The Cathartic Qualities of Spider-Man: No Way Home
According to the Twitter-perched Masters of Zeitgeist and Gatekeepers of Pop-Culture, it is unequivocally woke for a masculine male of the human species to be in touch with his emotions. Emotionally inadequate male protagonists are now scoffed at — sorry ye Ronald Weasleys, your emotional range must spill over from the proverbial teaspoon. The art of masculinity in our society has become deeply interwoven with refined sensibilities and delicate sensitivities.
I must confess — as a long-nosed, cishet, logic-worshipping, quasi-religious male with a somewhat orthodox upbringing in a male-dominated school friend circle, I struggle to access my emotions. Things that should make me feel things don’t actually strike me as particularly poignant. Instead, abstract concepts and vicarious struggles render me weirdly weepy. I have been observed having uncivil emotional meltdowns upon watching missed forehands in Grand Slam finals, choking up in front of Impressionist paintings at obscure museums, sobbing like a baby after re-watching old war documentaries, and even spontaneously combusting into tears during a hike in a deserted national park.
“Oh, somebody died? Absolutely terrible. Is there something tangible I can do to help?”
For such flawed individuals, in my experience, the cocktail of sports/entertainment fandom mixed with nostalgia proves to be quite an explosive emotional fuel. These are the same individuals who will never have serious romantic relationships in their formative years because they are incapable of accessing or expressing personal emotions. Naturally, they find it easier to bond with nerds and form cliques. I have no qualms admitting that I am/was such an individual. That is a lot of context — moving onto Spider-Man.
Unless you’ve been recently hit by one of the newfangled variants of the Chinese virus and been confined to an isolation ward without internet access, you may have heard about the extraordinary celestial alignment teased in the latest Spider-Man movie. There shall be no spoiler alerts because if you haven’t yet watched the movie, you don’t care much anyway.
As a child brought up on a staple diet of DC and Marvel comics fare, Spider-Man constitutes a significant element of my mental make-up. He is the most relatable Marvel superhero on account of his age, humble origins and relative simplicity of powers. He is not an overpowered alien or god like the rest of the Avengers. His counterpart in the DC Comics could be Dick Grayson’s Robin/Nightwing. Spider-Man is also simultaneously the conscience of the group and provides the comic relief, a role usually played by the Flash for the Justice League. So it’s no surprise that this motor-mouthed web-slinger has captured the imagination of bumbling teenagers looking for an idol.
Picture a classified meeting somewhere in Hollywood involving executives from Sony and Marvel. Here are the ingredients they brought to the table in the hopes of creating an unprecedented cinematic recipe:
- The rights to the first and arguably most popular live action adaptation of Spider-Man which captured the imagination and mind share of the late 80s and 90s kids, much before the MCU began its journey in 2007.
- The rights to the short-lived but emotionally-charged second Spider-Man adaptation that introduced a younger demographic to the hero — which ended abruptly causing widespread outrage over the protagonist being robbed of a chance to close certain threads.
- Access to three acting stalwarts who played the most memorable Spider-Man villains on screen — one irredeemable, unhinged Joker-equivalent of the Marvel universe, and two nice-dudes-drunk-with-power rewarded with classic redemption arcs.
- The concept of the multiverse, nurtured by the MCU and polished to perfection by a critically-acclaimed animated Spider-Man movie, which afforded creative liberties most scriptwriters would kill for.
- A clear reason to include the current most powerful being in the MCU as an enabler and guide, without him interfering too much with the action sequences, while the plot plays directly into subsequent storylines about wider, more serious multiversal repercussions.
Narrative Consistency and Nerdgasms
Outside of the portals and magic, Spider-Man:No Way Home has a fairly simple plot. Protagonist uses time machine causing a ripple in the fabric of space-time further causing a few bad guys from alternate timelines of other dimensions to appear. Now instead of merely sending them back, protagonist does the most protagonisty thing — he attempts to help them.
This simplicity provides a platform for the acting to shine — not the textbook approach in a superhero film. Led by Alfred Molina and later the inimitable Willem Dafoe, the villains come to party. It would have been awkward to direct such powerful maniacs in a confined space, but the film pulls it off without dwelling on it. The nuance of their individual characters gets sufficient purchase, and their interactions are completely believable.
There is some delightful pandering to nerds with hat tips to popular dialogues — now a meme, Dafoe’s “something of a scientist myself”, and Molina’s iconic “power of the sun in the palm of my hand”.
Moreover, the soundtrack design is gorgeous — with the original scores brought in to introduce the old characters without any jarring overlays. Appearances by beloved characters J. Jonah Jameson and MCU’s Matt Murdock are like sprinkles on an ice cream sundae. The movie references even minor elements like Tobey Maguire’s stiff back, Electro’s comic book suit and the Miles Morales mention — all elements that made the nerds sit back and shout “I understood that reference”.
When Dr. Otto Octavius talks to Tobey’s Peter Parker at the end, “It’s good to see you dear boy, you’re all grown up!” — it is hard to argue it was not Doc Ock speaking directly to the audience.
Crackling Chemistry and Crying My Eyes Out
Marvel has always been good with their attention to detail and Easter egg placements, and so the points mentioned above were not a surprise. What elevated the movie from another decent outing into a spiritual experience was the joy of witnessing three Spider-Man characters interacting, bantering and flourishing in general. Tobey and Andrew’s appearances were more than cameos, with significant narrative and emotional heft, while also being non-repetitive and fresh.
There is one word to describe the fraternal relationship among the Tobey-Andrew-Tom trinity as they compare notes and help each other tide over emotions, and that word is wholesome. Their scenes in the second half of the film are more wholesome than a bowl of egg fried rice. The scenes are chicken soup for the pandemic-battered geeky young-adult souls.
Two scenes broke the floodgates for me, personally, and for several others I know. The double-time triple Spidey swing around the shield-bearing Statue of Liberty was the definition of ‘dem feels’. But the catharsis, experienced through an actor at the top of his game, came from the scene where Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man saves Tom’s MJ. A masked superhero having failed to save the love of his life, trying to do his best every day, is a lonely dude. There are no Avengers in his universe he can turn to. There are no cool aliens to fight. But there is the constant gnawing feeling that he should have saved Gwen Stacey but could not. That simple scene achieves closure of a magnitude the actions of mad titans and galactic overlords cannot ever convey — because they are not human.
Andrew catches MJ.
MJ: Are you okay?
Andrew sobbingly nods.
The Audience (sobbing with him): No, we’re not okay!
Reunited, and It Feels So Good
The movie basically wrote itself. The studio knew what the fans wanted and there was no reason to deviate from the obvious. To the fans who have journeyed with multiple Spider-Man avatars, there was no astonishment. Just the feeling of familiarity as they saw their fantasy brought to life on screen. Spider-Man: No Way Home was the warm hug this extended generation of superhero fans needed in this period of global misery and languishing.
The image of three heroes — straddling my childhood, adolescence and adulthood — embracing, was enough to break the dam. God bless the content that hits you like a truck.
Fin.
