‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ review
Being a new fan to marvel can mean being utterly confused during their movies but Spider-man: No Way Home wasn’t confusing in the slightest and had great romance, action and visuals. Tessa Gibson ’24 breaks down her top moments and highlights of this amazing film.
January 25, 2022
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” was like no other superhero movie I’ve seen before. With the romance and action, there was heartbreak and tear-jerking scenes that left me and the entire theater in tears. But it also had stomach-aching comedy that played in my mind weeks later. Ultimately, as a relatively new fan to marvel this movie was easy to understand, had funny moments, and extremely sad moments. But be warned this review will feature many spoilers so if you haven’t seen this movie before, I suggest you turn away.
I’m a sucker for romance and let me tell you, this movie had lots of it. Peter and MJ are adorable with MJ’s shy, adorable demeanor and Peter’s charming and sweet personality, they are definitely a perfect fit. The Top Peter and MJ moments were probably them face timing and making occasionally rude comments about Happy’s snoring. Them laying on the roof at school to escape the conundrum of the media chaos and reading the creepy and totally unrealistic headlines from the newspaper. That part was hilarious and I’m pretty sure one of the headlines wrote that “Peter Parker has the spider ability to hypnotize females” which follows Zendaya’s character MJ calling Peter a spider lord. All in all these two definitely had a lot of chemistry but most of their little romantic scenes were interrupted by none other than Ned.
This leads me to my next point, Ned was by far the best character in No Way Home. From what I’ve seen in a lot of action superhero movies you always need a bit of comic relief to hold you over during the gory graphic fighting scenes. This is exactly what Ned Leeds brought to the table. I really admire that Ned is almost like a fan of the superhero action that Peter experiences. He’s honestly just a normal guy put into these critical life experiences and the dialogue that comes from him is hilarious. My top favorite Ned moment was definitely when he was granted with Dr. Strange’s magical power to create portals.
Speaking of magical powers, Dr. Strange was definitely a large part of this movie. Dr.Strange was a great aspect of this movie and his sarcastic witty humor was great to witness. As someone who wasn’t really familiar with him before this movie it was cool to learn about the different aspects of his abilities and what he can and can’t do. It’s clear that Marvel is continuing the trend of doing different collaborations with the different characters of Marvel. Marvel also brought in a non-familiar face to the movie screens but he’s popular with the TV screens. This character is known as the blind, quick reflexed, Daredevil. We see Daredevil during the scene where Peter is getting recognition for his revealed identity as spiderman. Of course, with the amount of chaos surrounding his damage to the city he would need some sort of attorney, which is where Matt Murdock comes in to help Peter face the commotion. At the end, as well during the classic marvel end credit scene we witnessed an upcoming Marvel character known as venom. This is definitely a sign that both these newcomers to the screen will be featured in more movies.
Some friendly faces are reintroduced as well. Now, at the beginning of this movie you probably assumed there would be one Peter in this film but there were actually 3 Peters. That’s right, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire returned to the screen as Spiderman for the most ultimate crossover. These two definitely brought many funny moments, and the Peters’ brotherly supportive dynamic brought a smile to my face the whole time. These Spider-mans definitely pulled in numerous generations of marvel fans and their dynamic was priceless. These light hearted moments definitely eased the sadness that bloomed during the movie.
“But Marvel is not all sunshine and rainbows and his life is completely destroyed.”
Peter in this movie has faced a lot of emotional toll which led to the saddest parts of the movie. It seems that Peter’s simple life at the beginning of the movie where he has a nice girlfriend and a funny best friend and a vision to go to MIT. But Marvel is not all sunshine and rainbows and his life is completely destroyed. Which leads to the heartbreaking death of his aunt May during the fighting between the villains from all of Peter’s backstories. I might not want to admit it but some tears definitely rolled down my cheek during this scene. I remember the quiet sadness that filled the theater and even felt some anger coming from my friend claiming “Happy should have died instead.” Peter was left devastated and so was the theater but he had a few scenes to rest before he was devastated yet again.
The Ending absolutely broke my heart into like a million pieces. I’ve seen this movie two times and each time during the ending scene I break down into tears. Peter is definitely tested and we see a lot of maturity and integrity from his decision. Basically at the end he chooses to erase the idea of Peter Parker from everyone he knows in order to keep the universe from essentially exploding. From there, we get a painful goodbye with Peter and MJ and a nice handshake between Peter and Ned. At the end we see Peter entering a coffee shop where he sees the girl that he’s liked for basically 2 years, but she doesn’t know him anymore. He originally has his little notecard which he’s rehearsed but that piece of paper ends up getting crumbled and he just wings it. Peter ends up speaking a few sentences to MJ and that’s where they meet each other for the first time, again. Peter is alone now and left to face his split life without the support of his girlfriend, best friend, and aunt. I’m predicting that he keeps having little exchanges with MJ and Ned to hopefully rekindle their relationships. I also predict that he will be able to have a clean slate without the harassment from the media and the public which could be good for him.
Ultimately, this movie was great! It had a perfect mix of romance, sadness, and action that left me “awwing”, crying, and fascinated. If you’re a new marvel fan like me, this movie is great to see because I understood most of the details and wasn’t left confused. Overall, this is a Spiderman-tastic movie.
