Spider-Man: No Way Home is a 2021 American superhero film directed by Jon Watts and produced by Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal, and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. It stars Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Tony Revolori, Marisa Tomei, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. It’s based on Marvel Comics, and is a sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), and is the 27th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as well as the third film in the MCU’s Spider-Man film series. It grossed $1.922 billion over a $200 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2021 and the 7th-highest-grossing film of all time. In Australia it’s rated M for action violence; in the US it’s rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence, some language and brief suggestive comments; in the UK it’s rated 12A (for cinematic release) and 12 (for home release) for moderate violence, threat. The following are 10 of the Internet Movie Database reviews for the film.
Gordon-11 15 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This Spiderman is really fantastic. It captivated me right from the start, and I was entranced every second. There’s adventure, friendship, team spirit, love, empathy, and brotherhood. The people in the cinema clapped and cheered multiple times, at the appearance of key characters and at big hint of what the future holds for Spiderman. I loved every second of it!
6/10
Great concept, mediocre execution
gbill-74877 31 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
A tough one to rate. It certainly has entertainment value, but it’s frustrating that it could have been so much better. On the one hand, the concept of bringing villains and other Spidermen in from alternate universes is fantastic, and it was great to see some of these characters again. There is so much star power in the cast here, and the special effects are wonderful.
On the other hand, there is quite a bit of bloat as well. I’m all for character development and non-action scenes in action movies, but too often these moments were poorly written and bogged the film down. I have to say, I didn’t care for how naïve Tom Holland’s version of Spider-Man was either, and I could never buy in to the concept that he would try to “fix” the villains before sending them back to their own universes. This seemed asinine to me, and how that would stop them from dying where they came from was a mystery too. There are several other plot elements that are either weakly crafted (Dr. Strange getting trapped by some quick Spidey-math) or boring (Peter Parker and his friends and their college admission drama, good grief). Give me more of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), less of Ned Leeds, the goofy sidekick.
10/10
masonsaul 15 December 2021
Spider-Man: No Way Home is a phenomenal conclusion to the trilogy and Holland’s best outing as Spidey yet. Starts off fun, safe and familiar and then becomes extremely emotional, satisfying and full of great callbacks. A love letter to all things Spider-Man.
Tom Holland gives an incredible lead performance once again, reliably charming and likeable but with a lot more emotional heft this time around. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon both have perfect chemistry with Holland and are also incredible in their own ways.
Benedict Cumberbatch reaffirms why he’s such a good Doctor Strange with his excellent dry wit and gravitas. All the returning villains give strong performances but Willem Dafoe is definitely the standout performance with an unsettling and terrifying presence.
Jon Watts’ direction is superb, the action sequences are thrillingly acrobatic once again but refreshingly impactful this time around. There’s a few homages to the styles of the previous iterations and some gorgeous imagery.
It’s also perfectly paced with none of its roughly 2hr 30 minute runtime feeling dull or overly long due to a strong momentum established early on. The CG is extremely impressive with only a few weak spots.
The music by Michael Giacchino is fantastic, a nice balance of themes from the previous iterations and use of Holland’s iconic motifs which are slightly altered in ways that work as well as a few new additions that are beautifully epic.
5/10
Neptune165 19 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Awful movie. The plot sucked and had awful pacing humour, and dialogue were subpar(like the octopus joke). And they couldn’t think of anything better so they brought back some old characters which still didn’t save this poorly written film. One bad dialogue scene was when the 3 Spider-Men where making jokes about Tobey’s organic webs which was just awkward and humorless. And to add to that, Tobey saying that “my back” joke and Norman Osborn repeating “I’m something of a scientist myself”. Just why?! The film could never decide whether it’s a comedy or a dark action movie.
This movie certifies that Tom Holland is the worst Spider-Man. With great power comes great responsibility and MCU Spider-Man lacks that. He’s had 6 movies and still acts like an inexperienced, immature, not independent, not smart and acts like a rookie. And the whole plot started because he couldn’t think of an alternative to get him and his friends to college so he got Doctor Strange to go and make a spell so that everyone will forget that Peter is Spider-Man(also doing it without his friends consent). And of course with Peter being the doofus he is, he messes up the spell which causes the multiverse to collide. There’s a reason why his messes are always cleaned up by someone better than him. One of Spider-Man’s best traits is his quick thinking and it was so inevitable that after messing up the spell, he decides to go and talk to the headteacher of the college for a placement(same scene where Doctor Octopus appears). You’d think he would have learnt his lesson about trusting villains in Far From Home but no; he does it again which caused Aunt May’s death. It could have been avoided if he had just sent them home, but no they needed to be “cured”(which is odd because The Lizard was cured in the Amazing Spider-Man). It just made him look sappy and too Disney like, thinking he can change their fate. It’s also not smart to invite dangerous villains into your house with a non superhero family member there. How could he trust them that quickly? When you see it, you find it hard to feel bad for Peter because you’re like “yeah this guy sucks” The emotional scenes in this movie were pretty awful, especially how long and stretched May’s death was and they still tried to exchange jokes and had her standing up right before dying(also re wording Uncle Ben’s infamous line which sounded wrong). Family member deaths are always before the character becomes a hero so doing it after feels cheap. It wasn’t even basic superhero bad luck, just Spider-Man not thinking straight.
