'Spider-Man: No Way Home' is a comic book fan’s wet dream

5/5 stars

Spoilers ahead

Spider-Man: No Way Home is everything fans could have wanted and more. The only way to describe it is a masterpiece.

Director Jon Watts returns to finish Marvel’s Spider-Man trilogy which started with ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ back in 2017. The third instalment also saw the return of many other spider-verse actors both past, and present, including Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.

‘No Way Home’ picks up where ‘Far From Home’ left off, with Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) revealing Spider-Man’s (Tom Holland) identity to the world. From there we see Peter Parker’s life get turned upside down as he struggles to go about his life now that the world knows his secret.

This leads him to Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) who suggests a memory wiping spell that would make the world forget who Peter Parker is – including MJ (Zendaya), Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei).

Peter refuses to go through with the spell causing it to derail leading to an epic, mind-warping fight in the mirror dimension. Showing us that math trumps the mystic arts.

One of the most important parts of this movie is the introduction of the multiverse – a concept that is going to be explored in more depth in Phase Four, including the upcoming ‘Dr Strange: and the Multiverse of Madness’.

We see villains from previous Spider-Man films appear in the Marvel’s main universe. Including Green Goblin (William DeFoe), Dr Octopus (Alfred Molina), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Lizard (Rhys Ifans) and Electro (Jamie Foxx) who is now human, instead of an electrified Smurf.

The character that stole the show was William Defoe’s Green Goblin, especially in the movie’s second and third acts. The character grows in complexity and is unpredictable throughout.

Of course, the main star of the show is Tom Holland’s spiderman. ‘No Way Home’ shows how great of an actor Holland really is and puts him up there with Garfield and Maguire. He proves that he is Spider-Man and not the “Spider-boy” or “Iron man Jr” that critics dubbed him after his first film.

I have watched this film three times now in cinemas, and each time I have picked up on things I didn’t see the previous time. The best thing is seeing how different people react to different moments and of course how each audience reacts. When Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire stepped through their portals, the audience erupted into cheers and screams – an audience reaction that I have only ever experienced when I watched ‘Avengers Endgame’ for the first time.

Spider-man: No Way Home is still available to watch in cinemas across the country.