NIKKI INDELICATO
Assistant Life & Arts Editor
Note: Contains spoilers.
The famous web-crawling superhero made his way back to the silver screen in one of 2021’s most anticipated film releases.
Jon Watt’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was surrounded by numerous rumors and hype to be one of the biggest movies the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has ever created.
One of the biggest pieces of news that came with the anticipation of the film was the return of some of the famous villains we saw over the past 20 years that were included in both Sami Rami’s original Spiderman trilogy starring Tobey Maguire and Marc Webb’s two Spiderman movies starring Andrew Garfield’s that followed Rami’s.
From the first teaser trailer Marvel and Sony released, fans saw the return of Doctor Octopus, played by Alfred Molina, along with a “pumpkin” bomb that is often associated with the Green Goblin. Both of these villains can be found in the original Spider-Man trilogy.
Fans also saw the return of Doctor Stephen Strange recruited by Peter Parker, who can also be found in many of the other MCU films.
As a huge Marvel and Spider-Man fan, I knew this film was one that was a must-see on opening night. I tried my best to avoid any spoilers because I wanted to go into the film with fresh eyes. When “Avengers: Endgame” premiered in 2019, I was immediately spoiled with some of the biggest plot points from YouTube about the movie. My goal was to avoid that at all costs.
This was also the first Marvel movie that I was seeing opening night, so my expectations were through the roof.
After seeing the movie, it was everything and even more than I could have anticipated. I have seen countless videos on YouTube of fans’ reactions to some of the biggest moments in MCU history and was craving for that experience too.
Entering the movie theater into a packed audience, I knew that I was in for a great time. For most of the first half of the movie, the audience was a typical theater going audience. The movie starts right where “Spider-Man: Far From Home” left off. The villain Mysterio made a fake video showing Spider-Man was a murderer who killed Mysterio along with causing the events that happened in London. In the same video, Mysterio took it upon himself to reveal Spider-Man’s true identity: a high schooler named Peter Parker. That changed Peter and his friend’s lives forever.
The first surprise the movie gave us was the introduction of Matt Murdock/Daredevil into the MCU played by Charlie Cox. The last time we saw this character on screen was in 2018 on the Netflix show “Daredevil” before it was canceled. I was particularly excited to see if this rumor was going to be true because I wanted to see Cox take on The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen once again. Cox’s small cameo was to help Peter, his aunt May and advisor Happy as they were stuck facing some legal troubles. Even though his cameo was short, it was still fun to see his brief introduction into the MCU for more adventures of his to come.
The audience wasn’t as loud as I thought they would be, but you could definitely hear the chatter amongst everyone.
As Peter is a senior in high school, he started applying for college with big dreams ahead for him, his best friend Ned and his girlfriend MJ. None of them were accepted to their college of choice because they were all involved with assisting Spider-Man/Peter.
Peter decided to make a visit to Doctor Strange to ask for a spell to have everyone forget that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Once Doctor Strange started casting the spell, Peter realized that he didn’t know all the details about the spell, so he kept asking Strange to make adjustments to who would remember his identity. Due to the countless adjustments requested by Peter, the spell became uncontrollable and opened up small tears in the universe that let people from alternate universes come into their current reality. It was the opening to the multiverse.
This was the reason for the return of many of the famous Spider-Man villains. One of the first characters we see return is Doctor Octopus. Once Doc Ock made it on screen to start his first battle with Spider-Man, the audience got excited. Everyone started cheering for the return of Alfred Molina and soon after with Willam Dafoe as the Green Goblin.
The movie was using all the villains returning to their advantage and brought some of their iconic lines that made the audience laugh. I personally really enjoyed seeing the interaction between the current Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, and all the former Spider-Man villains because I knew how they once reacted with Spider-Man in their own universes.
A little half-way through the film, the audience finally got to see the moment that defines every Peter Parker’s journey into fully becoming Spider-Man. After trying to help the villains have a chance of surviving once they returned home, Peter’s tingle alarms him that something bad is about to happen.
The Green Goblin made his appearance once again, taking over the human body the Goblin corrupted and convinces all the villains that they don’t need Peter’s help. They are good the way they are. As the fight continued with Green Goblin and Peter, Goblin summoned his glider to kill Aunt May in a similar way the Goblin met his despise in the original “Spider-Man” movie.
