The most recent collaboration between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, Spider-Man: No Way Home, is not just a satisfying conclusion to Peter Parker's high school years, or even a great adventure movie with real stakes and emotional heft - these filmmakers have stuck the landing and made the best superhero trilogy to date.
It's weird to think back to the formative days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when Shane Black's Iron Man 3 was racing with Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises to make the first-ever "good" third entry in a superhero franchise. To be fair, Superman 3 and Batman Forever are hardly steep competition, but when Nolan won the race in 2012, his film proved that the III curse could be broken, even if his final entry was perhaps the weakest of the three. Shane Black's IM3 though was maybe my favourite Iron Man picture overall and also the largest grossing MCU film up to that point, eclipsing a banal and disengaging Iron Man 2.
More currently, Thor Ragnarok has got that franchise back on track (with Thor: Love and Thunder in the works) after a brutal misstep with The Dark World (which works far better if you view it as a Loki movie that happens to have Thor in it). But the Spider-Man trilogy? All killer, no filler, in this nerd's opinion.
Tom Holland's third go-round as a title character leaves us with a franchise that has no weak entries and caps things off in grand style. Picking up shortly after the ending of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which had the villainous Mysterio not only framing Spider-Man for his misdeeds, but also with longtime foil J. Jonah Jameson revealing his secret identity to the world.
As the trailer describes, an attempt to solve the issue magically with the aid of Dr. Strange backfires, resulting in enemies from parallel universes arriving and wreaking havoc - enemies we recognize from previous cinematic iterations of Spider-Man (as portrayed by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield). This could have set up a "greatest hits" style series of battles, but is taken in a fascinating new direction when the morality-driven hero starts looking for ways to help these erstwhile enemies instead of simply rounding them up and sending them back home to die.
Look, Batman is probably my favourite superhero, but I am forced to admit that in many ways, Spider-Man is simply the best hero. He has probably the strongest origin story in all fo comics, a rogues gallery at least equal to Batman's and has always been driven by a compulsive need to do the right thing. Even when it is unsaid, that timeless mantra of "with great power, must also come great responsibility" that reaches all the way back to 1962 is never far from mind.
No Way Home is a great action-adventure story with some wonderful laughs and certainly the best cast of any single superhero film, but is also upfront about dealing with themes that really resonate with me - themes like accountability, consequences and love. I am not going to lie, parts of the film are bittersweet and some moments border on heartbreaking, but throughout a story that is bigger in scope and scale than anything Peter Parker has faced by himself, every choice and action feels consistent and earned for the characters that make them.
In addition to touching base with previous franchises, there are multiple connective points to the greater MCU, which I always appreciate, and the cynical detachment of Benedict Cumberbatch's Dr. Strange is a wonderful counterpoint to Holand's earnestness as Peter Parker.
Here's the thing though: I am always telling my girls, "don't grow up too fast." I know full well that childhood and innocence and freedom are fleeting, and growing up is always just around the corner. No Way Home is a chance to watch a beloved and iconic character grow up, which - as it probably should be - isn't always easy.
There is a lot of crash-boom-wow in the setpiece finale, but it all feels earned and it always feels like there are stakes, due to the rules being so loose now that a multiverse is in play. And it never feels like just a spectacle, and the spider-gags and stunts get better and better the further into the film you get, especially once teamwork comes into play.
Director Jon Watts has captured a lot of the nuances of high-school-age Peter Parker, and we owe him and Civil War writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for finally capturing the wisecracking webslinger so many of us had been waiting to see onscreen. Maybe someone else is better suited to take Spidey into his college years, and if so, I hope they were taking notes from his earlier MCU appearances - lead with your heart, not your webshooters.
You could potentially end the depictions of Tom Holland's Spider-Man at this point, but I selfishly hope we get a few more outings from him and Kevin Feige's braintrust, but this trilogy will be a hard act to follow. Excelsior!
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