Arguably Marvel Studios’ most ambitious, self-aware, experimental movie to date,Spider-Man: No Way Homehad a lot of storylines to juggle. It picks up where its predecessorFar From Homeleft off and turns Spidey’s entire life upside down before breaking open the multiverse and bringing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men (and five of their villains) into the MCU. While its meta crossover-event premise was undoubtedly risky, director Jon Watts stuck the landing beautifully. The MCU Spidey threequel succeeds on many counts, providing audiences with all the fan service they could ask for while also telling a moving Frank Capra-esque fable about second chances.
AsNo Way Homehits the home media market, many Marvel fans are revisiting the movie and re-evaluating its strengths and weaknesses. When it first arrived in theaters, many audiences were sedated with a healthy dose of nostalgia and overlooked some of the movie’s shakier spots. On rewatches, the plot holes stand out a little more. For starters, the rules of Doctor Strange’s brainwashing spell are as inconsistent asthe rules for acquiring the Soul Stone.
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But it’s easy to overlook a fridge-logic problem like the inevitably grim fate that awaits the villains in their own universes regardless of whether they’ve been “cured,” because the message that everybody deserves a second chance is so strong. Tweaking the lore is forgivable if it serves the themes of a great story, andNo Way Homehas a great story to tell. It’s the ultimate Peter Parker tale. He could just let the villains return to their own universes and perish, butZendaya’s MJ says it best: “That’s not who he is.”
The Ultimate Peter Parker Story
The biggest strength of Watts’ direction ofNo Way Homeis that he remained unwaveringly focused on Tom Holland’s Peter Parker throughout the movie. He didn’t turn it intoSpider-Man 4orThe Amazing Spider-Man 3or aSinister Sixmovie – everything inNo Way Homeserves Peter’s ongoing “hero’s journey” in the MCU. A less competent execution ofNo Way Home’s premise would’ve disappeared downthe rabbit hole of self-awarenessand favored recreating memes over charting Peter’s personal growth. There are plenty of meme recreations inNo Way Home, but Watts ensures it’s Holland’s movie from beginning to end. He spends the movie trying to fix his own mistake, he finally hears Uncle Ben’s iconic advice, and he resolves the final battle by making a heartbreaking sacrifice.
With its neo-noir investigation storyline, Matt Reeves’The Batmanhas finally shed a light onBruce Wayne’s talent as a detective, which is often ignored in the movies because it’s not as fun to visualize as beating street thugs to a pulp or flying a self-branded plane. Spider-Man’s version of this is his Spider-Sense. It’s one of his most useful powers, because it gives him a split-second to prepare for impending danger, but since a sixth sense is less exciting to put on film than web-slinging and wall-crawling, it’s often given a backseat or even ignored in Spidey’s big-screen adventures.
“Peter Tingle”
InFar From Home, Wattsfinally put Peter’s Spider-Sense in the spotlight. With a barrage of convincing illusions, Mysterio was the perfect villain to exemplify this superpower. Throughout the movie, Spidey learns how to tap into his Spider-Sense – hilariously dubbed the “Peter tingle” by Aunt May – to see through those illusions. The most obvious way thatNo Way Homefollows on fromFar From Homeis by picking up exactly where it left off, with the Daily Bugle revealing Spidey’s secret identity to the public and framing him for Mysterio’s attack on London. But Watts also finds space in the threequel’s jam-packed runtime to follow up onFar From Home’s “Peter tingle” storyline.
Continuing the “Peter tingle” arc fromFar From Homeis one of the many plates spun byNo Way Home’s behemoth plot. Following up on his journey to hone this tingle inFar From Home,No Way Homedepicts Spidey with a more finely tuned Spider-Sense. It starts to tingle right before Doc Ock attacks the bridge, and right beforeNorman Osborn’s “darker half”takes over in Happy’s condo. When Spidey manages to web Norman’s hand before he goes full Goblin, Norman grins and says, “That’s some neat trick, that sense of yours.” Not only did Watts prominently feature the Spider-Sense inNo Way Home; he also figured out a fun new way to visualize it.
Dolly Zooms
WhileFar From Hometold a whole story about Spider-Sense, it didn’t really visualize the power beyond demonstrating that he’s able to anticipate each drone attack in the final battle. Sam Raimi went a little overboard in visualizing this power. Intrue Raimi style, his portrayal of Peter’s Spider-Sense is a jaw-dropping, slightly unnerving visual effect. The camera swoops around all the little surrounding details that Peter notices, like the flapping of a fly’s wings or the airborne journey of a spitball. This was visually interesting, but also distracting, because it suddenly cut out of a scene to cycle through a montage of bizarre computer-generated close-ups in super slow-motion.
InNo Way Home, Watts found the sweet spot between not visualizing the Spider-Sense at all like inFar From Homeand visualizing it to an unsettling degree like Raimi. When Watts wants to show Peter’s Spider-Sense tingling, he simply pulls in on Tom Holland with a dolly zoom. The dolly zoom is a simple but fiercely effective in-camera technique that combines the zoom lens and the camera operator’s physical movement to give the impression of zooming in and out at the same time.
InVertigo, Alfred Hitchcock uses dolly zooms to show the effects of James Stewart’s titular condition. InJaws, Steven Spielberg uses a dolly zoom to show Chief Brody’s terror as he spots a blood-soaked shark attack from the middle of a crowded beach. InGoodfellas, Martin Scorsese uses a slow dolly zoom to showJimmy and Henry’s paranoiaas the feds close in on them. The dolly zoom is always used to show a character in distress, which is perfect for Spider-Man sensing that something terrible is about to happen.
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