january3–16, 2022 | newyork 67Parker goes to Doctor Strange (Benedict
Cumberbatch) and asks him—I am not
making this up—to cast a spell making
the rest of the world forget that Peter
Parker is Spider-Man so that his friends
can get into the college of their choice.
And Doctor Strange—again, I am not
making this up—agrees to do so. Holland
is a fine actor, but I’m not sure any actor
could survive the sheer idiocy of this
character’s decisions here. Peter might
be a teenager, but I don’t recall him ever
being this stupid, either in the comics or
the movies. Anyway, hocus-pocus, things
go wrong, portal into other dimensions,
flashing lights, blah-blah-blah. The
magic goes awry, and Peter finds himself
face-to-face with a whole new set of prob-
lems. It’s all so pro forma that even Cum-
berbatch’s Strange, called on to convey
rage at how his young colleague’s dumb
request has prompted him to tear a hole
in the fabric of the universe, can muster
only mild annoyance.
The initial big revelations of the new
film have already been shown in trailers:
When Strange’s magic opens a gateway to
different realities, once-dead villains from
previous Spidey movies suddenly return,
including Spider-Man’s Norman Osborn,
a.k.a. the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe),
Spider-Man 2’s Doctor Octopus (Alfred
Molina), and The Amazing Spider-Man
2 ’s Electro (Jamie Foxx). Again, a poten-
tially promising idea. And judging from
the cheers these veteran bad guys’ mere
emergence got at my screening, perhaps it
was of secondary importance that they be
given, you know, something interesting to
do. But aside from Dafoe, who once again
gets to have some modest fun with his
character’s divided self, there’s not much
going on here. Why bring back an actor
like Molina only to give him no sense of
inner life or any good lines? The same goes
for Foxx’s Electro, whose transformation
from oddball engineer to blustery super-
villain in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was
one of that (admittedly dreadful) film’s few
highlights. Here, he’s just a tired wisecrack
machine. That the action scenes involving
these characters are so insipid justadds
insult to injury: Watching Doc Ockduti-
fully toss weightless, computer-generated
concrete pipes at our hero, it’s hard not to
think back on Sam Raimi’s eye-poppingly
imaginative action sequences in Spider-
Man 2 and maybe even shed a tear for
what has been lost.
It’s not just the action and the magic
that flop. Even the film’s more intimate
moments fall flat. One early domestic-
comedy scene involving Peter, M.J., Aunt
May (Marisa Tomei, mostly wasted here),
and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) has the
camera whip-panning and roamingthe
spaces of their apartment in a pasticheof
handheld indie filmmaking, butnoneof
the humor feels organic or evenallthat
funny. Like almost everything elseinthe
movie, it’s just another put-on.Making
Peter more of a child does allowyouto
play up his sincerity and naïveté,which
should be a breath of fresh airina uni-
verse filled with cynical, world-weary
superheroes. But for all their allegedear-
nestness, these past three Spider-Man
films have never had any kind ofidentity
to call their own.
And now for the heavy spoilers:As the
infinitely superior Spider-Man:Intothe
Spider-Verse already taught us,opening
up doors to the multiverse meansthat you
may discover other iterations ofSpider-
Man. So, sure enough, AndrewGarfield
and Tobey Maguire return to thefran-
chise that once helped make themstars,
and the three Peters Parker nowwork
together to try and handle this cavalcade
of villains. And a film that wasalready
engorged with fan service positively
erupts with it.
That’s not such a bad thing,at least
at first. It’s certainly nice to seeMaguire
again, and Garfield is a genuinedelight.
The latter’s previous turn as Spideywasa
wildly uneven one. Here, almostasif he
had been given a second chance(arun-
ning theme in the film), he getsthegoofi-
ness just right. A scene wherethedeni-
zens of this world ask Garfield’sParker
to prove he has Spider-powersoffersacharming bit of slapstick, and his uncer-
tainty and insecurity pop up at oppor-
tune moments during the big climax. But
this also reveals a bigger problem: As we
watch Garfield act literal circles around
everybody else, we are reminded of how
lifeless and wanting the rest of the picture
is. It’s like getting a new pair of glasses
and realizing that your world has been
a blur for the past few months. Except
that whenever Garfield is off the screen,
you’re forced to put your old glasses back
on, which just makes everything look that
much worse.
The Tom Holland Spider-Man films
have been so eager to please that one
does feel like a bit of a crank criticiz-
ing them. Nobody should enjoy kicking
puppies. At the same time, along with
the oft-rebooted Batman, Spider-Man
is the one superhero franchise for which
we do have proofs of concept for differ-
ent approaches. And while the previous
Holland films have been middling, No
Way Home feels downright aggressive
in its mediocrity, bringing back better
actors from better movies and calling
back to an endlessly inventive and mov-
ing masterpiece like Spider-Verse. Is it an
attempt to gain residual luster by asso-
ciation with better work? Or is it some-
thing more cynical, an effort to bring
that better work under the big tent of its
blandness? If I didn’t know any better,
I’d think that No Way Home was trying
to make us forget that a great Spider-
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