I know. It’s incredibly basic to say that I love Spider-Man. I mean most of us do right? Or at least anyone who has any interest in the superhero genre, and tolerates Marvel, can probably admit Spiderman is in their top 10 heroes list. What’s not to love? He’s smart, humble, kind (yet very sassy to his enemies), with powers just strong enough to make for cool fights, but not strong enough to render him OP and boring. Embarrassing and TMI, my first exposure to Spider-Man was not through a comic, cartoon, or even the 2002 Tobey Maguire film. It was from the free game that came with our families first PC (I’ll remind you I’m a fairly older Millennial), the Spider-Man Cartoon Maker. This game was like a whole new level of creativity for a kid who’d only played MS paint. You could animate dozens of characters against any background of your choosing, add sound affects, and even record your creations! Needless to say, when the 2002 Spider-Man did come out, it instantly became my favorite superhero film. I still maintain that this film set the modern standard for what to expect from this genre.

Twenty years, two reboots, two actors, four MCU phases, and a few giant corporate acquisitions later, we’ve come to this point. Spider-Man: No Way Home might seem like just the third entry of the MCU Spiderverse, but anyone keeping up with what happened in the last one knows that this isn’t going to be any ordinary, villain of the week fair. After Mysterio exposes Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) identity as Spiderman to the world while simultaneously framing him for his death, things get…messy. As you could imagine, mass media attention combined with unforgiving cancel culture has made life a living hell for not only Peter, but his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), aunt May (Marisa Tomei), and ever loyal best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon). Seeing no other way to fix his life, Peter turns to his local wizard acquaintance, Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to magic his way out of his troubles. Unfortunately, the spell Strange conjures to try to make  everyone forget that Peter is Spider-Man goes a bit wrong (totally Peter’s fault) and now some familiar faces from other Spider-Man universes begin to appear.

Well…not sure how much more I can talk about besides that. Disney has basically threatened a painful death upon anyone (including the loose lipped Tom Holland) who spoils this film before release. I’ll just be very careful and remember exactly everything that’s in the trailer–and be really vague about my opinions about everything else that isn’t. I can definitely say, a lot of franchise entries are hyped up from their studios, but this one hands down deserves every bit of hype that’s been building up about it. No Way Home is everything little kid and adult me ever wanted in a Spider-Man movie, and then so much more.

First off, I’m actually surprised on how well balanced everything feels. We have a great deal of focus on Peter and his friends, yet somehow a surprisingly great amount of focus and development from everyone else who showed up on the way. (Again, not going into specifics.) I just felt an incredible amount of closure was achieved in a short amount of time–closure in many cases, I’ve been wanting for years. As is the case when multiverses collide, we’re also treated with some very interesting dynamics between cross dimensional characters that we’ve never seen interact (but have always wanted to!) I’m sure many super fans will have a differing opinion, but I felt very little opportunity was wasted when it came to how these interactions went down.

From his first appearance, Tom Holland has been my favorite Spider-man. He’s just everything I look for in a Peter Parker. And while I think Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield had wonderful qualities in their own rights for the roll, Holland strikes a perfect balance between the two. Holland has always shown great performances within the MCU films, this one really tested his abilities, and I think he’s really achieved something amazing this time around. As for Zendaya, I guess it only took her being in almost everything lately for me to finally admit, I do enjoy her, especially as the ever sardonic MJ. Ok, he’s in the trailer, so I’m aloud to talk about this: Alfred Molina is back as Doc Ock and I’m literally screaming with joy about it. He was one of my favorite villains from any of the Spider-man franchises, and I’m happy to say, my opinion hasn’t changed.

Visually, well it certainly better be as stunning as it was, having one of the largest film budgets to date. Of course everything was beautiful. Can you expect anything less from an MCU film, especially one guaranteed to be popular? As to be expected, anything heavily involving Dr. Strange will not only be stunning but very trippy to view as well. I continue to really love the way magic looks in this universe, and this is coming from a fantasy nerd.

There’s so so much more I want to say about No Way Home. But at this point, it’s going to get too specific, and I ain’t no filthy spoiler. I think the one thing I resent about this movie, is it gave me almost too much of everything I wanted. It’s too good. It spoon fed me fan service I thought I would never get, and I ate it up and asked for more. But now…what are they going to do after this one? How are they going to top it? I just hope we won’t be too disappointed with future Spider-Man films in the years to come. At least No Way Home exceeded all of my expectations, as well as finally gotten me proper hyped for what’s to come in Phase 4 of the MCU.