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Spider-Man: No Way Home gets rave first reviews: Critics praise the film for its ‘fan service’

Spider-Man: No Way Home gets rave first reviews: Critics praise the film for its 'fan service' 2

Early reviews from critics are showering Spiderman: No Way Home with praise.

Many critics admit that this third installment in Marvel’s Spiderman franchise plays heavily on fan service though they don’t cite this as an issue.

Spiderman: No Way Home is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it follows the 2017 film Spiderman: Homecoming and 2019’s Spiderman: Far From Home.  

Lots of love: Early reviews from critics are showering Spiderman: No Way Home with praise

Lots of love: Early reviews from critics are showering Spiderman: No Way Home with praise

Tom Holland reprises his role as the titular character from earlier films while his new girlfriend Zendaya returns to the series as well.

‘What could easily have felt like one of those tacky Disneyland parades, where all the princesses are assembled to do fan service, instead finds a strong emotional foundation,’ wrote Peter Debruge for Variety. 

The Hollywood Reporter writer John Defore’s reaction to it was more tepid, writing, ‘Some of the fan service plays fairly well here; some is unsubtle enough you expect an actor to look into the camera and wink at you after delivering his line.’

He continued, ‘But in the end, Spiderman: No Way Home does use its multiversal mayhem to address the only real problem with the Holland-era web-slinger: the Iron Man-ification of the character, in which his already amazing powers keep getting overshadowed by the gadgets given to him by billionaire jerk-hero Tony Stark.’ 

Finishing the trilogy: Spiderman: No Way Home is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it follows the 2017 film Spiderman: Homecoming and 2019's Spiderman: Far From Home

Finishing the trilogy: Spiderman: No Way Home is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it follows the 2017 film Spiderman: Homecoming and 2019’s Spiderman: Far From Home

Dating and working together: Tom Holland reprises his role as the titular character from earlier films while his new girlfriend Zendaya returns to the series as well

Dating and working together: Tom Holland reprises his role as the titular character from earlier films while his new girlfriend Zendaya returns to the series as well

Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly wrote the movie goes much father than simple fan service.

‘So it’s safer maybe just to say that what seems at first like pure fan service turns out to be some of the best and by far the most meta stuff Marvel has done, tender and funny and a little bit devastating,’ she wrote. 

As for the action sequences in the film, Rolling Stone’s David Fear wrote, ‘What we can say is this: Spiderman: No Way Home is a perfectly fine superhero movie. It has a couple of great set pieces — the initial fight between Ock and Holland’s Spider-Man is proof that director Jon Watts has gotten increasingly better at staging these kinds of things; there’s a dizzying chase through Escher-like cityscapes that echoes a similar sequence in the first Doctor Strange movie, yet still feels inventive.’   

Some critics also praised the film for the emotional depth of its characters, and the problems they are forced to confront. 

‘As the old villains reappear, we’re reminded that practically every one of them is a good soul gone wrong — some made monstrous by the same kind of dumb luck that made Peter a hero,’ Defore wrote in his review.  

Fan service, not in a bad way: Some reviewers wrote that many of the older characters are in the film, and the fan service was generally well-liked

Fan service, not in a bad way: Some reviewers wrote that many of the older characters are in the film, and the fan service was generally well-liked

Some very deep characters: Variety's Peter Debruge wrote, 'We see the franchise trying to make the character more fully dimensional and dare I say 'realistic'

Some very deep characters: Variety’s Peter Debruge wrote, ‘We see the franchise trying to make the character more fully dimensional and dare I say ‘realistic’

 Variety’s Peter Debruge wrote, ‘The reason, as Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers’ screenplay tries to explain, is that this version of Peter is still dealing with Mysterio’s death. 

‘In that reaction, we see the franchise trying to make the character more fully dimensional and dare I say ‘realistic’ — much as 21st-century Bond Casino Royale and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight did in recognizing the physical toll saving the world had on their respective protagonists.’ 

There are a few drawbacks in the film though. Defore made it clear he thought the film came too soon after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which contains a similar storyline. 

He wrote, ‘Who thought it was a great idea to tackle this material so soon after practically the same thing happened in 2018’s animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? 

‘That rollicking, eye-popping adventure was so fresh, funny and exciting that Spiderman: No Way Home can really only look stodgy in comparison, relying on the novelty of faces we haven’t seen in a while and building up to the kind of operatic emotional moments the previous Watts films tended to avoid.’ 

Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing in theaters. 

Big opening weekend: Spider-Man: No Way Home opens in the United States and the United Kingdom on December 17

Big opening weekend: Spider-Man: No Way Home opens in the United States and the United Kingdom on December 17

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