Marvel really need new writers(especially in the comedic department), because they’ve released 4 bad movies this year and a TV show that messed up a timeline just like No Way Home did. And they’ve also ruined Spider-Man’s character by not properly developing him and just throwing him into the Avengers drama. They are cash grabbers and only adding him because he is popular and it will get the movie ticket sales up. No Way Home is one of the few movies that make me wish the villains had won, and the reason is that the plot armour on Spider-Man was too strong. Like when geometry was somehow the answer to get out of the mirror dimension. Green Goblin was right about his morality getting the better of him.
Overall this movie was just an overhyped, over budgeted nostalgia bait and Spider-Man is the real antagonist of this film. Always puts people in danger for no reason.
10/10
BandSAboutMovies 18 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
It’s hard to discuss this movie and not get into the spoilers because the biggest moments of this movie necessitate ruining several of the big reveals. I loved that not everything was in the trailer and I successfully avoided reading too much about the film, which helped my enjoyment. This was the first movie I’ve seen in a theater since Halloween Kills, so the risk of COVID-19 and all its variants didn’t keep me away* from the biggest movie of the year.
This movie arrives as so many older directors gatekeep what constitutes a movie. So let me break down my opinion: movies can be anything you want them to be. There is equal room for a high end Oscar contender as there is for the junk low end world that I live in, the places where Godfrey Ho, Jess Franco and Bruno Mattei make their home.
What else are comic book movies other than classical myths made with computers and no small amount of sound and fury? So yeah, this is the 27th Marvel Cinematic Universe movie and you know, you don’t have to watch these movies. Hollywood — the world — is still making something for everyone. But for crowd-pleasing moments, the two biggest I’ve heard in years are when Captain America lifted Mjolnir and when one of the characters arrived in this film, a literally explosion of happiness and joy from an audience that has weathered so much in the last two years.
And isn’t that why movies exist? To make us feel something?
No movie that I have seen in a theater in nearly a decade has elicited that emotional outburst and you know, it brought true joy to my heart. So I didn’t feel silly expressing my emotions, whether they were happy when a certain legal professional made his presence known or the sadness of Dr. Strange’s final words to Peter Parker.
Spider-Man has always lived by the lesson that with great power comes great responsibility. He’s a character informed — in every incarnation — by a great loss that he was at fault for and a lifetime of making up for that mistake.
Yet Spider-Man: No Way Home presents us with something new. Great power with responsibility also means being better than your enemies and at times, working to make them better people and not just punching them into oblivion. The fact that antagonists can be worth saving spoke to me, someone usually given to mad revenge schemes and years of grudges. Even when doing the right thing ends up hurting you, you still can do the right thing.
These are big concepts for a comic book spectacle. And this movie does what all great films should. It’s stuck in my mind since I saw it and I wanted some time away from it before I wrote this. Spider-Man is the story of a bully grown up and moving past the way he was treated, often finding those bullies — Flash Thompson, Eddie Brock — become if not friends, certainly no longer enemies.
This also gets into the Marvel idea of a multiverse, a connected web of other realities where small differences — Disney+ set this up with What If…? And this idea will form the heart of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — but the main part of this story remains refreshingly human in the midst of big ideas, strange science and concepts like how magic works.
Look — I don’t have to sell you on these movies. They make so much money that they’re critic proof. But I do want you to consider that even if you hate superhero movies, even if you think there are too many of them, to consider your favorite film series. What if you had more than three of the original Star Wars films and they all were progressively better? What if the last Jason, Freddy or Hellraiser movie was so much better than the original? What if James Bond got more human, more relevant and more real as the world around him became even stranger?
That’s what’s happening here. And it’s amazing.
*I’m triple vaxxed, beyond fastidious about mask wearing and personal space, and rarely if ever leave my movie basement. This isn’t a political statement. Viruses don’t have politics and if you think they do, you can kindly never read another word that I write.
4/10
IPyaarCinema 21 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Review By Kamal K
I don’t think this film was written well. It had already established Spider-man characters with no involvement with Stark, but still failed at making Tom’s Peter any better than he was when under Tony Stark’s mentorship. This movie was not good. No amount of nostalgia saved it for me. It had pacing issues, for example the movie skimmed past Peter’s whole identity exposed moment and chucked Daredevil in for a meaningless cameo as nobody seemed to truly care that as a blind man, he was able to catch a brick chucked through the window. He was literally just there for fanservice, and not a well written one. The rest of the movie is pointless as by the end, they just reverse everything by sending the spider-men and villains back to their world, after of course, seemingly retconning the plots of the previous spider-man movies by curing the villains, who were taken before they met their demise. Therefore their fights with spider-man end on a lame note as they all just become ordinary men towards the end of the original battles and so the Peter Parkers wouldn’t experience the key character development and progression of their stories from this.
