It’s a scene you remember. If you didn’t catch it the first time, way back when, you certainly saw it the second time. You DefinitelyThe meme. The setup: A villainous mastermind will don a Spider-Man costume to commit a robbery. So the superhero will be blamed. The real webslinger appears. They point at one another. They call each others impostors. Everyone’s confused: There’s more than one of them? Which is the bad guy and which one is it? Can the Spider-Man real please rise up?!
The bit dates back at A 1967 cartoon. It is often referred to as a post-credits punchline in Spider-Man: Into The SpiderverseAnd has become Visual shorthandFor everything, from police failures to hip-hop beefs and Congressional stalemates. And somewhere out there, a light bulb appeared over someone’s head: What if we essentially made what was once a deep-cut in-joke for Spider-fans Into a complete live-action movie?
Most likely, you’ve seen this. Spider-Man: Spider-Man is not coming home. and are aware of the secrets and surprises that await audiences, and why we’re bringing up the now-iconic Pointing Spideys image. If you haven’t seen the movie or are allergic or just want to stay in the dark (something Spider-Man is known for), To turn off) regarding some key twists and turns, don’t proceed any further. Spoilers ahead! Klaxon GIF! The sound of sirens and the Family Feud “wrong answer” noise! Go read our Guillermo del Toro profile or our recent Adele cover story instead.
The big revelation, one denied by most of the movie’s cast for years while also being primed by the teased appearances of familiar villains, is that this is not a Spider-Man story so much as a Spider-Men one. There are many webslingers in this room. There are many. You get all ThreeThese are the actors who starred in Spider-Man films over the past twenty years. They are now reunited for the first time. This is one of the most absurd aspects of Spider-Man. There is no way home. a plot turn which involves secret identities being exposed, a kid borrowing a magical ring, and Peter Parker asking the Master of the Mystical Arts to completely alter the fabric of space and time because his friends can’t get into M.I.T. (The real answer, of course, is multicorporate synergy, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) All of this narrative backbending, the abundance of bad guys from the past, has led to the magnificent sight of Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire standing there as a fraternity, a fraternity, of complimentary cinematic webslingers. As we mentioned in our review, it’s not necessary to service only one generation of fans. You can service many.
This should not have come as a surprise, but it was. When Tom Holland’s Spider-Man showed up briefly in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War the stage was set for a studio-to-studio networking deal: You can have Spider-Man in your movies, says Sony, who’ve owned the rights to the character for decades, if we get a few crossovers for our in-house franchise. Perhaps Iron Man will appear in their film. Maybe Disney gets what is arguably Marvel’s most popular superhero to swing around in their MCU. Maybe the Mouse House simply made an offer that the other company couldn’t refuse. However, the portal was opened which allowed the character the ability to move from one cinematic universe or another.
As for the multiverse concept — a framework that’s going to be getting a lot of screen time for a host of different I.P.s in the near future — Sony’s animated division had already given us 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the SpiderverseThey showed how wild and entertaining arachnids can be from different friendly neighborhoods. The overarching narrative of Marvel’s upcoming phase is predicated on dimensions colliding into each other; the next Doctor Strange movie is subtitled “in the Multiverse of Madness.” (Kudos to There is no way homeYou can partially forgo the pretense of a second teaser post-credit and just run a trailer of the next Strange movie. Treat these things as they are.
And then there’s the notion of those old-school supervillains showing up in trailers and character posters, confirming that all timeline- or reboot-respective Spider-era bets were off. The actors would either avoid the question, or downright deny it. Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Jamie Foxx would all return to the stage for one last victory lap. Of course when a time-hole is opened, and some Spider-Man walks through it, and removes his mask and oh my god it’s actually Garfield, people will scream. Of course when it happens a second time and yup, holy shit, there’s Spidey 1.0 himself, audiences will lose their freaking minds. (This is Actual footageThe first New York press screening. And of course, when they find Holland, lamenting what hell he hath wrought, and suddenly you have the complete Spider-trio, sharing the screen and comparing notes…there’s going to be a current of energy rippling through whatever multiplex you’re in, even if it’s just a conversation in which older guys in spandex bitch about webswinging-related back pains.
It’s in this last third where There is no way homeIt truly is something different and an extraordinary superhero movie. For an hour and change, we’ve been watching scenes that could have been plucked from any other Holland-era entry, along with the requisite MCU drop-ins and the reminder that, while it’s great see certain actors chew acres of scenery again, not all of those first- and second-edition supervillains were created equal. Molina, Dafoe, and others. mixing it up with Gen-Z Spidey, there’s still the feeling that you’re in the middle of yet another MCU movie, once again pitched at level somewhere between never-ending saga and soap opera.
Once the three of them get to know each other, the film becomes one part Spider-group therapy and one part buddy comedy. There is no way home levels up. There’s the odd, almost absurdist sense of fan fiction being writ large in witnessing this peck of Peters counseling each other over tragedies, joking with each other about web-shooter issues. Everyone has been singling out Garfield’s performance here, with folks saying that his aborted trilogy never really gave him the chance to carve out his take on the character. The emotional beats the movie gives him does feel like the franchise is paying penance; even if you have no dog in this fight, it’s hard not to see the look on the actor’s face when his Parker saves a falling MJ and feel as if he’s somehow dulled the pain This is what it looks likeSecond.
It’s Maguire’s presence that gets us a little choked up, however. He did some fine work after his tenure was done, yet you got the sense he never quite found the right groove after Spider-Man, or even that he felt a little bitter about what came with the experience of playing him — a stratosphere of fame predicated on who he’d played versus a dedicated career of digging into parts prior to putting on the mask. Maguire appears to be making peace with the role. There’s an empathy that radiates off of him. These other versions almost seem to think he’s a Spider-mentor.
This reel-to-real quality is so evident in these sequences, even when meta-reverberations begin to shake the roof. Each Parker has had their own trials, made their own choices, and suffered their own loss. Yet in the end, they all know what the other has gone through — and OnlyThey know. The movie’s heart is shaped by their bond over their shared burdens. The movie that immediately comes to mind when you see those sequences is, in a strange way, The Beatles: Get back.Only four men were able to experience what it was like being in that group. The documentary also shows how protective they are when someone attacks them from the outside and how much history they have. Only three teenagers bitten by radioactive spiders know what it’s like to have that great power, and the great responsibility that comes with it. Only three actors know what it’s like to play that role and what that entails. After the movie ends, it returns to slam bang-boom CGI before everyone is returned to their respective worlds. The rest are plunged into amnesia. For a short time, even though the movie is nostalgic and you realize that there’s no way back from past-present convergencemania now, you still feel that you are seeing something unique. It’s a reunion that ensnares you in an emotional web you didn’t even see being wove.