"Spider-Man No Way Home" (With Spoilers)

All the spoilers ahead.  I mean it.

I suspect that the making of this movie is more interesting than the actual film.  The most impressive part of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" is the deal-making that must have taken place to get  Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, Thomas Hayden Church, Rhys Ifans, and J.K. Simmons to reprise their roles, not to mention Andrew Garfield and the elusive Tobey Maguire, who gave up acting and hasn't been seen onscreen since 2014.    

Thanks to the inescapable rumor mill - which is only getting more aggressive - I was pretty confident that Garfield and Maguire would be making some kind of appearance in the film, but it was a great treat to see them spend the whole last act of the film together with Tom Holland's Peter Parker, interacting, quipping, and finally bonding with each other.  I finally watched the Andrew Garfield "Spider-man" films last year, and I'm so glad I did, because "No Way Home" really only works the way that it should if you have the past history with all of these films.  Without the nostalgia, the sudden introduction of two previously unknown versions of Peter Parker, along with all of those villains, probably comes off as much more abrupt and clunky.  

The MCU is really milking the multiverse concept, and I'm sure they're far from done.  However, "No Way Home" feels like the best possible execution of this kind of crossover event, because the Sony reboots came in such a short amount of time, and the franchise was so huge in the popular consciousness that they're still mostly remembered fondly.  This also gave director Jon Watts, and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers a chance to tie up some of the loose ends left over from the Maguire and Garfield-led "Spider-man" films.  It's oddly reassuring to know that both of the previous Spideys are alive and well in their own universes.  Garfield really is a very good Spider-man, and Maguire may be less enthusiastic, but he delivers when it counts.  

And it feels miraculous that in a movie with so much comic book madness going on, the emotional journey of Tom Holland's Peter Parker remains so clearly defined throughout.  The other Spider-men coming to support him in his hour of greatest need wouldn't work so well if the stakes weren't as high as they are here.  Peter Parker thinks his life is ruined until he does something immature and stupid, and has to face much bigger, much worse consequences.  It's the kind of morality play, featuring tragic ironies and hard choices, that Watts and company have mostly sidestepped so far, and I'm glad that they finally decided to commit to it here - even if redeeming all the villains is so very, very Disney.  Peter Parker is uncoupling a bit from the MCU and going back to square one, and it feels right.  

And while I like that Peter has been de-powered, forced to grow up, and given a suitably sad Spidey ending this time out, what I really appreciate about featuring the whole multiverse concept is that now we can treat the MCU "Spider-man" canon as fully its own thing.  There doesn't have to be a Gwen in this universe, and "With great power comes great responsibility" works fine coming from Aunt May.  And after six film appearances from the Tom Holland Spider-man, he's finally crossed off all the boxes of the usual Spider-man origin story, and feels properly like a full-fledged Spider-man instead of a younger version.  Frequently, "No Way Home" feels like "Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse," but not quite as good because the storytelling relies so much on the previous films.  

Where Spider-man goes from here depends mostly on what Tom Holland wants to do, but it's clear that there's plenty of material left for future adventures.  More Venom seems to be an inevitability, which I am not looking forward to.  I also worry that the success of "No Way Home" is going to spark imitators, but few studios have the IP or the deep pockets to pull something like this off - can you imagine a multi-Batman crossover with the current state of Warner Brothers? - so this will likely stay a high water mark for superhero crossovers for a while.  

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