From the second rumors began to gather steam that Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire would be suiting up and swinging back into action as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, fans crossed their fingers in the hopes the iconic pointing meme would be recreated.
It was staring Marvel Studios and Sony right in the face, and it was far too good of an opportunity to pass up, never mind another self-referential wrinkle to the concept of having all three live-action Peter Parkers standing side-by-side in the same movie against a raft of multiversal foes.
Garfield even dived deep into how they managed to work it into the story organically, and it relied heavily on improvisation to make it work fluidly within the context of a mega budget comic book blockbuster and not having it feel forced.
It’s become such a touchstone moment, in fact, that the scene in question has even gotten its own special feature as part of the No Way Home digital release. As you’ve no doubt noticed, the sixth highest-grossing film in the history of cinema is now available to rent or purchase, and Sony have continued to drop even more nuggets of web-slinging goodness for our perusal.
Not many projects could drop a featurette about working a meme into the third act and expect viewers to lap it up, but we’d be selling it very short to say that Spider-Man: No Way Home is a million miles away from being a standard run-of-the-mill superhero adventure.