Review of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) by Gomesx — 11 Jan 2022

Before all the hype, I wanted to see Spider-Man in the movies, and the hype only made me want to see more. I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly expected better than what I saw. In addition to being a snooze festival, it was so corny and saccharine that I made an appointment to visit the dentist during the film.

The film began to deteriorate the moment Peter Parker (Tom Holland) went to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) for a spell to make everyone forget about him. It wasn't a bad idea for Peter to go to Doctor Strange to fix his little revealed identity problem, it was just weirdly dumb of Doctor Strange to actually accommodate Peter. Dr. Strange really tried to make everyone in the world forget who Peter Parker was. It was a massive spell that felt too excessive just to fix a man's problems. The movie went into silly mode as Parker kept interrupting Doctor Strange as he did the spell. The result was a multitude of old enemies from different universes converging on this universe to find Parker. If it was explained, it was poorly explained.

At this point, the film was on shaky ground, but it didn't budge. "No Way Home" would suffer another setback when Parker fought Strange to stop him from sending all these villains back to their respective universes. See, if they came back, they would meet death at the hands of, or because of, this universe's Spider-Man, and this universe's Spider-Man was too moralistic to allow that to happen. No, Parker would fix this so everyone could go home and live happily ever after.

Everything after that part of the movie was immaterial to me in the grand scheme. To me, when a plot is based on a flawed or just plain bad premise, everything that follows is equally wrong and pointless. Not that the things that follow can't be aesthetically cool; they are just empty.

Parker was acting on the fair advice of his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). By his wisdom, Parker had an obligation to help these poor misguided men, no matter what the exponentially more experienced Doctor Strange said. Doctor Strange wanted to do the most logical thing which was to send each villain back to their own universe and let fate take over from there. Parker, with his oversized heart and undersized common sense, wanted to keep them in his own universe as pet projects until he could fix them and then send them back. Forget that he would actively tamper with the course of events from another universe, massively altering their timelines with incalculable consequences, he simply wasn't old enough, wisdom, or experience enough to know what the best thing to do was. Also, it was a slap in the face to the other Spider-Men. As if to say, "You guys are screwed, I'm going to find a better, healthier solution because I'm a better Spider-Man.".

I was so disturbed by this new Spider-Man mission to save these villains that everything after that started to bother me. The attempts at comedy were awkward and grossly bland. The emotional moments were very frequent and long. The last nail in the coffin of this was execution time. Man, they dragged this. I could tolerate a didactic and flawed plot if you explained it to us in a quick and exciting way, but in their attempts to send this great spider-man, we had to suffer through an ocean of tears, an abyss of emotions and an abundance of silence with slow music. Everything was set up for them to restart Spider-Man if necessary, but at this point I could use a break and no more Spider-Men about "home".