Spider-Man: No Way Home Review

This is a film that runs almost entirely on accumulated goodwill, and it is worth admitting that before saying that it works. The multiverse premise is a device for importing five villains and two prior leading men out of abandoned franchises, and the screenplay's real job is engineering their entrances for maximum noise in the room. What lifts it above nostalgia management is the decision to write the villains as people rather than trophies: Willem Dafoe is genuinely frightening again, sliding between Norman Osborn's pleading and the Goblin's delight inside single takes, and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock gets an actual arc rather than a cameo.

Tom Holland finally gets consequence, and the film is brave enough to close on real loss instead of a reset. The direction is functional, the middle act is a superhero science montage, and several entrances are staged for applause rather than for drama. But the last twenty minutes carry a weight this character had never been given on screen, and the event around it was real. The most purely enjoyable blockbuster of its year.