Review of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) by Jpritcha — 19 Jan 2022

One of the most brain-dead movies I've ever had to sit through.

The tone of the movie swings wildly between silly and not-taking-itself-too-seriously in some scenes, and then trying to hit hard with emotional drama that it makes absolutely no meaningful build up to in other scenes. As a result, the silly scenes feel awkward, and the drama heavy scenes fall completely flat. The entire plot is pulled along by a string of increasingly convoluted deus ex machinas, all under the pseudo-scientific guises of "string theory", "the multiverse", "magic", and "making/repairing something powerful in the lab". The sheer number of these absurd devices makes the entire plot and all of the character motivations mostly incomprehensible by the halfway point.

By the end of the movie I was left feeling like Spider-Man was an annoying, egocentric, and self-righteous little jerk, and that I really didn't care at all about any of the other characters. The movie boils down to a 2-hour-long slog of flimsy fan service and nostalgia baiting for the Spider-Man franchise. But hey, it's a perfectly valid, focus-group-tested recipe for butts in seats that all but guarantees a profit.