Kevin Smith Reviews Spider-Man: No Way Home: “A Touching Movie That Wasn’t the Movie I Thought We Were Getting”

If a new Marvel movie comes out and filmmaker Kevin Smith doesn’t throw his thoughts out into the ether, did it even get released? Spider-Man: No Way Home has been playing in theaters for almost two weeks now and Smith has finally revealed his thoughts on the film on his latest FatMan Beyond podcast. Like most that saw the film, Smith loved it, praising the big moments of its plot but largely the direction of filmmaker Jon Watts, who has helmed all three of the Marvel Studios Spider-Man movies. At one point the Clerks director adds, “I can tell you right now, I’ll never make a movie as entertaining or enjoyable as Spider-Man: No Way Home.”

Smith added, “This is not really a movie that you should enjoy alone. The audience added a dimension to it, just like Avengers: Endgame, what a fun movie that was to be surrounded by 200 people and vibing on that energy, and sucking in that Omicron. The (gasp) moments, ‘oh what the f-ck,’ are just better in a collective experience….When you’re in a movie you’re all believing the same thing, particular if the movie rocks the house, and this Jon Watts kid that’s been making these Spider-Man movies for the last few years, what a genius. He stuck the landing beyond sticking the landing, for my money.”

The writer/director also offered some details about the means which he saw the film in, revealing his showing was at a 4DX/ScreenX theater (where the screen is enlarged and takes up three of the walls of the theater). Smith went on to highly recommend seeing the movie this way.

Smith also spoke to the box office success of the movie, which is performing like it’s the only film in theaters when compared to everything else that’s out there.

“You could see this was the movie that everyone was going to leave their house for. If there was any movie since Endgame that the world was going to be like, ‘Oh my god, I’ll risk everything for that,’ it was going to be this. So the pressure was on. They could have just easily been like ‘Look all we have to do is get a couple Spider-Mans together in the frame and we’ll be good,’ but they actually gave us a really touching movie that wasn’t the movie I at least thought we were getting for the last two years. I thought they were setting us up for ‘He’s gonna f-cking fight the Sinister SIx from across all the Spider-Man universe,’ and yeah (it was that), but it wasn’t so much about the fight as like, how do we save them? Which was so sweet.”

Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing in theaters worldwide, and breaking records every day.