No Way Home
On days when I don’t know what else to do, I like to escape into a movie. In December 2021 I was in Chicago for a long weekend with no plans and a couple hours to kill. I spent the afternoon at Logan Theater.
As I approached the entrance, I noticed a backpack hanging on the back of a wheelchair who’s user was also going into the theater. It wasn’t a particularly interesting backpack, except that it happened to be exactly the same one my cousin Brian uses. He also happens to use a wheelchair.
“That’s funny,” I thought. “It must be a popular backpack.” A few seconds later, the very obvious conclusion smacked me in the face. It was in fact Brian’s backpack, and Brian’s wheelchair, with Brian sitting in it. He was there to see the same movie as me: Spider-Man: No Way Home. It has come be one of my favorites.
Picking favorite media has always felt a little weird to me, especially when the category is as broad as “movies.” There are too many dimensions to compare things on, some of which are so necessarily opposed to each other that it doesn’t make sense to synthesize them all into one final tally. When I have to pick a favorite movie, or song, or whatever, I’m usually just recalling the last item in that category that I liked a lot.
There are a few exceptions to this general rule, but when that happens, that “favorite” status has more to do with the experience of consuming rather than the thing itself.
For example, my favorite book is Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I haven't read it in over ten years and I don't even really remember what it was about, but I do know that the book ends with the main character (Jake) talking to his friend (Brett) in the back of a car. Jake is not-so-secretly in love with Brett, but she doesn’t return his feelings. Neither of them seem all that bothered about it. She tells Jake about a former fling she thinks might have been a good match for her.
“Oh, Jake,” she says, “we could have had such a damned good time together.” Her phrasing is vague enough that the reader can’t know if Jake or the fling are included in her “we.”
He replies, “Yeah, isn’t it pretty to think so?”
I was in college the last time I read those lines on paper, also pining over a woman who was not interested in me romantically. The story seemed to overlap with my life in such a way that it almost feels intertwined. I might have been working through my emotions or I might have been working through Jake’s and it doesn’t really matter which is the truth.
The details of that time in college are hazy and I suspect that anything I write down is likely to be at least somewhat false. I actually lied when I said I knew how the book ends. In fact checking myself, I discovered that I’ve been quoting the lines wrong in my head for years. The details aren’t all that important.
I know that I am not Jake, but The Sun Also Rises is my favorite book because when I think back on it, I can imagine an alternate universe where I am different, and it is different, and we are one and the same. It’s an awfully pretty thought.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is still very fresh in my mind, so the details are more accessible. It’s mostly a fairly standard superhero movie. Spider-Man is tasked with rounding up and stopping a group of super-powered villains. He succeeds.
However, those villains are actually characters plucked from previous Spider-Man movie franchises, brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe through multiversal magic, original actors and all. Even two Spider-Man incarnations are brought over, teaming up with the MCU Spider-Man for the movie's big final battle. Seeing these old characters brought back to life is a rich playing ground for comic and dramatic irony with a heaping dose of catharsis from seeing both the heroes and villains further develop in a way that is very obviously reflective of theories and head-canon from the fans of all the old movies. It helps No Way Home stand out in its genre.
For fans, these villains are given new life, but they’re also literally brought back to life in the story. They explicitly enter the MCU at the moment of their death in their original movies. Spider-Man’s main conflict in the No Way Home isn’t really stopping them or sending them back as much as figuring out a way to send them back without getting them killed along the way. He doesn’t want to see them die.
The second time I watched No Way Home, it occurred to me that if the villains all arrived at the moment of their death, completely unaware of their demise in another universe, then the heroes must have also died and are just as unaware. I keep remembering that detail.
After the movie ended, I walked Brian back to his car, helping put the ramp down and strapping in his wheelchair. Before he drove off, I stepped inside, gave him a hug, and told him I loved him and that I would see him again next time I was in town. It was too prescient. Just over a week later, I was back in Chicago at his funeral.
Today is the one year anniversary of his death and I’d like to escape into a Spider-Man: No Way Home again. I don’t know if Brian’s still out there somewhere in the multiverse, unaware of the date’s significance, but it sure is pretty to think so.