At first May got up with the help of Peter, you could sense everyone in the audience had the feeling that she would actually be okay. Soon after, she delivered the infamous line “with great power, comes great responsibility” and met her fate.
There was a collective gasp from everyone in the audience because we didn’t know what was going to happen.
You could feel the despair that Peter was going through, after losing the only person he had as family, along with the controversial newspaper, The Daily Bugle, following him and the FBI coming to bring him in.
After experiencing the long emotional impact of Aunt May’s death came a moment that was special for any Spider-Man fan who grew up watching the movies.
The film then switches over to Ned and MJ in Ned’s house wishing that they could see Peter. At this time, Ned also has the ring that Doctor Strange wears to create portals to get from place to place. As Ned starts circling his hand, he sees that he is starting to open a portal. MJ encourages him to try again and when he does the second time, the portal opens and Peter Parker is shown in his Spider-Man outfit. The only thing is, the suit is different from the one that Tom Holland usually wears.
As soon as Ned opened the first portal, the audience started chattering. As soon as Spider-Man turned his head, someone in the audience screamed “IT’S ANDREW!” Wearing the suit that he wore in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” it was revealed that Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man was summoned from the portal and the crowd was in an uproar. People were standing and cheering at the sight of the former Spider-Man’s return to the big screen.
But that wasn’t all, Ned then went to try and summon their Peter Parker once again, but ended up summoning Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man into the house. The crowd was once again in an uproar with the return of Maguire, who was last seen in the role in 2007.
Once Holland met up with Garfield and Maguire on screen, the chemistry between them was off the roof. You could tell how excited Garfield and Maguire were to be back as Spider-Man as well. Between the three of them, there were many iconic moments from Garfield and Holland learning that Maguire has organic webbing instead of creating webs in a lab, to Garfield cracking Maguire’s back (which was a reference to a moment in “Spider-Man 2”).
As the film was reaching the climax, the audience was getting excited to see all their favorite characters work together to fight off all the villains. One of the coolest visuals is a shot where you see all three Spider-Men running on the Statue of Liberty, swinging with one another, then landing on the statute in each of their individual poses. The audience was clapping and cheering seeing them all work together.
During the battle, Ned and MJ find themselves trapped on the Statue of Liberty, where all the action is taking place, when MJ accidentally gets knocked off and starts falling to the ground. Holland makes an attempt to save her, but as he is about to catch her, the Green Goblin flies by and knocks him away from MJ. Garfield takes the moment to jump down and ends up saving MJ in his arms. The audience stood and cheered once again, because this act of Garfield saving MJ gave him redemption from when he tragically lost his love Gwen Stacy in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”
You could see the look of relief and pain on Garfield’s face as he made sure MJ was okay and she returned the favor asking him as well.
At the end of the movie, more famous villains started coming through because they all knew that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Peter decided to make the ultimate sacrifice by asking Doctor Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget who Peter Parker is, including his close friends. It would be like he never existed in the first place.
The audience was buzzing at what was happening and could feel the emotion that was being created. Peter started making his way to say his goodbyes. One of his first farewells was to thank Maguire and Garfield for their help.
It ended with a group hug between all three Spider-Men and the audience let out a loud cheer. It was the celebration of all three generations coming together.
Peter then proceeded to say goodbye to Ned and MJ even though they didn’t want to. Doctor Strange finished casting the spell, which sent everyone back to their home universes and Peter swung away from his friends.
The film ends with him meeting Ned and MJ to fill in all the blanks where he was in their lives, but figured that their lives would be better and less dangerous if they continued to forget him.
He kept the mantle of Spider-Man and created a new suit that was inspired by both Maguire and Garfield’s suit. It looked like the classic Spider-Man suit that we hadn’t seen before in the MCU.
The movie concludes with him taking a long swing around Rockefeller Center then swinging into the camera. The audience was in an absolute uproar and applauding once again.
I thought it was one of the best experiences I ever had seeing a movie and I’m so glad I was able to see it on opening day as well. Following, I saw the movie two more times, but the audiences were nothing compared to what it was on the very first day.
This was an experience I will never forget and I can’t wait to see the next movie Marvel has up their sleeves with “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.”