CLOSER TO HOME: How the MCU Spider-Man embraced his comic book roots
Disclaimer: This article will delve into spoiler-filled details about Spider-Man: No Way Home, the third installment of Marvel Studios' Spider-Man trilogy. If you have not watched the movie yet and wish to AVOID SPOILERS, PLEASE STOP READING NOW.
The silver screen offerings released from 2002 onwards, all of which play into Jon Watts' Spider-Man: No Way Home, owe an unbelievable debt to the comic book stories that inspired them and even more so to the writers who crafted these landmark events. It all started with Amazing Fantasy #15, when Spider-Man first graced the pages of a comic book over five decades ago. Tom Holland's latest iteration of the teenage web-head comes closer than ever to the classic comic book counterpart of the Friendly Neighborhood Hero, steering away from the persona of Iron Man Junior, as we were used to seeing him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The film is packed with so many easter eggs that one would need another entire article just to list them all and still miss a few. On my first viewing of No Way Home, SKS' Star Cineplex Hall 2 roared in unison every 20 minutes or so. After the film ended, however, I wondered how many of those people experienced that same feeling I did—one of déjà vu. When Peters 1, 2 & 3 met for the first time on screen, did the others also think about Brian Micheal Bendis' Spider-Men crossover, where Peter Parker meets his multiversal placeholder, Miles Morales? Or the Spider-Verse mega-event by Dan Slott, without which the seminal animated film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, would not be possible?
Whether their euphoria (unintended Zendaya pun) was at all related to the comic books or not, fans of the series should give the original works a chance—even the much-maligned "One More Day" storyline, which is adapted loosely in No Way Home when Peter has to wish away his relationship with his MJ. Everything goes back to the comic books (even the Doc Ock interaction with Aunt May which led to one of the more infamous comic book covers depicting their wedding).
The recent Spider-mania is fueled also by the video-game Marvel's Spider-Man, which captured the imagination of the mass audiences much like Batman's Arkham Asylum series did a decade ago. The film almost directly lifts Marisa Tomei's entire arc from the Aunt May of the game, who also runs F.E.A.S.T. and (SPOILER ALERT!) meets a similar fate.
But that isn't even the most emotional beat of the film—Andrew Garfield takes the cake there with his redemptive and cathartic arc as he tries to prevent Peter from facing yet another loss. This is to be found in the comic book story of The Night Gwen Stacy Died, which positions the Green Goblin as the antagonist to Spider-Man, and that is why his role as the primary aggressor fits in this adaptation, despite the presence of a hodgepodge (yet scene-stealing) assortment of villains from the previous films.
Garfield's emotionally powerful performance is supported by Tobey Maguire's beloved original, and as I watched their interaction on screen, it seemed like a meta on-screen depiction of the conversation the actors must have had about their shared careers as the Spider-Men of the silver screen. Furthermore, when the Spider-Man memes were realised on the big screen, you knew that this was no longer just a film—this was the ultimate celebration of Spider-Man: the one in the comic books, the one in the films, the one in the video games, the one in our phones and in our hearts.
The torch has truly been passed to Tom Holland now, with his ending almost a shot for shot remixing of Tobey's and Andrew's respective sequel endings. The fact that Holland ends the film closer to the Spider-Man of the source material—as a lonesome superhero with a secret identity and without a personal life—effectively conveys to the mass audience what us comic book lovers have been experiencing for decades. The status quo will always reign supreme (unlike the Sorcerer in his duel with Spider-Man) and continuity will always reset to the familiar (albeit slightly tweaked) beats of a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man!
In so many words, at the end of the day, I would just like to urge everyone who loves Spider-Man to experience the 2 hour 28 minute spectacle that is No Way Home and then carry that momentum into reading the comic books that built the legacy of Ol' Web-head, the books that laid the foundation for it all.
Mir Zariful Karim has written for The Prestige Magazine and The Daily Star Books previously. He currently works for APEX DMIT Ltd. as an MTO, and maintains his diet of sports, comic books, movies, television shows and professional wrestling.