Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) is a superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Spiderman, co-produced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. Other films in the series include Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). The film was directed by Jon Watts and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. It stars Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spiderman and Zendaya as MJ, as well as Charlie Cox, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Tony Revolori, Marisa Tomei, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire. This review contains major spoilers.

The film picks up where Far From Home leaves off. Quentin Beck has framed Spiderman for his murder and named him as Peter Parker in a public broadcast. This makes life miserable for Peter, his Aunt May, and his friends as they’re harassed by law enforcement and the press. Lawyer Matt Murdock gets the charges dropped, but the harassment continues. Frantic to make it stop, Peter goes to Dr. Steven Strange and asks him to work a spell to make everyone forget that Peter Parker is Spiderman. However, in the middle of the spell, Peter suddenly realizes what this might mean. Strange manages to contain the spell, but this opens rifts in spacetime for Peter’s enemies in alternate universes to come through. With a little work, he and his friends manage to round up the group, which includes Doc Ock, Norman Osborne, Curt Connors, Max Dillon, and Flint Marko, and imprison them while Strange works on a spell to send them back to their individual universes. After talking with them, Peter suddenly realizes all these people have been killed by Spiderman, and resolves to “fix” them so he won’t have to kill them in the alternate universes. This seems to go well, but Norman Osborne turns out to be a problem. And now more Peter Parkers are appearing. Things are getting dire. Is there any way Peter can repair spacetime?

The best point about this film is the appealing characters. Of all the Spiderman films, I think this is the best cast, chosen to appeal to the Disney audience most likely, but representing Peter well as a high school student. Willem DeFoe as Osborne is suitably creepy and the other villains manage to be more appealing than dangerous. This film also integrates the previous Spiderman films through the vehicle of the multiverse, bringing in older versions of Peter to give him advice and moral support. And last, there are consequences here.

On the less positive side, this feels like an obvious steal from the Academy Award-winning animation Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). One of the characters in this film actually wishes for a black Spiderman. Besides that, it’s something of an eye-roller because of the typical Disney tendency for their characters to make emotional decisions. This causes huge problems. First, Peter doesn’t think out the consequences of asking Strange to make the world forget Peter Parker. Next, he decides he can “fix” evil from the alternate universes so none of his captives will die when they’re sent back. The action sags while the other Spidermen commiserate, and then Peter doesn’t end up making his own moral choices, but has to be saved by these other, wiser versions of himself.

There are plenty of consequences here, but I’m not sure the audience will connect these with Peter’s poorly considered choices and emotional overreactions because the film doesn’t really point these out. Strange says something about it after the interruption to his first spell, but it’s early in the film and goes by too fast—Strange should be wiser than this and Peter should be, too. Something not addressed by the film is how fixing the villains so they don’t die will change events in spacetime. The end result will take some fixing in the next film. Last, it was interesting to see Charlie Cox here. I hope it’s an indication Disney is going to try to reboot his Daredevil series that they destroyed through ending their contract with Netflix

This film has been highly successful at the box office, but there are a lot of not-so-positives. I’m going to give it tree and a half stars.