After what felt like a lifetime of waiting due to countless teases and leaks over the past year, MCU fans are taking in the best and brightest moments of Spider-Man: No Way Home as it debuts in theaters worldwide. Bringing together three generations of the web-slinger's history in one movie, No Way Home already appears to be exceeding expectations at every level.
This movie took some major risks by including five of Spider-Man's classic villains from Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man trilogy and both of Andrew Garfield's The Amazing Spider-Man movies. Combine that with continuing stories for Jacob Batalon's Ned, Zendaya's MJ, Marisa Tomei's Aunt May, and more, and it makes for plenty of adventures to touch on in just under two and a half hours of screentime.
In a movie that features nearly a dozen key players to tackle, not including rumors of even more on the way, Marvel and Sony had a tall order ahead of them to make a coherent story that gave each hero and villain their time in the spotlight. Speaking on this challenge, one of the movie's screenwriters explained how he and the team managed to work all of the details out.
No Way Home Screenwriter on Cutting Key Moments
Speaking with Discussing Film, Spider-Man: No Way Home screenwriter Erik Sommers shared how he and his team juggled the movie's many crossover opportunities with an all-star cast.
When asked how the team split up the spotlight between each villain and hero, Sommers simply said it had to be done "very carefully" to make sure they gave "everyone their due." This came at the expense of "a lot of painful decisions" to cut "little moments and things that you really just love." However, Sommers did make sure to point out that it's still a Spider-Man movie first and foremost, meaning that every decision about the story had to be "in service of" putting Peter Parker's story first.
"Very carefully. Because, I mean, you want to give everyone their due, and just as a fan, you want to see those people as those characters and have fun with them. But at the end of the day, it’s a Spider-Man movie – you have to be telling the story of Peter Parker, and everything has to be in service of that. So there were a lot of painful decisions made, you know, we would have loved to have done this and that and 'Oh, wouldn’t be great if these two villains could do this!' But it has to be in service of Peter’s journey, and you have to keep things moving. There were definitely a lot of what we call “little darlings” – little moments and things that you really just love – but sometimes you have to let them go."
Making Spider-Man 3 a Peter Parker Story
WARNING: The rest of this article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is arguably the biggest solo crossover event in comic book movie history, and the five villains were only the start of it. Also included at various points in the movie was Charlie Cox in his official MCU introduction as Daredevil along with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, who played fairly significant roles as their Spider-Men in the third act alongside Tom Holland.
With so many supporting roles that had such an impact on the story in No Way Home, this could have easily become a bloated mess of an adventure due to so many people and moments needing their time in the spotlight. However, at the center of it all was Tom Holland's MCU Spidey, who went through more trying times than ever before and sacrificed everything while doing so.
Even for the moments that came to fruition in No Way Home and those that didn't, Sommers and his team were adamant about making sure the narrative centered on Peter at every turn.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing in theaters across most of the world.
