Summary
- Spider-Man: No Way Home is a definitive success despite not being perfect, breaking box office records.
- The film excels in differentiating character versions, focusing on emotional depth rather than elaborate world-building.
- Spider-Man 4 can learn from No Way Home's emotional weight by blending street-level action with multiversal elements.
Making a multiverse movie is a risky hit-or-miss experiment, and there are several reasons why Spider-Man: No Way Home stands out as a definitive success. The groundbreaking superhero movie nears its three-year mark, and its formula offers essential lessons for any studio or franchise looking to break into the multiverse genre.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is not a perfect film by any means – it’s far from being the best Spider-Man movie, the best multiverse movie, or even the best Spider-Man multiverse movie. However, it remains the highest-grossing film in all these categories, falling just shy of the well-deserved and hard-earned $2 billion mark at the box office.
Spider-Man 4's Multiversal Story Can Still Find A Way To Feel Fresh
Spider-Man 4 should take cues from the Spider-Verse movies to blend street-level action with multiversal elements to satisfy all fans.
Before No Way Home, the bar for multiverse storytelling in the Spider-Man franchise was already set high by Into the Spider-Verse. Marvel had to tread carefully in this territory after finding massive success with its "universe films" and setting up the MCU in the process. It’s easy for a standalone movie's vision to get muddled when multiple parallel realities are involved, especially when events from one universe could potentially cancel out those in another. With an almost infinite array of characters, variants, and worlds to choose from, the result could have easily been creative chaos. However, Jon Watts skillfully found a way home in his third Spider-Man directorial.
It’s all about getting the basics right: a multiverse movie typically follows different versions of the same character in separate universes – in this case, Peter Parker. When these parallel realities overlap, they come together to overcome a larger conflict affecting all their worlds. Since this template is familiar in multiversal storytelling, it’s crucial to break free from clichés and make the experience more enriching. Spider-Man: No Way Home did just that by asking the right questions and delivering solid answers.
The questions here aren't thematic or philosophical but relate more on a meta level to the narrative. For instance, a studio making a multiverse movie is likely to focus on how distinct the different universes in the story should be. Creators get lost in the complexity of building unique worlds for each character variant. Films like Everything, Everywhere All At Once have set high standards for visually striking parallel realities. Even the MCU’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has that memorable scene where the characters fall through multiple universes.
However, images alone are only as effective as the story they serve, and a multiverse film should excite its audience beyond just offering a grand visual spectacle. The real concern is how distinct the character versions are, rather than how different their worlds look. In No Way Home, the question becomes: how different are the three Peter Parkers, and how can their unique strengths and weaknesses complement one another to add more emotional depth to the story? As a result, the three Spider-Men spend all their time together on the MCU's version of Earth-616, and the film does not waste time on elaborate world-building or hopping between different universes.
Furthermore, the MCU had the advantage of not needing to introduce or establish the three different Peter Parkers, as each one was already familiar to the audience through their respective films. By the time Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield came together in Spider-Man: No Way Home, fans already knew their strengths, weaknesses, backstories, and emotions. Most importantly, they understood the subtle differences in their characters. This familiarity allowed the multiple Spider-Man versions to interact almost as though they were traveling through time to both teach and learn new things, to and from each other. Essentially, they were the same person, yet different all at once.
Consider one of the most emotional scenes from No Way Home, where Andrew Garfield’s Peter-Three rescues Zendaya’s MJ from free fall, which gives him closure for failing to save Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The power of this moment is in the contrasting characterizations. Earlier in the movie, Tom Holland’s Peter-One had lost Aunt May to one of his enemies, and he is fighting to protect his loved ones like MJ and Ned. Meanwhile, Garfield’s Peter-Three has already endured the other Spideys’ worst nightmares, and understands the weight of such a loss. So, when one Peter saves another Peter’s loved one, it creates a heartfelt reaction made possible only by the multiverse genre.
The MCU struggled to replicate this formula with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where the variants of both Stephen and Wanda felt too similar, with little to learn from one another. Instead, the film focused heavily on exploring multiverse novelties, such as the introduction of the X-Men in Earth-838. Similarly, The Flash marked the end of the DCEU for a number of reasons – one of them being its multiversal failure. 2013-Barry was a mix of time travel and alternate realities, which left the character underdeveloped and flat.
Now, the stage is set for Spider-Man 4 to learn from its predecessor and build upon what made it work. No Way Home's ending itself was a result of what Peter-One had directly learned through his interactions with his fellow Spider-Men. It inspired his ultimate sacrifice to ask Doctor Strange to cast the spell that erases him from everyone’s memory in order to protect those close to him. The upcoming film could blend a street-level story with multiversal elements, but to succeed, it must carry forward the same emotional weight as Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Spider-Man: No Way Home
- Release Date
- December 17, 2021
- Runtime
- 148 Minutes
- Director
- Jon Watts
- Writers
- Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko
Cast
-
Peter Parker -
ZendayaMJ
Spider-Man fans pay attention because No Way Home is out in Limited Edition SteelBook. With beautiful packaging, this is a collector's dream, combining the thrilling narrative of Peter Parker's multiverse adventures with a visually striking and exclusive SteelBook design. In the movie, Tom Holland reprises his role as Spider-Man, navigating a web of realities alongside his iconic counterparts. This limited edition promises fans an immersive experience, blending top-tier superhero action with a visually stunning and unique Steelbook presentation, making it a must-have for avid Spider-Man enthusiasts.
- Main Genre
- Superhero
- Box Office
- 1.9 Billion
- Budget
- $200 Million
