Spider-Man: No Way Home Spins Webs of Tears!
By Christina Muttavanchery ('23)
Our favorite insect hybrid is back! This movie needs no introduction, but I’ll do it for the people who are really missing out and have no idea who Spider-Man is. Spider-Man is a character made by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Gerald Way. He was first introduced in Marvel Comics' Amazing Fantasy, no. 15 (1962).
Our current Spider-Man is played by the actor Tom Holland. He’s a geeky teen named Peter Parker who gets bitten by a spider and starts to have spider-like abilities such as crawling on different surfaces and has “spidey senses”, a feeling when he can sense and react to danger about to occur.
In the past years, we’ve had 2 different actors as the live-action movies of Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire was in Spider-Man for 3 movies, (2002, 2004, and 2007). After that, was Andrew Garfield who acted in the changed, even more, modern retelling of The Amazing Spider-Man for 2 movies, (2012), and (2014). And now our latest one, actor Tom Holland, has so far been in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2019), Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021).
SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT read ahead if you don’t want to know what happened in the latest Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Sitting in the movie theater and hearing the Marvel intro soundtrack, is honestly the most invigorating experience that gives people the rush of expecting to be wowed by what’s being presented in front of them. In this Spider-Man movie, it does what none has done before (it was brought up in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but that was an animated movie), it brings in the characters from the other storytellings of the franchise! I got to see the original Sandman, Lizard, Electro, Doc Ock, and the Green Goblin take on their roles once again and show us a side of them we haven’t seen in a long time from before they took on their villain persona. The plot of the movie is that it starts back when Tom Holland’s Peter Parker identity is revealed by Mysterio, and the whole world knows who he is. Peter isn’t very happy about this since it’s not only affecting his personal life but also all the ones he cares about. He seeks out help from Dr. Strange, to reverse time like he once did in Avengers: Endgame. Strange explains he can’t do this just for such a small reason and instead presents the idea of wiping the knowledge of Peter being Spider-Man from everyone’s minds. Peter jumps at this opportunity but wants certain friends and his aunt to still remember. Because of all the changes that happen, the spell occurring goes haywire, and Strange is forced to restrain it. Before he does, however, a couple of people from other Spider-Man universes slip in. Peter was advised by Strange to just capture all of them, and then send them back to where they belong, but to Peter’s surprise he finds out that after he caught all the villains, they were killed in their worlds, so if he sent them back they’ll be walking into their death anyways. Aunt May urges him to instead “fix” them, but he comes up for cures.
When I started to see this idea actually work—first with Doc Ock—I was so happy, but still wary of the others, since at any second they can do something awful, especially the Green Goblin and Electro in my opinion. This worry I had became reality for Peter since that’s exactly what happened, starting with the Green Goblin who was acting like he was Dr. Norman Osborn the whole time, which was not true at all. He gets into the heads of all the other villains (except Doc Ock since he has his normal mentality again) causing everyone to go berserk against Peter, especially the Green Goblin, who kills Aunt May. This death of a loved one was something all the multiverses Peter’s need to go through to harness their skills and to know who they are and need to be. Going through his inner turmoil, he gets to meet Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man personas! They all converse and see everything they have in common with each other and become brothers in a way. This has to be my favorite part. Seeing the way they interact with each other is comical but also tugs on an emotional strand of the attachment we have with these characters.
Spider-Man lineup!
Photo courtesy of Marvel.
Soon we see the Sandman as his normal human self, as well as The Lizard, Electro, and finally, the Green Goblin, who puts up a fight and brings out the dark side of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, when he almost kills him, instead of curing him, until Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man steps in and stops him before he regrets it. And what do you know, all the villains are once again back to their normal selves (as normal as Doc Ock can be with his mechanical arms).
When everything ends, I completely forgot that the issue of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker’s identity is still there, but then we’re reminded by Dr. Strange when he tells Peter the issue and that the only remedy is for everyone to forget who Peter Parker is, as a whole, and tells him to say his goodbyes to MJ and Ned. He promises that once their memory of Peter Parker is gone, he’ll find MJ and explain everything. We cut to the scene where he’s walking into MJ’s job, index cards ready to explain, but he backs down when he sees their lives are going back to normal. We then see him on his own in a tiny apartment in Queens with a GED book, since there’s no trace of him at all to even be in school again, but this doesn’t dampen his mood, since he gets back out in the city at night, and swings with his webs, staying alert for the safety of others.
This movie put me on such a rollercoaster of emotions. Seeing all the multiverses’ Peters does tease the future of Marvel movies to see where they’ll go with this idea, and I'm extremely enthusiastic about it. I’ve been asked which Spider-man is the best, and in all honesty, I can’t even answer that. All of them are different but similar in ways of how they behave, and think, but in the end, all care about keeping others safe, and that's every Spider-Man, so it’s impossible to pick one I think. In the future, I hope to see more of the 3 Spider-Man actors together in one movie, but I count on it, since that may be too repetitive. For now, this movie will be there for anyone else to watch so they can slip into the multiverse themselves and just enjoy the movie.
Cover photo courtesy of IMDb.