THB #56: Review - Spider-Man: No Way Home

The first 20 minutes of Spider-Man: No Way Home had me a little nervous. It felt a little too clever. A little too hyper-real. A little too jokey. A little like it was trying too hard.

And then, it changed.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is everything you don’t want in a Marvel Movie… until it becomes the act of genius that overcomes everything that, in lesser hands, would be an eye roller.

This is a phenomenon in movies that I often cite. The combination of ideas (usually too many) or flights of imagination are a disaster unless you happen to show the extremely rare ability to overcome them… magic… true movie magic. Making the impossible into something that almost feels obvious.

In many ways, Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse did that, as The Lego Movie did before. This is why Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the guys pretty much everyone wants in their room. It’s the stuff of Coens and Kubrick and Spielberg and Coppola and Paul Thomas Anderson.

And now, this combination of Jon Watts, making jus…