The movie is quite terrible until it dumps truckloads of memberberries on you. This movie is carried entirely by the performance of the classic characters. Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe are as captivating as they were in the OG movies, hamming it up just perfectly.
The difference between Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire versus Tom Holland is night and day. Tom Holland is a wet blanket of an actor, charismatic void, nothing compared to the other two. I also hate how Tom Holland's Peter Parker fumbles and stumbles, acts like a 12 year old and casually runs into mcguffins without real effort. O look it's a fucking magic science box just standing there in the corner, it can literally solve all our problems in like an hour work, tops. How convenient.
I really enjoyed the chemistry between Garfield and Maguire, there were some really solid moments. The moments of downtime where they exchange experiences was super cool.
Tom Holland's Spider-Man makes me retroactively appreciate Garfield's Spider-Man way more.
Also - how big of a moron is Dr. Strange? Like seriously, is he an idiot? I always thought he was a wise sage but man, what a moron. First lets a little kid talk him into brainwashing the entire universe because the kid and his friends get bullied, then fucks up the spell because he lets himself get distracted multiple times, then tries to beat a kid but gets owned in the process and locked in his own mirror dimension, just after another kid steals his fucking teleport device. And then ultimately agrees AGAIN to brainwash the entire universe. Isn't this guy supposed to be super wise?
Lots to unpack here.
Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe are far more captivating in this film than they ever were in the OG films. The reason being because Chris McKenna and and Erik Sommers wrote them far better than the writers of Spider-Man 1 and 2. Jon Watts also did an amazing job at directing. The biggest difference between this film and the originals is that they feel like fleshed out characters in No Way Home rather than one note villains in the originals.
When someone calls someone a bad actor, the card that is always played is the "charismatic" card, like that's all there is to being an actor. Jon Watts directed the hell out of Tom Holland and Tom Holland acted his arse off in this film. Probably his best performance to date but I haven't seen The Devil All The Time. Everyone's chemistry was on point, Holland and Zendaya were great together and the interactions between all 3 Spider-Men were brilliant. The scene where Holland, Garfield and Maguire talk on the school roof is chefs kiss, so much emotion between the 3 of them.
Not sure what you mean by the fumbling and mcguffins. The cube that solves the problem, the plan was to recapture all the villains first before returning them. If Pete would have found Green Goblin before Aunt May that is exactly what he would have done. But he didn't, May "found" him first and felt sorry for him. May made Pete realise that the villains weren't right in the head, which they weren't in the original films. Norman was affected by the super serum and Otto was controlled by his tentacles. Same goes for the Lizard, his formula affected him. Electro on the other hand was just an all round poorly written character in ASM2. Pete didn't want to disappoint Aunt May and he had a very heavy burden to bear.
If you mean the Stark technology that was in Happy's apartment ... the MCU has established advanced technology since Iron Man 1. And it's not like it was automated, Pete still had to work out the formula's correctly. There is no sign of passage of time, it could have been hours or days to work out those formulas but there is a thing called pacing. Did you really want the film to spend half an hour showing Pete working out these cures?
*EDIT*
As pointed out by
The_hunter
below, it's absolutely not in Pete's character to murder villains, never has been, he will help them as much as he can. But it was really good to see him struggle with this decision.
The experience exchange between Garfield and Maguire was actually one of the lower points for me. Yes, it was entertaining but they only mention things we see in old films. Couldn't they have mentioned more adventures that they had off screen that we hadn't seen, actually flesh out their careers as Spider-Man?
It's not Tom Holland that makes you retroactively appreciate Garfield's Spider-Man more. It's the amazing job of the writers and director for this film. The ASM films are still bad and I fucking hate them, but even I want to see a 3rd ASM film now with the same writers as No Way Home because they understand all these characters far better.
Strange has never been a wise sage in the MCU, he hasn't even been the sorcerer supreme yet from what I understand. What he is is an egotistical, arrogant and self centered dick who ignores the rules. He straight up ignored the rules in the first film and started messing with time as soon as he could. It's his arrogance that causes him to start casting Pete's spell before setting the ground rules before hand and his arrogance that causes him to be defeated by math in the mirror dimension. Pete's friends didn't get bullied, they got denied to college/university because of their relation to a "murderer" and Pete felt guilty for fucking up the start of their lives. As for the spell at the end, it was straight forward, everyone, no chance of Strange fucking that up.
Now, the consensus surrounding No Way Home is that Andrew stole the show, to the point that it feels like some of Tom Holland's thunder has been stolen.
That's certainly not the consensus at all. Garfield is a great actor in general, amazing in Silence, Tick Tick Boom, Hacksaw Ridge and Social Network amongst others. It's just that he is so much better in No Way Home compared to the ASM films because he has a good script to work with and Jon Watts knows how to get a good performance out of him. He does not overshadow Tom Holland though, sure there will be people with that opinion but it won't be the vast majority.
DeafTourette
With the TVA and Loki show, like I mentioned above, plenty of wriggle room. From what we know the TVA is set up by Kang and the rules are set up by Kang. As far as we know Kang controlled reality to get Loki and Silvie in the same room with himself.
