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Spider-Man: No Way Home was one of the most anticipated superhero movies of all time. The initial trailer broke records for views on YouTube and the movie was projected to break box office records even amidst the pandemic. The hype around the movie stemmed from the popularity of the character, the popularity of the MCU, and the rumors about returning characters from previous Spider-Man movies. So the question is, did Spider-Man: No Way Home live up to the hype? 

The answer is 100% yes. The movie currently has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.8 on IMDB and for good reason. It is an action-packed movie filled with emotional highs and lows. It hits on the usual MCU comedy moments while also being one of the more sad and darker installments in the franchise. The return of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire, as well as the villains from their franchises, including Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, The Lizard,  Sandman, and Charlie Cox returning as Matt Murdock. These returns created nostalgic moments for so many people and they were wonderful callbacks to the previous Spider-Man movies. 

The movie wasn’t just a nostalgia filled action movie though, which was a concern some people had going into the movie. The movie took one of the most unpopular Marvel comic storylines and turned it into an extremely compelling and exciting story. The movie was also filled with great performances from Tom Holland, who delivered potentially the best of his career and Willem Dafoe was the best of the villains delivering a terrifying performance that put him up with the likes of Heath Ledger’s Joker as all-time great villains. The rest of the cast shined as well. Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, and Jacob Batalon all had their strongest performances of the trilogy and the returning Spider-Men; Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire reminded fans why they were so beloved. Jamie Foxx’s Electro was much better in this movie as opposed to his first appearance and Alfred Molina was just as good as he was back in 2004 as Doc Oc.

Overall, this is not only one of the strongest comic book movies of all time, but it is also one of the best movies of all time because of everything the movies was able to do. It isn’t perfect, sometimes the story can get confusing, the CGI can look funky, and two of the villains (Sandman and Lizard) were all CGI because they couldn’t get the actors to return for the movie. The highs of the movie far outway the lows though, and I give this movie 5 stars.