As one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s best-reviewed projects ever that currently holds respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of 93 and 98 percent from critics and fans, along with its status as the sixth highest-grossing movie of all-time by way of a $1.9 billion box office haul, Spider-Man: No Way Home is about as universally-beloved as it gets, right?
After all, the web-slinging epic united three generations of storytelling to bring back Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Willem Dafoe, Jamie Fox, Alfred Molina, and many more besides to deliver wish-fulfillment on a previously unimaginable scale, even by the fantastical standards of the superhero genre.
And yet, despite such widespread adulation and undying love, the tides of sentiment are inevitably beginning to turn. Of course, we’ve been here before very recently with unanimously popular MCU offerings after Moon Knight unexpectedly came under fire, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting to see No Way Home being dragged under the harsh spotlight of criticism.
Any major property tends to ebb and flow when it comes to fan opinion, but No Way Home was surely about as bulletproof as it got. It did absolutely everything it set out to do and then some, but that clearly hasn’t been enough for some folks. Obviously, the dissenters are in a very small minority – but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating and fascinating to see negativity creeping into the discourse less than a year after the all-star extravaganza was unleashed into theaters to decimate countless commercial records.