New York City. After the previous events, the whole world now knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, which begins to also influence the lives of his friends, Michelle MJ and Ned. Peter thus asks Dr. Strange to conjure up a magic spell for to erase everyone's memories, but it goes wrong and instead brings Spider-Man's enemies from alternate dimensions: Osborn / Green Goblin, Octavius / Dr. Octopus, Dillon / Electro, Dr. Connors / Lizard, and Marko / Sandman. Strange wants to return them back to their universe, where they will die in battle, but Spider-Man rebels, traps Strange in a different dimension and takes his ring away, and then proceeds to try to cure the villains in an attempt to save and reform them. Spider-Man reforms Dr. Octopus, but Green Goblin kills aunt May. Two more Spider-Mans from alternate dimensions appear and help Spider-Man defeat Goblin and inject him with a cure. Strange returns and erases everyone's memories of Peter Parker.
Tom Holland's fifth film as Spider-Man, "No Way Home" is overlong and overburdened with too many subplots, but it gives a rather satisfying conclusion to his saga, becoming remarkably emotional in the finale. The alternate universe setting tends to obfuscate the plot in several Marvel movies, yet here it even works to a good degree since it offers an alternate / changed outcome for characters from all the previous Spider-Man movies, Raimi's trilogy ("Spider-Man 2", "Spider-Man 3") and Webb's duology ("The Amazing Spider-Man", "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"), including villains Dr. Octopus (Alfred Molina) and Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), which gives it a certain metafilm awe. The gimmick that Peter clumsily wrecks Dr. Strange's magic spell, and then even goes on to capture Dr. Strange in an alternate dimension so that he can try to reform the villains on his own, feels highly contrived and shoehorned, but the film has charm and humor (albeit often corny one: "Oh, a torture rack!" - "That is a pilates machine."), and feels energetic enough to carry this strange storyline.
One of the best moments is when Spider-Man 2.0 from an alternate dimension (Andrew Garfield from Webb's duology) enters our dimension through a portal, but MJ and Ned don't believe him because he is played by a different actor, so they order him to prove it. Spider-Man 2.0 then jumps and holds himself to the ceiling of the house with his hand, but MJ is still not convinced: "Crawl around." - "Why do I need to crawl around?" - "Because it's not enough." - "This is plenty." - "No, it's not." - "Yes, it is. How do I stick to the ceiling?" But then eventually gives in, and walks on the ceiling, upside down. Later on, even Tobey Maguie from Raimi's trilogy appears. Unfortunately, they both appear very late, some 92 minutes into the film, and are strangely underused. When you have a crossover of two or more characters, it better be damn well used since they may never have time to interact again. The only truly great moment is when Ned approaches the lab and asks: "Peter?", but then all three Peter Parkers respond with: "Yeah?" - "Peter Parker?" - "We're all Peter Parker." There should have been simply more of these interactions between Maguire, Garfield and Holland. Despite a typical CGI overkill in the action and battle finale, there is a cathartic post-finale segment which is surprisingly mature and grown up, meditating on the themes of death, decline, new beginning in life, fatalism and accepting loss, which gives it more weight than expected.
Grade:++
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