And in usual MCU fashion, the film is riddled with jokes that sometimes hit, but mostly fall flat. Awful humour, which is constantly blurted out after (or during) serious moments because the writers simply couldn’t leave us without jokes for two whole minutes. Constant tonal shifts because of the “jokes”, And the Peters just felt like they needed to be there for Tom’s Peter? Bad writing at its finest.
Yes, this whole movie could’ve been avoided if Peter just listened to Doctor Strange, a man who actually knows magic and the consequences of messing spells up, but nope, he has to be stupid when he is supposed to be smart. Strange was literally the best character in the entire film, just for being the only one with a working braincell.
Overall, I found this movie quite bad. Nothing about it made me want to rewatch it and I have been feeling this with MCU movies recently like Black Widow and Shang chi, I will continue to watch Spider-man movies just because of my love for the character, but I will most likely continue to think the MCU’s portrayal of the character is the worst even though Tom Holland’s acting is great.
9/10
jack_o_hasanov_imdb 16 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
It was very enjoyable to watch in the cinema. The expected theories turned out to be true. Acting was great. The script was pretty good. I will watch it for the second time) It was the best Spiderman movie in my opinion. It’s also one of the best Marvel movies. Be sure to watch it in the cinema!
9/10
andrewchristianjr 15 December 2021
Superhero extravaganza! Spider-Man NWH didn’t meet my expectations, it exceeded them. The most emotionally resonant MCU film so far. This movie is worth every excruciating moment we had to wait. The visuals, the score, the emotions, the story, and ofc the fan-service. This film understands spider-man fans like no other spider-man film before it. Truly a celebration of the most beloved character in the best way possible!
10/10
A MASSIVE treat for every Spidey fan out there.
Achyut_Prashast_Singh 16 December 2021
This is a movie made purely to satisfy the fans and there should be no doubt about that. No Way Home, in my opinion, is even better than Homecoming and Far From Home, and pretty much one of the best MCU movies of all time. It’s a simple story, but the execution is fantastic. Even the smallest of surprises have a huge impact, and I could feel that in the theatre as I joined several other Spider-Man fans cheer out for both heroes and villains. The action sequences were brilliant; seeing them in 3D is totally worth the price of admission. Every actor delivered a believable, realistic performance, and especially our lead actor Tom Holland. The visual effects too were top notch and the editing was stupendous. Two and a half hours flew by real quick while watching this popcorn action entertainer. It won’t be fair to reveal anything, so here I conclude my review, and recommend you to check out this new world of Spidey-ness on the big screen and in 3D. And once you’ve seen it, please don’t spoil it for others, just like you won’t want it spoiled for yourself.
6/10
paul_haakonsen 12 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Right, well I am by no means a fan of superhero movies, but I will watch them when given the chance. Why? Solely for entertainment purposes, because Marvel Studios does make rather impressive movies, now don’t they? Indeed. And that is also why I opted to sit down and watch the 2021 movie “Spider-Man: No Way Home” here in 2022.
Actually, my family went to watch “Spider-Man: No Way Home” back in 2021 when it was out in the cinema, but I didn’t go, as I don’t think superhero movies are worth the ticket admission for a cinema. So instead, I opted to watch it when it became readily accessible at the comforts of my home.
Writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers actually put together a wholesome enough storyline here for this movie, and sure it was watchable and enjoyable. Outstanding or memorable? No, not so much. But then again, I am not overly keen on the whole superhero genre. But “Spider-Man: No Way Home” did provide me with entertainment for the 148 minutes that the movie ran for.
And it was actually fun enough to watch the various Spider-Men come together on the screen and fight the villains from previous movies all over again. Nostalgia? Perhaps. But at the same time, sort of lazy writing when you think about it.
Visually then “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was phenomenal. But then again, that is what Marvel Studios excel at, isn’t it?
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” certainly has a impressive cast list, with a lot of big names. I mean, you have Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire as the Spider-Man, and then you have Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Rhys Ifans and Thomas Haden Church return to reprise their former villainous roles. And the movie also have the likes of talents such as J. K. Simmons, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau and such on the cast list as well.
It was nice, though, to see that the writers were taking the many previous movies in the franchise with a grain of salt some times throughout the course of the movie, with the puns and snazzy dialogue hinting at and referencing previous movies.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” definitely is a pleasing movie for the fans of superhero movies and of “Spider-Man” in general.
My rating of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” lands on a six out of ten stars.
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