It didn’t take long for Jon Watt’s Spider-Man: No Way Home to become 2021s highest grossing movie. There’s plenty of reason for that too.
Even before it grossed over 250 Million in box office tickets, it was clear that No Way Home is easily the biggest MCU movie since Endgame. I find myself only venturing back into the cinematic amusement park that is the MCU for their movies of this size. I just don’t have the time and energy to dedicate to every corner of the MCU anymore. To be fair, even if this movie felt smaller in scale, I would still see it simply because Spider-Man is my favorite superhero and has been since I was a kid.
In its 3 movie run so far, Spider-Man easily became a main attraction, spinning this complex MCU web that will have ever lasting effects on the movies to come, reaching for the cosmos, playing with time, toying with high tech and even ripping open foreign “multiverse”, all while Peter Parker navigates his teenage years in High school. It’s just universally accessible entertainment for audiences.
Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is back for the finale of the Home Trilogy and along with him is an army of so so many returning familiar faces, specifically the surprise return of some multidimensional trespassers.
No Way Home features some goosebump inducing performances that produce some fantastic revisionist takes on Spidey characters of old. The action/Visual Effects are great as always, making this years Oscars shortlist. Spiders may not actually have siblings but we got to see Peter Parkers of different generations come together like the brothers they never had, sharing in their unique existences, something that no other MCU character has truly been able to do and it’s such a delight to see all of this unfold.
There are some emotional moments that just fall completely flat for me but they aren’t enough to moan about.
The Home Trilogy is now complete and it’s not outright clear where things go from here. The way things went down in No Way Home, it has me itching for potential storylines that may unravel in the future. Into the Spider-Verse has already introduced us to multi-dimensional travel but imagine a live action trilogy of the Spider-Verse comics. The Inheritors would do some damage. So for now this is a nice place to step out of Peter Parker’s life.
That 250 million plus in box office sales means that plenty of the screenings are in packed houses. It felt so good to be back in a filled theater watching such a spectacle, especially during this holiday season. I’m sure theaters desperately need Spider-Man to perform well in order to stay afloat just as much as people need a temporary distraction from the horrors around us. While it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the movie, I did find myself not immersed enough to ignore coughs heard throughout the dark room, just wondering how many people could get sick from this very screening. Now imagine this across over 4,300 movie theaters. Sure some of the coughs I’m so painfully aware of now may not be a result of covid but with number of covid cases back on the rise it’s hard not to assume the worst, I mean we are coming up on two years with it flying around.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility…. So please be cautious and safe this holiday season if venturing out to theaters. You can enjoy this wonderful movie or any other theatrical release of the 2021 holiday season with some safety precautions in place.
Happy Holidays to all, be safe and enjoy some movies, even if it isn’t at the theaters.
The Spectators' Odyssey 