Spider-Man: No Way Home-A LArge Scale Spider-man Story with a Firm Understanding of the Character

What has always made Spider-Man: No Way Home such a great film is its firm understanding of Spider-Man as a character while upping the stakes massively. It's a story that explores the selflessness inherent to the character, how Peter does things because it's the right thing to do, and the sacrifices he makes along the way. Only now, it's on a cosmic, multiversal scale.

The fan service elements and cameos rarely feel forced, as they are in service of Tom Holland's Peter. The antagonists are there to conflict with the morals Peter must learn throughout the film. There's also something so touching about seeing Tom Holland's Peter learn to be a better hero than the other two Spider-Men. Admittedly, I get a kick from seeing all the familiar characters and watching them interact. It can, at times, feel like cheap fan service, but I would be lying if I said I didn't find much of it to be very enjoyable.

However, No Way Home isn't a perfect film, and its flaws become increasingly apparent each time I watch it. For starters, it's a visually inconsistent film. There are some fantastic-looking shots throughout the movie, but there's also an equal amount of ugly CG shots and shots that look clearly like actors behind a green screen. The writing has its quirks, as some of the humor doesn't always land, and the exposition-heavy dialogue, especially in the first two acts, can be pretty cumbersome. Some other writing choices also slightly bother me, such as what the film does with J Jonah Jameson, as he seems too antagonistic towards less Spider-Man and more Peter himself in a way that seems out of character compared to previous iterations, and as I said, some of the fan service and references did tend to feel a bit cheap at times.

But even with its flaws, I find it hard not to love No Way Home when the film is so in love with Spider-Man and all the previous and current iterations of the character. It's a film that firmly understands the character and tells a vast-scale, multiversal story. Spider-Man is a character known for his small-scale, neighborly quality. But now and then, it feels good to have such a large-scale story that has fun with the character.

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