Spider-Man movies have come in such
flurries over the last two decades that you
could almost tell time by them. Who needs
the long centuries of the Triassic, Jurassic
and the Cretaceous, when, in the span of
just one generation you can have the Tobey
epoch, the Garfield era and the Tomozoic?
The franchise’s constant (and contractual)
regenerative velocity has by now become a
familiar punchline. But in “Spider-Man: No
Way Home,” the distinct, if cluttered, time
zones of Marvel’s webslinger overlap and
collide in ways that are often entertaining
and likely to be satisfying to fans, even if
they still lack quite the Spidey sense tingle
they’re designed to provide an overdose of.
This movie is like two Spider-Man jabs and a
booster all in one. In its retrospective sweep
and supergroup construction, “No Way
Home” is Spidey’s own “Endgame.”
That also means it comes with plenty of
twists that, if you don’t want spoiled, you
really ought to see the movie before reading
reviews like this one. The clever reveals
and appearances of “No Way Home” are so
much a part of its fabric that’s it’s difficult
to consider the movie without referencing
some of them. In a message before the film,
Jamie Foxx (who played the villain Electro
in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”) warns of
revealing spoilers before it’s pointed out that
he, himself, is a spoiler.
Jon Watts’ “No Way Home” begins as its two
previous installments, also directed by Watts,
did: with the breezy high-school vibe that
has characterized Tom Holland’s reign as