directed by Jon Watts
written by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna
Much as I'd like to say that Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first movie I saw in theaters after a year and a half of lockdown, the truth is that it was another movie I went to see, namely Chloe Zhao's much maligned, somewhat misunderstood film Eternals, a movie I didn't hate but didn't love either. It's worth comparing the two because there's something important they have in common apart from the Marvel Studios brand name.
Spider-Man: No Way Home immediately follows the revelation that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is Spider-Man that took place in the mid-credits scene of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Thanks to the doctored broadcast leaked by the late Mysterio's team to conspiracy theorist/online show host J. Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons), Peter's life has basically turned upside-down. Although none of the allegations hold up in court, Peter's life is still in shambles, and to make things worse, even his friends Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) are suffering from the backlash as none of them can get into any of the colleges of their choice due to the controversy surrounding them. Desperate, Peter thinks of a radical solution; he approaches Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks him to use magic to help him. Strange is able to think of a spell to make people forget his identity, but it ends up getting botched, however, after Peter constantly interrupts Strange with concerns about the people he cares about forgetting him like his Aunt May (Marissa Tomei), MJ and Ned. Suddenly, Peter finds himself running into strange, powerful people he doesn't know...but who know that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and who want to kill him. These mysterious strangers include Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and the Lizard (Rhys Ifans), and Peter learns that they've been pulled from other universes into his own because of Doctor Strange's failed spell, which means he is now in a race against time to send them back where they belong, until he learns something shocking that changes everything.
(SPOILER ALERT)
Sony and Marvel basically pulled out all the stops for this movie, with all of its villains and surprise heroes, but the real coup of this movie was what it took away. What this film has done in somewhat shocking fashion is to take away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Spider-Man everything in his life, such as his friends, and even his Aunt May, and strip him to basically the barest essentials of the character. When he swings out into the winter night at the end of the movie, the MCU Spider-Man, for the first time, is completely on his own.
People have often criticized Marvel movies--quite unfairly--in my opinion, of being low-stakes affairs in general, largely because of the relatively light tone that many, if not most of them adopt. Such a criticism actually fails, in my opinion, to understand the way Marvel tells stories.
Kevin Feige and his cohorts understand, probably better than anyone else in the business, that even though making each individual MCU film is important, they are all still part of a bigger narrative and as such are a true adaptation of the comic book series' long-form storytelling. They know that it is important for their characters to connect with audiences over time. In short, rather than get a cheap rise out of the audience with contrived "stakes" through gratuitous violence and death every movie, Marvel takes the cannier route of getting audiences invested in its characters, whether these are heroes like Iron Man and Black Widow or key supporting characters like Aunt May. While, several of their individual films may sometimes seem "weightless," more often than not all but the harshest critics note that they usually do a good job of connecting us viewers with the characters.
As a result, when Black Widow sacrifices herself to obtain the Soul Stone and restore half of the universe's population, and when Iron Man basically barbecues himself to defeat Thanos and his forces, audiences all around the world are genuinely gobsmacked. I still remember watching Avengers: Endgame two years ago in a packed IMAX theater in which the guy beside me was so sure that Iron Man would rise from the dead with a clever quip...until he didn't.
Similarly, Marisa Tomei's young and hip Aunt May has been known mainly for her humor and loving support of Peter over the course of several films starting with Captain America: Civil War, so when the filmmakers finally yanked the rug out from under the viewers and killed her character in No Way Home, it hit harder than any "edgy" but ultimately meaningless violence in movies with supposedly more "stakes" ever could.
Perhaps the most effective point of comparison and contrast is Eternals, which significantly departs from the Marvel practice of letting all of the major characters survive their first movie. Salma Hayek's Ajak doesn't even make it halfway through the movie before she's killed, and Don Lee's Gilgamesh meets a similarly grisly fate about two thirds into the movie. This is supposedly good for the narrative because it creates a sense of urgency and menace for our eight remaining heroes, but because this film does such a poor job developing its massive cast of characters, we the audience cannot really be bothered to care that something bad has happened to them. We're not invested in the characters and so their deaths become meaningless. There are dire consequences to their actions, sure, and there are therefore "stakes" in that hackneyed sense, but because these characters are so undercooked, these "stakes" basically don't mean anything beyond what the script tells us they're supposed to mean, and it's probably only when Thanos' brother (played by Harry Styles) shows up that the audience has some vague idea of how serious the threat is...because the movie has to spell it out at this point, rather than it being a visceral reaction. So having failed in its basic assignment of getting the audience to connect to the characters, the film now struggles to establish its sense of urgency, even after killing principal characters to make its point. So for once, Kevin Feige and his team screwed up.
Spider-Man: No Way Home, in contrast, takes what has come before and basically pays it off in spectacular fashion. Throughout all of his adventures in his solo films and in the Avengers movies, MCU Spider-Man has made lots of friends and allies, and even though he's had close calls, he's always benefited from having someone, whether it was Happy Hogan with Stark tech, or Ned as his "guy in the chair," or even two other Spider-Men, around to help him out. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film truly ups the ante; after finally asking Doctor Strange to cast the spell to really make everyone forget who he is, Peter lets go of everyone left in his life who matters, leaving himself completely alone in the world, and it is a deeply affecting moment, especially when the viewer realizes that he's still just a kid, albeit one who's just grown up a whole lot faster.
Yes, producer Kevin Feige, working here with Spidey vet Amy Pascal, director Jon Watts and his writers Erik Sommer and Chris McKenna know all about stakes, and how to really hurt their character when it really and truly matters. And THIS film was a time that it really mattered.
9/10
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