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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ has
fun embracing the multiverse
By Katie Walsh
Tribune News Service
B
ack in 2018, when Phil Lord
and Chris Miller took audi-
ences “Into the Spider-Verse”
with Spider-Man Miles Morales,
they reinvented, and reignited,
what superhero movies could
do, and indeed, could be, com-
pletely turning the nature of the
superhero movie inside out, while
retaining its heart, soul and sense
of thrilling adventure.
It’s clear that writers Chris
McKenna and Erik Sommers,
who also wrote “Spider-Man:
Homecoming” took note, and
inspiration, bringing the Spider-
Verse into the most recent,
live-action iteration. Helmed with
verve and wit by director Jon
Watts, who has directed all three
of the Tom Holland-starring
“Spider-Man” fi lms, “Homecom-
ing,” “Far From Home” and now,
“No Way Home,” the multiverse
freshens the formula while also
looking back fondly at some of
our favorite things about Spidey,
now and then.
Coming off “Far From Home,”
our intrepid Peter Parker fi nds
himself in quite a pickle back
home in New York when the evil
Mysterio reveals his identity on
TV news outfi t “The Daily Bugle,”
as J. Jonah Jameson (J.K.
Simmons) is now a blowhard
broadcaster. For your friendly
neighborhood Spider-Man to
be unmasked as a quiet high
school student who was unfor-
tunately involved in Mysterio’s
drone attacks in London, it puts
Parker in quite a public pre-
dicament, and during college
applications no less! When he
and his besties Ned (Jacob
Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) are
rejected from MIT due to the
controversy, Peter turns to his
not-so-friendly neighborhood
wizard, Dr. Strange (Benedict
Cumberbatch) for some way to
turn back time.
It shouldn’t be out of bounds
to mention that the spell cast by
Strange rips open the multi-
verse, and former supervillains
start to pour in, including Doc
Ock (Alfred Molina), the Green
Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and Elec-
tro (Jamie Foxx). Will there be
even more visitors from other
Spider-Verses? You’ll have to
turn up at the theater to fi nd out.
Peter Parker, in every itera-
tion, has always been a deeply
earnest do-gooder, those quali-
ties embodied perhaps most in-
nocently by the youthful Holland,
and that is at the emotional core
of “No Way Home,” especially
inspired by Peter’s empathetic
Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). These
aren’t his supervillains, so
maybe he can send them back
where they came from just a
little bit less villainous? Therein
lies the quandary and conun-
drum of “No Way Home,” which
is: Can you change someone’s
fate? It seems, not without a
large sacrifi ce of your own.
The multiverse approach
does indeed liven up the pro-
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MJ (Zendaya) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) jump off a bridge in “Spider-Man:
No Way Home.”
ceedings that can get rather
rote over the many, many ver-
sions of Spider-Man. Though
it’s curious which tropes have a
staying power that goes uncriti-
cized, like including the ever-
present grayscale airborne CGI
climax, and certain emotional
beats that are hit time and time
again. Watching these repeated
moments play out with diff erent
actors has a surreal quality, as if
we are really in a multiverse.
But despite these limitations,
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”
is a fast, loose and funny romp
through Spidey’s greatest hits.
It whips through its two hour,
28 minute runtime at a break-
neck pace, though it takes it’s
time to breathe in the emotional
moments. Turns out it’s a good
thing when our Spider-Man
fl icks gain sentience, because it
doesn’t get much more fun than
this at the movies.
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