Spoiler Warning. In case the title wasn’t clear, this post contains spoilers for the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home.

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This Spider-Man movie starts with the aftermath of Far From Home. Spider-Man/Peter Parker is considered a villain by many which causes Peter and his friends trouble when it comes to running their lives and getting into a top rated school. To deal with this Peter asks Dr Strange to make everyone forget him, however when this is attempted Peter ruins it causing a break in space time and opening the multiverse.

The open multiverse brings an awesome cast of villains: the literally power hungry Electro; Sandman who just wants to survive; the pessimistic Lizard who wants to be a stronger life form; Doc Ock still struggling against his robotic extra arms while desiring the power of the sun; and the star of the show, the mad Green Goblin whose split personality is an incredible force for destruction that drives Spidey to the brink of murder, yet also enough to cause pity for poor Norman Osborne. Everything was done well and every one of the villains could have destroyed the hero given their power levels. The stories came together so well and the acting was spot on. It’s a bit strange how they were pulled back from their respective death situations though.

Arguably Dr Strange was another villain as he attempted to solve all the problems in the quickest way possible. He was willing to let all the villains die which conflicted with Spider-Man’s desire to save them all. It did result in some cool CGI city twisting action where Tom’s Peter was able to demonstrate some intelligence.

As for the heroes, it’s Holland’s movie so his Spider-Man with Ned and MJ are the stars, but this movie gives the gift of old Spider-Man actors returning which was bound to please fans.

Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is still the annoying kid that he has been in his last two movies. He does get a tragedy, some decent villains and enough desperation to help him grow as a character. This Peter learns from the other Spider-Men as well as his own mistakes, eventually deciding to do the honourable thing, even when it disadvantages himself. Once he has something to actually deal with and the movie becomes a bit more serious a decent Spider-Man is formed, rather than the Stark reliant giddy child that irritates me so much. MJ takes on more of a girlfriend role in this movie which gives her proper attachment to Peter, she also works in a cafe and seems a bit closer to Mary Jane in how her character is built. Ned is still annoying but is shown to have some affinity to magic giving him room for character development. Flash is still a weak, annoying idiot, I wish they’d never written him.

Tobey Maguire comes in as an experienced adult. He knows how things work from his own movies where he played an older version of the hero, one with biological webs which the other characters showed their amazement for. He’s supportive of both of the others, showing the mental development his character really had, even going as far as stepping in the way when Tom nearly goes too far and standing up to his friend to teach him something important. It’s also nice that he got a more friendly resolution to his original villain’s story although it’s odd that the pair never spoke. They treated my favourite Spider-Man well.

Andrew Garfield was another to return, his Spider-Man was a sort of late school Spidey who was becoming a man in his movies. In No Way Home he was older, probably depressed and had largely given up on Peter Parker as a lifestyle; his failure to Gwen in his movies hit him hard which left him with a low opinion of himself, this prompted Tobey to call him amazing (get it? He was the Amazing Spider-Man). He got his redemption saving MJ, having Tobey help bring him back to some level of self belief and trying to do the same for Electro in return. Including his own two movies this character had a really good story arc. I hope Sony use Andrew in their villain series as the Spider-Man.

The action was fast, dynamic and looked to be hard hitting from everyone involved. Scenes with the Goblin were fantastic as he drove his enemies to extreme levels of viciousness with his mad taunting and desire to make Spider-Man more like himself. Personally I’m glad they killed off Aunt May who didn’t bring much to the movies (possibly because of her relative youth).

This movie is brilliant to Spider-Man fans, as long as you’ve seen Far From Home the MCU doesn’t matter too much however there are five films that need watching first to get the full impact of what’s happening. It works to move on two visiting stories and sets up Tom Holland a blank slate to become an actual Spider-Man. That’s exactly the problem though, this movie relies so much on what came before and it wouldn’t work nearly as well if the older stuff didn’t exist. However, it does turn all three spiders together into an amazing series to watch.

I personally enjoyed the movie a lot, it reminded me of the older, non MCU Marvel movies where I think quality was a lot higher. It also helped in the MCU that it had Strange’s involvement as he’s probably my favourite MCU character. It’s an action packed movie well worth watching and I hope the two younger Spiders are used well in future (especially with Venom in the end credits).