Spider-Man : No Way Home is a superhero action-adventure drama starring Tom Holland as everybody’s favourite wall-crawler. The film is the final instalment in the Sony-Marvel Spider-Man trilogy that sets the hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). After the relatively weak performances of MCU fare in 2021, No Way Home has been highly anticipated worldwide.
Our review of No Way Home begins with a quote from famed director Martin Scorcese – “… that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire magazine, “honestly, the closest I can think of them … is theme parks.” Scorcese was responding to a query concerning his thoughts on superhero movies. While largely ignorant from Scorcese to generalise in this manner, a movie like No Way Home seems to suggest that there is a grain of truth in this less than flattering statement.
IS THE SUPERHERO MOVIE BOOM OVER?
No Way Home is fan-service, nothing more and nothing less. But that said, it is smart fan-service. Using the MCU multiverse concept to bring back characters from the Sony Spider-Man movies of the last 20 years is a masterstroke. How that is achieved plot-wise is sloppy at best and downright poor, at worse though.
There are plot-holes the size of the Statue of Liberty in No Way Home, which thankfully, even a casual movie fan will be able to ignore, thanks to the intelligent fan-service being applied copiously here. Much of the storyline does not make any sense whatsoever and No Way Home functions as a roller-coaster of emotions – mostly nostalgic – as fans will thrill to the easter eggs and cameo appearances that come at them thick and fast throughout the movie.
In the final analysis, No Way Home is a fun outing to the movie theatres – something the industry sorely needs in a time of pandemic. Whether it is ‘cinema’ is debatable but definitely does feel like a theme park ride but perhaps in the best way.
… still there’s more …