Spider-Man
Peter Benjamin Parker
Movie · Phase 4
Spider-Man: No Way Home
2021 · 148 min
Outed as Spider-Man and charged with Mysterio's murder, Peter loses his life, his friends' college applications and his privacy in a week. He asks Doctor Strange to make the world forget, botches the…
The Multiverse SagaDisney+93%Released
The story
Outed as Spider-Man and charged with Mysterio's murder, Peter loses his life, his friends' college applications and his privacy in a week. He asks Doctor Strange to make the world forget, botches the spell mid-cast, and tears open the multiverse instead.
Five villains arrive from two other Sony franchises, and Peter's decision to cure rather than deport them costs him Aunt May. The film's back half is a legacy sequel with two other Spider-Men in it, and it works because the emotional logic — three men who all lost someone by not being fast enough — actually holds.
Key facts
- Release date
- 17 Dec 2021
- Status
- Released
- Phase
- Phase 4
- Saga
- The Multiverse Saga
- Runtime
- 148 min
- Certificate
- PG-13
- Director
- Jon Watts
- Writers
- Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
- Streaming
- Disney+
- Timeline placement
- 2024 — days after Far From Home's mid-credits reveal
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Tom Holland | Peter Parker / Spider-Man |
| Zendaya | MJ |
| Benedict Cumberbatch | Doctor Strange |
| Willem Dafoe | Norman Osborn / Green Goblin |
| Alfred Molina | Otto Octavius / Doctor Octopus |
| Tobey Maguire | Peter Parker |
| Andrew Garfield | Peter Parker |
| Marisa Tomei | May Parker |
Characters
Doctor Strange
Stephen Vincent Strange
Green Goblin
Norman Osborn
Doctor Octopus
Otto Gunther Octavius
Electro
Maxwell Dillon
Sandman
William Baker
Lizard
Dr. Curtis Connors
Daredevil
Matthew Michael Murdock
Easter eggs
- Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield return as their own Peter Parkers; Garfield's Peter catches MJ mid-fall, resolving Gwen Stacy's death from The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
- Charlie Cox debuts as Matt Murdock in the MCU proper, catching a thrown brick and noting he is a very good lawyer.
- All five returning villains are played by their original actors: Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, Thomas Haden Church and Rhys Ifans.
- The post-credits scene is a Venom stinger from Let There Be Carnage, and Eddie Brock leaves a fragment of symbiote behind on a Mexican bar.
- Molina's 'Hello, Peter' is his exact first line to Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 2, delivered to the wrong Peter.
- Maguire cracking his back is a joke about the herniated disc he suffered filming Spider-Man 2.
- Peter's final homemade suit is drawn from the comics' classic silhouette, with hand-stitched webbing and no Stark tech.
- Strange's spell-casting recites 'runes of Kof-Kol' and the Sanctum's Mirror Dimension sequence pays off Doctor Strange's 2016 finale.
Trivia
- Sony and Marvel ran a year-long denial campaign about Maguire and Garfield, with both actors publicly lying in interviews.
- Alfred Molina revealed his own return in a September 2020 interview, breaking the embargo before any trailer.
- Leaks were severe enough that decoy scenes were shot and fake pages distributed, a tactic the Russos had pioneered.
- It was the first film of the pandemic era to pass $1 billion, and finished as the sixth-highest-grossing film in history at the time.
- Charlie Cox's appearance formally folded the Netflix Defenders shows into MCU continuity, leading to Daredevil: Born Again.
- Maguire and Garfield shot their scenes on set with Holland rather than separately, with updated versions of their original suits.
- A 2022 re-release, The More Fun Stuff Version, added eleven minutes and pushed the global total past $1.9 billion.
Box office
- Budget
- $200 million
- Worldwide
- $1.952 billion
- Domestic
- $814.9 million
Reviews
Critics
93%
A thrilling, fan-servicing crowd-pleaser, Spider-Man: No Way Home reaches into the multiverse to expand its hero's world without losing sight of what makes him great.
The MarvelGossips verdict
The most effective piece of pure fan service ever assembled, and a better film than that description suggests. Dafoe is terrifying, the three-Peter dynamic is genuinely tender, and May's death finally gives Holland's Spider-Man the loss the character requires. It also set a precedent Marvel has been chasing ever since with steeply diminishing returns.
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Frequently asked
Does everyone forget Peter Parker at the end?
Yes. Strange casts a global amnesia spell that erases every memory of Peter Parker's existence, including from MJ, Ned and Happy. Peter chooses not to reintroduce himself, which is the situation Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens on.
Are Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men canon?
Yes. The film establishes them as the Peter Parkers of their own universes, designated Earth-96283 and Earth-120703 in tie-in material, pulled across by Strange's broken spell.
Is this the highest-grossing Spider-Man film?
Yes, by a wide margin. Including its 2022 extended re-release it grossed roughly $1.95 billion worldwide, the highest total of any Spider-Man film and the biggest opening weekend of the pandemic era.
Why does Aunt May die?
Peter takes her advice to cure the villains rather than send them home, and the Green Goblin kills her during the Happy's-condo attack. It is the film's version of the Uncle Ben death the Holland trilogy had skipped.