Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
★★★ — Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Spider-Man: No Way Home arrived in December 2021 carrying perhaps the heaviest weight of expectation placed on any superhero film in years. Rumours, leaks, and fan theories had been circulating for months before release, and the finished film confirmed what many had suspected: this was Marvel and Sony going all-in on the multiverse concept that had been quietly seeded across their shared continuity. Produced by Marvel Studios, Pascal Pictures and Columbia Pictures, and directed by Jon Watts (completing his trilogy of Holland-era Spider-Man films), No Way Home picks up immediately from the cliffhanger that closed Far From Home, with Peter Parker's secret identity exposed to the world. The solution he lands upon, enlisting Doctor Strange to cast a memory-wiping spell, goes badly wrong and tears open the boundaries between parallel realities. At 148 minutes, it is comfortably the longest of the Watts Spider-Man films, and the production clearly had the resources to match that ambition, drawing on a roster of characters from earlier Sony Spider-Man franchises going back two decades.
Watts had built a reputation across his three Spider-Man entries for keeping things relatively grounded and character-focused by Marvel standards, polished but unremarkable work that served the larger franchise machine efficiently enough. Here, the scale expands considerably, and the film becomes as much a celebration of the broader Spider-Man legacy on screen as it is a standalone story. Tom Holland returns as Peter Parker for his fifth appearance in the role (counting his MCU crossovers), and he is joined by Zendaya as MJ and Jacob Batalon as Ned, both reprising their roles from the previous two films. Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange takes on a significant supporting function, essentially serving as the mechanism through which the plot is set in motion, while Jon Favreau returns as Happy Hogan. The film also reintroduces several villains from earlier Spider-Man film series, most notably Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Jamie Foxx's Electro, alongside others drawn from different corners of the franchise's history. For a sense of how this kind of action-heavy blockbuster compares to other ambitious entries in the genre, it is worth looking at the site's thoughts on Mad Max: Fury Road and Hardcore Henry, two films that each took very different approaches to staging spectacle.
Spider-Man: No Way Home was supposed to be the ultimate fan-service event, a multiverse collision of Spider-Men, villains, and nostalgia. And while it delivered on spectacle and sentiment, for me, it was surprisingly boring. The plot feels thin and overly reliant on emotion that for me it doesn’t earn, and Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, while well-meaning, lacks the depth or wit that made earlier versions so compelling. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon are "ok" but underused, this isn’t really their story anymore. The film leans hard on nostalgia, and honestly, the most exciting moments come entirely from borrowed glory: Tobey Maguire showing up as the original, awkward, soulful Spidey (still the best one), and Willem Dafoe absolutely devouring every second as the Green Goblin. His return alone gives the film its only real spark of danger and drama. Those scenes crackle with energy and history, everything else just feels like setup, CGI, and predictable beats. Jamie Foxx sucked here. It’s not a bad movie, and fans will likely eat it up. But as a standalone story? It’s overstuffed, emotionally hollow, and strangely lifeless despite all the noise. Saved only by the ghosts of Spider-Men past. A spectacle without a heartbeat.
And that tension between borrowed excitement and original storytelling is, for me, what lingers longest after the credits roll. When the film is working, it is genuinely working, but those moments feel tied almost entirely to the weight of what came before rather than anything this particular story builds toward on its own terms. I found myself thinking about how other recent films from the same era handle the gap between spectacle and substance, and the gap here is wider than the marketing would have you believe. If you want a palate cleanser that shows what a tightly constructed, atmosphere-driven 2020s genre film can look like without the franchise scaffolding, my review of Moshari might be worth a read, and for something at the other end of the scale in terms of sheer production ambition, there is always Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. No Way Home is not a film I regret watching, but it is one I am unlikely to revisit. Some parties are best remembered from the outside.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2021 | Watched: 2025-09-14
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus · fuboTV · Starz Apple TV Channel · YouTube TV
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Physical: Amazon US
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