Spider-Man: No Way Home is officially out, and it’s a hit. Actually, that’s understating it. No Way Home is a phenomenon. According to The A.V. Club, the movie made $587.2 million globally in its first weekend alone, $253 million of which came from the U.S. That’s easily the biggest debut of the year and the third biggest ever, behind only other Marvel movies like Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and we remind you that those movies didn’t come out during a freaking pandemic.
Part of the appeal is definitely seeing Tom Holland’s Spider-Man mix it up with classic villains like Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus and Willam Dafoe’s Green Goblin; the plot involves Peter Parker and Doctor Strange opening up the multiverse, which presents all kinds of wild storytelling possibilities.
And folks like Dafoe don’t just drop by for a cameo; they’re important parts of the action, and Dafoe wouldn’t have it any other way. “I just was concerned about how contrived it was or whether it was just like a power cameo, a reference,” Dafoe said in an interview with Mulderville. “I really was worried that I wouldn’t have something to do.”
"To do this physical stuff was important to me. One of the first things I said to Jon [Watts] and Amy [Pascal], basically when they pitched it to me, before there was even a script, was, “Listen, I don’t want to just pop in there as a cameo or just fill in in close-ups. I want to do the action because that’s fun for me…It’s really impossible to add any integrity or any fun to the character if you don’t participate in these things because all that action stuff informs your relationship to the characters and the story, and also it makes you earn your right to play the character."
With over half a billion in the bank, I’d say he’s earned it.
How does Marvel top Spider-Man: No Way Home?
Where does the franchise go from here? We’ve had some mixed messages about that, but Marvel boss Kevin Feige did clear some things up with The New York Times. “Amy and I and Disney and Sony are talking about — yes, we’re actively beginning to develop where the story heads next, which I only say outright because I don’t want fans to go through any separation trauma like what happened after Far From Home,” he said. “That will not be occurring this time.”
I’m honestly not sure what he’s talking about there, but he and producer Amy Pascal seem determined to continue this story. “At the end of the movie we just made, you see Spider-Man make a momentous decision, one that you’ve never seen him make before,” Pascal said. “It’s a sacrifice. And that gives us a lot to work with for the next film.”
"You can’t think about topping yourself in terms of spectacle. Otherwise movies just get larger and larger for no reason, and it’s not a good result. But we do want to always try and top ourselves in terms of quality and emotion. Kevin and I never want to lose sight of one thing: Peter Parker. That he’s a normal kid. That he is orphaned over and over again. That he’s a teenager, so everything in his life is at a heightened pitch and everything matters more than anything. That he’s fueled by goodness and guilt. That he’s striving for a greater cause, and he’s vilified by the press."
I won’t mention what that momentous decision was in case you’re keen to avoid spoilers, but I will note that neither Feige nor Pascal mention continuing the story with Tom Holland in the lead role, as much as they surely want to. Holland himself has been mulling leaving the character behind of late, and while it’s too early to know anything for sure, I wonder if the next live-action Spider-Man film will take a different sort of shape.
But we won’t know about that for a while. In the meantime, No Way Home is in theaters now. Watch responsibly.
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