Spider-Man: No Way Home is riding high on success! Marvel and Sony’s latest Christmas offering has a LOT to offer. From three generations of Spider-Men to its iconic villains this movie is an emotional rollercoaster for fans. The movie also serves as the final iteration of Tom Holland’s trilogy and Kevin Feige has already announced a fourth is in ‘active development.’
No Way home stars Tom Holland along with his Sony predecessors Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. Marvel and Sony have done what was unthinkable in Hollywood. While MCU has been a massive success as a franchise and in-universe sharing, No Way Home has officially changed the game.
No Way Home Success Metrics
The real measure of any movie’s success is audience reaction and with fans screaming and clapping in the theatres, it’s pretty safe to say Spider-Man 3 has nailed it! The mere sight of Andrew and Tobey was enough to fill the theatres with the loudest cheers one could imagine… harder than Captain America picking up the Mjolnir, one dare say.
Even before one saw the whole movie Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer broke the record of the highest number of views in a day set by MCU’s Avengers: Endgame at 289 million views. In contrast, the highly anticipated Spider-Man trailer, racked up 355.5 million views across all online platforms in the first 24 hours.
At the box office again No Way Home makes and breaks records. The movie soared to a record $260M US opening and $600.8M globally. The movie surpassed Avengers: Infinity War ($257 million) to land the second-biggest debut in Hollywood history behind only Endgame ($357 million). Looking at the number, it can be assumed that NWH has broken the theatre jinx and is the biggest release in the post-pandemic world.
In a recent interview with THR, (video below) when Tom Holland was asked about the ‘future of Spider-Man,’ he had an interesting joke about getting an Oscar. Holland said, “I do know that I love this character, and I would be sad to say goodbye.” Further adding,
But I have achieved basically everything I wanted to achieve as this character, I really think I’m going to win the Oscar for this movie. So there, it’s great
Genre recognition
Though Tom Holland was only joking about the Oscar nomination given a serious thought it would never be possible. Despite all the success of No Way Home the singular basis for Holland’s no Academy nomination is that there is a genre bias quite prevalent in the Awards circle. During a separate interview with THR, Marvel Head Kevin Feige pointed it out saying,
I think we are always at a deficit because of the Marvel logo and because of a genre bias that certainly exists.
The singular argument for this bias comes from the sentiment that superhero films thrive off special effects and not characters. Which shows weakness within the script and storytelling and hence the genre is not ‘real cinema’. Even Christopher Nolan’s realistic, critically acclaimed The Dark Knight trilogy didn’t get the honour.
Feige makes note of Black Panther which did the unthinkable by bagging Best Picture Oscar nominations in 2020. He said, “I just loved that for a shining moment there with Black Panther that (genre bias) was put aside, and the work was recognized for the achievement that it was.”
Whether Academy will recognise Spider-Man: No Way Home’s achievement or not you can appreciate it in all its glory in theatres now!
