Normal life has changed pretty drastically with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, and one aspect that has changed greatly has been movies. Ever since the quarantine essentially shut them down for a while, it’s been discussed how movie theaters will survive afterwards and if anything will be the same. However, one thing that has given hope to the survival of movie theaters is the release of the newest Spider-Man film: Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Some may say that I’m a bit late to be putting out a review on this movie, considering it came out over a month ago, however I decided to take that time to not only get my thoughts on the movie straight, but also wait for the hype around the movie to die down so that I can review it in an objective manner. With all that being said, while I will not be spoiling the entire plot of the film, I think it’d be impossible to accurately review this movie without some spoilers, so take that as a warning if you haven’t seen the movie yet and want to go in blind.

To begin this review, I want to quickly summarize the movie’s premise and then discuss the good parts about the movie, then move on to the bad parts of the movie. The movie starts off immediately after the last Spider-Man ended. With Spider-Man’s secret identity being revealed as Peter Parker, his life starts to go downhill as the fame and the detractors start to make life hard for him and his close friends and girlfriend. Seeking a solution, Peter goes to Doctor Strange to ask him for help, who proposes using a spell to make everyone forget that Peter is Spider-Man. The spell goes wrong and starts bringing in Super Villains from across the multiverse, and it’s up to Spider-Man to stop them and send them back home.

Now, I’m sure many of you who haven’t seen the movie yet have one burning question on your minds: Are Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprising their roles as previous Spider-Men in the movie? The answer to that question is a resounding yes, and they’re one of the best parts of the movie. Every actor gives a standout performance and the way they interact with each on screen is amazing to watch, and it’s absolutely the best part of the movie, especially seeing Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Toby Maguire interact with each other on screen.

I also don’t think that I could do this review without mentioning Willem Dafoe’s performance as the Green Goblin. It’s been over twenty years since he first portrayed the role of Norman Osborn and the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy, but you would never be able to tell given how easily he slides back into the role in this movie, and how he absolutely steals the show with his performance, more than any other actor. I could gush on and on about how amazing the characters and actors are in this film, and how they give the movie so many emotional moments, but I feel that I’ve made my point clear. 

And with that part done, I feel like I need to discuss what I feel are some of the movie’s biggest mistakes and what it did wrong, because while I do love this film and think it’s an amazing movie, nothing’s perfect and this movie definitely has its flaws. To start off, the spell that Doctor Strange uses, the one that goes wrong and therefore sets the entire rest of the movie in motion, is incredibly poorly explained, and the more you think about it, the more questions you have. Given how most of the movie’s plot happens because of this spell, the fact that it’s so poorly explained can really take you out of the film if you start to think about it. This becomes even clearer given later events in the film that I can’t mention without spoiling the ending. 

Another aspect of this is the fact that the explanation given to why the spell going wrong brought in all these people across the multiverse makes very little sense given how that explanation doesn’t cover certain characters that we see get dragged from across the multiverse. Again, I would like to cover more in detail about that, but I still don’t want to spoil the movie.

I could talk a lot more about what I don’t like about the movie, and what I loved about it, however I think it’s time to bring this review to a close and give you my final thoughts on this movie. While Spider-Man: No Way Home certainly has some flaws that are clear to see, those flaws are overshadowed by all the movie does right and how great it is to watch and experience. To finish off, I would whole-heartedly recommend this movie to anyone who’s a fan of Marvel films, or just Spider-Man in general, as I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed.