I'm honestly not sure whether No Way Home is more or less meta than Matrix: Resurrections, a film that makes its own existence an integral part of the plotline 🤔 I think Matrix clinches it, but it's a close call!
I'm also no longer sure which of the MCU Spiderman films holds the crown. I think everyone will agree that Far From Home sits on the bottom of the heap, which is saying something considering I still think that's one of the finest MCU movies of the latter few cycles, but is No Way Home better than Homecoming? Probably not, as the former is just a little tighter and cleaner, but wow, it's close. No Way Home certainly has a much bigger scope and a much larger idea, an idea which it executes incredibly well.
After all, what's the number one criticism that a lot of the older Spiderman films receive? That they introduce too many villains and become bloated messes as a result. So here comes a notoriously difficult third act boasted not just two villains, or three villains, but almost all of the previous villains, from all the previous franchises! Yet, somehow, it sticks the landing. We get a movie with a ridiculous number of bad guys, and not only are they all interesting, but they also get individual arcs, several of which are almost more well developed than the main heroes are. Okay, the previous movies do a lot of the heavy lifting, and if you've never seen them you're not going to get as much out of NWH. And sure, James Franco's Goblin gets stubbed a little here, but I understand why two Goblins flying around may have been overkill (his character also lacks the necessary "scientist's hubris gets the better of them" arc; it's more personal to the Tobey Maguire Spiderman than the others).
But the point is that we get meaningful, character-driven plotlines for Doc Ock, for Green Goblin, for Electro, for Sandman, for Aunt May, and for all three of the Spiderpeople in the film. Some of these beats are incredibly subtle, but they're all there. I welled up a little when Andrew Garfield caught MJ and slowly lowered her to ground; it was such a heartbreaking moment and he did it so damn well. Tobey Maguire getting to acknowledge how he fucked up so many times, and finally being able to help both Osborn and Octavius. And, yeah, the "villains" arcs are great. Doc Ock as the antihero is a brilliant take, beautifully done, and Alfred Molina is so damn good in this role! Ditto Willem Dafoe, who just nails the whole Jekyll/Hyde duality of the character. And even where they chose to update the characters a little, it's great. This is the version of Electro we should have had and it's just so nice to see Jamie Foxx get to take another shot at that. Even Rhys Ifans' Lizard gets a nice moment at the end, even if his is the least developed of the villainous arcs. It's just all so neatly pieced together, it pulls off so much so well.
Amongst all of which, it's kind of surprising to think that this film also includes Doctor Strange, who gets some nice beats, and cleverly ties up the whole name reveal from the end of the last movie. I don't know if they did that with this plot already planned out, but it works so well and gave them such a good excuse for live-action Spiderverse, you've just got to applaud the writers 👏👏👏
I'm a little surprised that they chose to kill off Aunt May, though I do think the whole "great responsibility" line was a nice touch; it wouldn't have felt right in any other movie, but in one as meta as this it works and now Tom Holland has had his quintessential Spidey moment. Plus, I'm very aware that they've left the character with one foot firmly out of the MCU. None of the Avengers or Guardians remember him. His only family is dead. Even his best friend and girlfriend don't know he exists. It's a clean break for the MCU/Sony deal, if they need it. I sincerely hope they don't and that we get more Zendaya and Jacob Batalon, more Tom Holland in the Avengers, more everything, but if they had to break up it's a nice way to do so. Plus, I have to forgive anything like that a little when we get Matt freakin' Murdoch just dropped-in as a nice little cameo, officially bringing Charlie Cox into the MCU proper 🙏
In fact, there are very few criticisms that I have for the film. The one small nitpick I have is the Venom cameo; it doesn't make any sense. The characters brought through the multiverse rift are those killed by Spiderpeople, or are Spiderpeople. In the cameo scene we see, Tom Hardy's Venom makes it clear that he's never heard of Spiderman (which means he exists in a universe without one), so he can't have been killed by one. Nor is he a Spiderperson. Yet somehow, he evaporates and gets returned just like the rest of them. Except, he leaves a glob of Venom behind, which doesn't work because Venom is sentient so should all go away at once. What irks me the most about this is not just the hamfisted way it undermines the entire plot for a meaningless, throwaway gag for fan service (something which the film manages so well to avoid up until this point) but that it's not necessary. I admittedly haven't seen Let Their Be Carnage, so it's possible that that sequel breaks the Venomverse firmly away from the MCU, but from what I know Tom Hardy could exist in the MCU. We know from the trailer for the upcoming Morbius film that that Sony Spider-movie-verse movie is in the MCU, because we see the Vulture in it. And in that trailer, Morbius makes a gag about Venom, which heavily implies that he shares the same world as that character. Yet here, in this stupid mid-credit scene, Venom is shown to be from a different universe. Why? Why do that? It's not even a particularly good cameo. Why mess up all these timelines? You manage a nearly three-hour movie about multiverses and time travel with no glaring continuity issues, tieing together two decades of films neatly, and then create an absolute mess of your own future releases in a two-minute scene 🤦♂️ Sorry, needed to get that off my chest 😁
Other than that, the film retains the humour and action of the previous movies; the core cast is still excellent; and it sets us up for either a more street-level sequel with the likes of Daredevil, or a college-based smaller-threat character-driven film, a lot more like Homecoming. It's all pretty great stuff.