Critics' Review: 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Saves the Franchise

'Spider-Man: No Way Home' starring Tom Holland and Zendaya released in India on 16 December.

A still from Spider-Man: No Way Home featuring Tom Holland as Spider-Man and Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Spider-Man: No Way Home hit theatres in India on 16 December. The film, starring Tom Holland as the friendly neighbourhood superhero, picks up where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off. Peter Parker asks Doctor Strange for help but a botched spell results in a flurry of old supervillains entering Parker’s universe.

The critics’ reviews are in and many have hailed Spider-Man: No Way Home as the franchise’s winner, despite some audience pandering and ample references to old films. Here are some of the early reviews for Spider-Man: No Way Home:

"Bringing Spidey even further from home and even closer to the centre of all things Marvel was always going to happen but the question remained over how director Jon Watts would be able to juggle that many more plates without any or all of them crashing to the floor. He does a pretty solid job here, tasked with a considerable upping of the ante while bringing back numerous baddies from the previous Spider-Man universes, delivering a propulsive, slickly choreographed adventure that will appease a broad fanbase this Christmas."

Benjamin Lee, The Guardian

"No Way Home does use its multiversal mayhem to address the only real problem with the Holland-era webslinger: the Iron Man-ification of the character, in which his already amazing powers keep getting overshadowed by the gadgets given to him by billionaire jerk-hero Tony Stark. This is the least fun of the Watts/Holland pictures by a wide margin (intentionally so, to some extent), but it’s a hell of a lot better than the last Spidey threequel, Sam Raimi’s overstuffed and ill-conceived Spider-Man 3."

John Defore, The Hollywood Reporter

"The movie can be ungainly at times, and it’s much too committed to setting up even more craziness to play out in upcoming Marvel product (these aren’t stand-alone films so much as overloaded episodes, after all), but it provides enough resolution for the past two decades of Spider-Man adventures that audiences who’ve tuned out along the way will be rewarded for giving this one a shot."

Peter Debruge, Variety

"The Spidey custody battle that has ensnared Sony, Disney and Marvel Studios over the years is too tedious to rehash here, but there is something admittedly disarming about the solution that No Way Home hits upon. Without saying too much — OK, without saying anything at all — three parallel Spider-Man universes that once were forced to stand apart now get to belatedly salute each other, in a warm, even reconciliatory spirit."

Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times