All this movie really "needed" to do was put the bat in front of the ball. If this had just been a "good enough" crossover of fun spider stuff from previous spider dude movies with the baseline competence of Tom Holland's always fantastic Peter and some fun set pieces stringing it together, it would been popped with audiences and made a ton of money.
But instead, they actually put in the work, and it really pays off.
NOTE: This review doesn't give anything away that wasn't in the trailers, but does discuss plot details from previous films in the franchise.
Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up immediately after the ending of Spider-Man: Far From Home with Peter Parker's identity being revealed to the world, and his life being turned upside down. From he and his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) having to move to his best friends Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) getting serious social and academic blowback because of their involvement with him, things are decided Not Great for our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler. And, like any normal teenager who was bitten by a radioactive spider, got mentored by a billionaire, went to space, fought some aliens, died, was resurrected, and helped save the world, he turns to a wizard for a solution.
This will be as spoiler-free as possible, but A) all of this stuff has been in the trailers, and B) touching on it lightly is necessary in discussing the film's major merits. No Way Home is, to put it bluntly, easily the strongest of the MCU Spidey films because it genuinely reckons with the fact that this version of the character has been able to take advantage of a lot of shortcuts. While the movie makes canny use of the MCU's automatic buy-in of handwavium (this being a world where half the population disappeared and reappeared five years later, people roll with the ridiculous), it also takes the more interesting story path when examining how those developments make this Spider-Man's life harder rather than easier.
The most immediate example being a spell by Doctor Strange (Bendedict Cumberbatch) going wrong and a bunch of villains from other universes come hunting Spider-Man. However, No Way Home understands that the real magic of the MCU isn't the Avengers facing down an alien army, it's them hanging out in someone's living room or eating shawarma, and spends a huge amount of its second and third acts playing those notes rather than just hammering cameo-filled action beats. At two and a half hours, there's a lot of movie here, but it's refreshing to see it deliberately slow down to do more than do a roll call of its supporting characters in between explosions.
Which isn't to say that the film is bereft of superhero shenanigans - Jon Watts (in his third round as director) has become very comfortable with the VFX elements of showcasing Spidey's abilities, but get to do a lot more down and dirty physical action this time around. There's also some sharp visual storytelling and subtle character work, especially for so loud a genre. The film forces Peter to continually confront his desire to save everyone (even those trying to kill him) and the cost of balancing that with his responsibilities to his loved ones. That sounds like Basic Spider-Man Stuff (especially to fans of the Sam Raimi movies, who are in for several treats here), but where No Way Home makes this approach its own is tying a whole bunch of possibly mandated corporate product crossover to the dramatic setups and payoffs the film puts its characters through. While the guest stars are mostly varying degrees of "reliably good" to "shockingly great," Holland really gets to flex in both dramatic and comedic directions in his sixth round in the tights, leading to some of the best emotional beats for this version of the character. He also gets to showcase his chemistry with several character combinations that feel genuinely additive to his character journey rather than mandated box-checking.
The MCU Spidey films have always had a loose "oh no, our sitcom problems have escalated to insane scale because superpowers," but No Way Home is the first time the filmmakers have seemed passionately determined not to tie things up in a neat sitcom package. This very definitely feels like a culmination of the arc that Peter has gone through since 2016's Captain America: Civil War, but also uses its time to examine what it means to be Spider-Man from as many angles as possible.
It's funny, thrilling, heartbreaking, and shockingly complex at times, and it didn't have to be. But even though everyone involved has to know there's not catching up to Spider-Verse, it still swings at every ball with everything it has. Because with great power. . . well, you know the rest.
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