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#MovieReview: Spider-Man swings back onto screens for his biggest adventure yet

No Way Home is the third Spider-Man film starring Tom Holland, and the eighth dedicated cinema outing for the webslinger since 2002.

Spider-Man: No Way Home flirts with being overcrowded, but a strong central performance and well-worked twist ensure its place as one of Marvel’s best offerings.

No Way Home is the third Spider-Man film starring Tom Holland, and the eighth dedicated cinema outing for the webslinger since 2002.

Despite the many iterations and constant cultural presence of Peter Parker’s alter ego in the new millennium, No Way Home is still an enjoyable superhero romp with freshly heightened stakes.

With a central reveal that is sure to land with anyone who has been a teenager in the 2000s, nostalgic intertextuality has never been so effectively mined.

Spoiler alert

The film opens on previous villain Mysterio, who has left Spider-Man with a parting gift, framing him as a murderer rather than a hero.

In the process of this framing and Spider-Man trying to clear his name, his identity is revealed as Peter Parker, essentially unmasking one of the most famous people in the world.

Naturally, being the friendly neighbourhood superhero, Spider-Man becomes desperate and enlists the help of fellow Avenger and New York resident, Dr Strange.

During a magical spell in which everyone on Earth would forget his identity, things go awry and a rift into the multiverse opens.

Villains from previous Spider-Man movies begin to appear in the city and the two former Avengers are left to clear up the mess.

Dr Octopus, Green Goblin, Electro, Lizard and Sandman all materialise and need to be caught in order to be sent back to their own dimensions.

Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) convinces Peter to help cure the villains before returning them, but this has dire consequences for Spider-Man as he attempts to rehabilitate his image.

Luckily, when the villains jumped through the multiverse, so did the respective Spider-Mans from each reality, played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

Together, the unlikely cloned triumvirate join forces to save the day.

It was at this point where the film’s centre might not have held, but the grouping works without feeling overly manufactured or grandfathered in.

In fact, the two previous Spider-Mans provide a neat character arc unto themselves, helping present-day Peter to face his demons in one of the biggest moral quandaries of superhero movie history.

No Way Home is still very much designed to be enjoyed by all ages, but to its credit, it does not shy away from difficult questions and scenes, landing the majority of its emotional high and low points.

Sure, a cynic would say that playing on three generations of nostalgia will make for easier merchandising, but it walks the line well enough to be good fun nonetheless.

Superhero movies are much maligned, but sometimes for pure popcorn escapism, there is nothing that matches up to the same spectacle.

No Way Home has the sixth highest box office return in history for good reason, it is worth watching on a big screen.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, some language and brief suggestive comments.
4/5.


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