Spider-Man: No Way Home

Spider-Man: No Way Home is easily one of the most highly anticipated films of all time. From the very early stages, heavy speculations have been circulating about the inclusion of characters from the past live action features made for the webslinger. It came to a point where everybody and their momma knows for certain that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are in fact starring, even when the promotional materials did not choose to give it away. The real unfortunate and devastating fact is though, these iconic Spidey veterans are roped into an extremely incompetent, uninspired flick concocted purely to steal money from the Spider-Man fanbase.

The movie starts off strong for sure. Peter's (Tom Holland) life is in shambles now that the public knows he is behind the mask. Subway tunnel close-shave episode together with the in-house one-take sequence are fantastically canned! The struggle due to the aftermath involving law enforcement is real, not only for our protagonist, but every person tied to him. At the culmination point of desperation, Peter seeks Doctor Strange's (Benedict Cumberbatch) help. The accident that arrives due to this and the consequences that follow form the crux.

Look, the idea of witnessing each and every live-action cinematic representation of Spider-Man, Peter Parker and all of his famous foes is invigorating no matter to who! That's the very idea No Way Home clang on to sell its tickets. But, there's an even more, in fact, most fundamental question that needs to be answered before said dream could happen - WHY are these characters being brought back? HOW are these characters relevant and necessary for this storyline? These questions do not receive even the most basic answer from this third instalment of Spidey-Home saga.

A mishap with Doctor Strange's spell causes everyone who knows Peter Parker to look for him in this universe (which is odd because The Amazing Spider-Man's Electro (Jamie Foxx) doesn't know Peter Parker but let's move on). These characters from the multiverse invade, and the Sorcerer Supreme's natural and logical solution to this is to send these individuals back to where they came from (conveniently he does know the number of slots to allocate for the exact amount of past antagonist characters whom are set to appear but let's move one). Just then, Tom Holland's Peter suggests a "brilliant" alternative - he wants to "save" these villains. In terms of making a sequel to an idiotic decision, this makes sense since this character has to perform an action that would surpass his Far From Home's decision of giving Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) inheritance for him away to Quentin Beck aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). But back to the serious discussion, this choice of action of his is incredibly ludicrous that it's too hard to empathize with or to root for. First of all, WHO is he to cure them? It's not the abilities that makes these baddies the way they are; it's their collective painful experiences that pushed them to this extreme. Secondly, WHY do they need any curing at all? They've already had their perfect setup, midpoint and resolution in their respective stories / movies, so what is this nonsense? Oh that's right, ends had to be pulled hard to be met or else there's no money to be made out of this cheap endeavor. With lazy writing, comes stupid character decisions and motivations. For the first time ever in any Spider-Man literature media, when J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons) scorns at Spider-Man for all the destruction he caused, we can help but agree with him wholeheartedly since it's a no-brainer!

For the love of good cinema, the Marvel Cinematic Universe just can't proceed with their storytelling without inserting an unnecessary, unfunny joke every 2 minutes. It's like the creative heads are scared to death of losing the audiences. As a result, we receive mediocre, bland, careless and effortless scenes plus dialogues anchoring onto these ridiculous quips. It definitely brings tears of joy seeing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back onscreen as the true Spider-Men, but the excitement doesn't last when you realize they are merely being used to mouth and participate in what MCU perceives as comedy. The potential for another Avengers: Endgame was widely possible here, but oh boy did they flush it down the toilet! To experience that live-action cinematic doing of three Spider-Man swinging together is amazing, but the effect is severely reduced by the below average script. Seeing Matthew Murdock (Charlie Coy) return as the Daredevil himself must have been a field day for the Netflix series fans. Willem Dafoe made an impact as Green Goblin once again and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man saving MJ (Zendaya) is a good callback we all predicted by watching the trailers itself. The conversation between the Spider-Men, Andrew's Peter relieving the backpain of Tobey's Peter and the final hug between the three although could have been executed way better, are nice moments nevertheless. Supporting characters like MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) are nothing but super nuisance of a presence. Aunt May's (Marisa Tomei) demise as a result of trying to combat a supervillain as a normal human being is well deserved. Great thing is, we'll never have to encounter these useless characters in the sequel anymore, hopefully.

This brings us directly to the ending. Peter allowing his surrounding to forget him as he doesn't want to hurt anybody anymore is a fantastic resolution! He moves out to be his own in the end. One could only hope the sequels would be much better. The innocents will call No Way Home a fan service, but in reality it is nothing more than an utter gutter cash-grab barf sandwiched between a solid opening and ending designed to take advantage of the gullible Spider-Man fandom. An ambitious ensemble picture as such should definitely have been handled by prestigious and experienced hands like the Russo Brothers along with screenwriters who know how to pen a script with dignity such as Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.