Spider-Man: No Way Home is a bad film

Spider-Man: No Way Home is an awful, horrible film. An absolute cringe-fest. An abomination. Blasphemy. An insult to human intelligence.

I think I just made enough people angry by saying that. People somehow tend to take film opinions too close to heart. The only thing people argue about more fiercely is probably politics. I’ve got angry DMs or irl convos with different friends when I didn’t agree that their fav movie is good. Same happens to me when people trash Friends. But when presented with enough data, logical explanations and reasoning, I can change my opinions. So when I say smth is shit, and I have done that a lot, I am prepared to defend it with reason. It’s on you from this point on to decide whether you’re open to alternative opinions and reasons behind them or not. You may just as well close the review right now and send me an angry DM or reply 😃

For those who are interested in deep dives, let’s explore it now together.

Spider-Man 2 was the 2nd film I saw in theatres in my life. I asked my mom to take me. I was 7 or 8. I liked Tobey’s films enough. I wasn’t blown away by them but they were pretty decent entertainment. It had heart and was pretty organic and close to the original material. Then came Andrew’s 2 films. I honestly like Andrew Garfield’s spider-man films (not exactly his portrayal of spider-man) the most. The villains were cool and the dynamic between Spider-Man and a new love interest, Gwen Stacy, was fresh. So up until now I had avrg to good experience with the character of Spider-Man.

Let’s move on to the Marvel cinematic universe, Marvel Studios and their films. I think by now, marvel movie is a separate genre. And unfortunately, I don’t like that genre. Out of all the Marvel movies (27) I probably liked 2–3. The first Avengers (2012) was good, the Black Widow (2021) was almost good. The other ones are horrible. And I’ve unfortunately seen all of them as it’s unfair to give bad reviews or have bad opinions w/o actually seeing the films. Out of all the Marvel TV shows (~15) I liked 2. Daredevil and Jessica Jones are honestly phenomenal. Loved it. Much better than any marvel film. 10x better. 100x better. And out of all the Marvel characters (a million?) I liked only a few: Yelena Belova, Jessica Jones, Kingpin, Electra, Luke Cage, Punisher and Loki. So on average, I’d say my experience with Marvel is pretty bad.

I didn’t see the 2 new Spider-Man films that starred Tom Holland when they came out as they looked awful to me. But I thought I have to see them now, before watching the third one. Again, 1/10 both. Tom is not a talented actor and he just looks and acts annoying. He prevailed if annoying was what they were going for.

However, I shut down all my previous bad experiences before seeing this film, I made an honest and huge effort to forget that I hate Tom Holland, his spider-man, and most of Marvel. The ratings were amazing(9/10 everywhere), The box-office blew up ($1B gross). So I thought they really made smth special. And I like seeing smth special. I booked the vip theatre hall to make the best out of the upcoming (presumably great) experience.

Alas. I have to go into SPOILERS now. Let’s talk separately about each section.

The Cast: Tom is his usual virgin-eyed, angelic-faced but annoying and stupid teenage boy. Zendaya was ok but her character is so dull and unimaginative that her presence just serves as a “click-bait”. The rest of the cast including Tobey and Andrew felt like they were just trying to wrap the shooting asap and take their paychecks. The only one who did a decent job is probably Willem Dafoe.

The Story: There is no story. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is an asshole who puts his friends and family in danger just because he wants to play with some magic and get into MIT. He causes the world to get upside down and very much is responsible for that one specific death. Other Spider-Men were fighting against actual threats and actual villains that emerged on their own. Tom’s Spider-Man got bored and messed up the world.
To cover up their lack of writing skills the writers just brought back every other spider-man villain from every other spider-man movie alongside with every other spider-man to fill the script void. There was absolutely nothing original in this script. Some original stupidity maybe.
Tom’s Spider-Man brings all the spider-men villains to his universe and decides to keep them in his universe, otherwise, god forbid, they might die. How can that be an action of a logical functioning human being? or worse, a superhero. It’s so simple. If you know that these people died fighting other spider-men, what can actually prompt you, a spider-men, to keep them alive, causing a very predictable mess that results in aunt May getting killed (!). About that, why didn’t he rush her to the hospital? He can literally rush his gf from one place to another in seconds. What’s the point of this nonsense? It seems like he didn’t take aunt May to the hospital just because it wasn’t in the script. And it wasn’t in the script just because they needed some emotional death for the “hero” to suffer for a bit.
The final fights had 90s-action-movie feels to them. The villains were attacking one by one even though they were all there. What were the villains waiting for? Their turn to get into the camera?
About the villains, I think almost every villain here was great in their respective films but they were plain and boring here. They were two-dimensional.
And the last thing, about the finale: at the beginning when they were playing with magic and fuckin’ up the universe, Doctor Strange said that the “cure” spell would make everyone forget that Peter Parker is Spiderman, not forget that Peter Parker exists. But the latter is what happened at the end. I guess, just because. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The Visual Effects: The multiverse was cool. But I like practical effects more. CGI is lazy.

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To think about this, my “bad” reviews are usually way angrier than this one. I tried to be as calm as possible because I genuinely want to hear people bring me counter-arguments. Prove me wrong. Tell me the script was good. Tell me it had no plot holes. If you think it was that good, tell me why.

This film is just a massive fan service aimed specifically at making money. Which it did. And I am at least thankful to it for bringing people back to theatres. But a question remains. Is it even worth it when the bar is so low?