By William Smith – Staff Reporter

*WARNING: This does include spoilers for “Spider-Man: No Way Home”*

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a Marvel movie that was released on December 17, 2021. It stars Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Toby Maguire as Spiderman, Zendaya as MJ, Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, and Jacob Batalon as Ned. 

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” takes place right after the events of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” when Mysterion reveals Spider-Man’s identity to the whole world. When this information was released people’s thoughts were divided between that Spider-Man was a menace or that he was a good guy. This caused him and his friends to get denied to MIT, the college the three of them wanted to go to. So Spider-Man goes to Dr. Strange to see if he undo time so he can go back and change it, but Dr. Strange gave him the alternative of changing everybody’s memories so they forget who he is.

When Dr. Strange is casting the spell Spider-Man tries to change many things which results in the spell malfunctioning and causes everybody from alternate universes to come to their universe who knows Spider-Man. Luckily Dr. Strange manages to contain the spell. After that happened, Dr. Strange mentions how they were not able to accept him after he pleaded his case. Then Spider-Man says he could plead his case, and him saying that caused Dr. Strange to be angry because he was about to brainwash the entire world that he wasn’t Spider-Man. Spider-Man then finds one of the school’s admission managers so he could plead his and his friends’ case. Just as he was doing that he was attacked by Doc Oc. When Doc Oc takes off Spider-Man’s mask he is confused and says “you’re not Spider-Man.” Just as he beats Doc Oc Green Goblin shows up and starts bombing the highway they are on. While this happened Doc Oc is confused as to why Green Goblin is alive because he was supposedly dead.

Right after he said that, they were both whisked away by Dr. Strange’s magic to his basement. He tells Spider-Man that a couple people slipped and managed to make it to their universe. So after that he tells Spider-Man he is responsible for finding everybody who came through. He eventually finds SandMan and Electro and brings them both to the basement prison. He then gets a message from Aunt May that she found another person from an alternate universe; it turns out it was Green Goblin. When he was visiting Aunt May she convinced Spider-Man that he needs to help them so Spider-Man brings everybody he captures to Happy’s apartment so that he can fix what’s whats wrong with everybody. He only manages to help Doc Oc before they all go Rogue and escape. After that, the movie cuts to MJ and Ned as they are holding onto a device that can send them all back. As this happens, they want to see Spider-Man, and Ned ends up using his magic to open up a portal to Spider-Man, only it’s not the Spider Man they know (For now, Spider-Man refers to the name of the actors played by him so it’s not confusing.) It’s a Spider-Man from a different universe. Then Ned opens another portal that leads to Toby Maguire. Then they meet up with Tom Holland and decide to work together to cure the rest of the villains who haven’t been cured of their powers. When they’re done making all the cures they all head to the Statue of Liberty to battle it with the villains so the Spider-Men can cure them. During the fight, the malfunctioning spell gets let loose so Dr. Strange tries to contain it. While this happens Tom Holland fights with Green Goblin. After he cures him Spider-Man goes up to Dr. Strange and says to make it so nobody remembers who Peter Parker is, and he does just that. When this happens everybody from an alternate universe is sent back to their universe, and nobody can remember who Spider man is. And during the post credit scene we see Venom at a bar talking about how he wants to see Spider-Man. He then fades away to his universe, but he leaves his symbiote, the thing that lets him become Venom. 

Something that was good about the movie was that it explained the Spider-Man reboots and gave some nostalgia to long time Spider-Man fans. It also gave rise to a lot of new information and will make fans want to see how Spider-Man overcomes not being known to anybody, not even to close people who he’s known for a long time. 

The worst part about the movie is how they are going to make another Spider-Man movie that’s just as good or better than this. Because of what happened in the last movie, it is difficult to imagine another Spider-Man movie that can top it, and it’s hard to imagine what the next movie is going to be like. However, this movie does give the next movie a lot to work with; it might be too much with nobody remembering him and the whole Venom plot line. It will be interesting to see what future Marvel movies might add.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars