Retro Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. –T.S. Eliot, THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK I was only moderately entertained by the first two MCU/Sony collaborations on the Spider-Man franchise, and I had no reason to think that Number Three would be any different. When I heard that advance sales were breaking records, I tended to put it down to a lack of competition in U.S. theaters. But I started hearing positive reviews from sources I respected, so, despite having boycotted Eternals and Shang-Chi among others, I queued up and bought my ticket. SPOILERS apply throughout, naturally. One review asserted that the Sony people may have been more in control of the script than the MCU/Disney people. That alone might be one reason as to why No Way Home provides a massive crossover of all three live-action movie versions of Spider-Man—Tobey Maguire from the Sam Raimi trilogy, Andrew Garfield from the Marc Webb duology, and Tom Holland from Jon Watts’s neo-trilogy. In addition to bringing together all three versions of Spider-Man—in what might be considered a great live-action counterpoint to Spider-Man: Into the Spid...