WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home, now in theaters. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home finally hit theaters, and to huge box office and critical success no less. The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) isn’t the first in the franchise to look at the multiverse, but it goes into the dangers -- and fun -- of the multiverse’s possibilities in a way previous films haven’t. In fact, the universe-jumping film bears a remarkable similarity to the 2018 Oscar-winning film Into the Spider-Verse, which similarly features a multiverse and multiple Spider-People. However, despite the multiversal connection, both films are totally different in tone and story, which means a debate can be had about which is better.

How Into the Spider-Verse Handles the Multiverse

Into the Spider-Verse Cast

In Into the Spider-Verse, audiences get a first look at Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino kid from Brooklyn who gets bitten by a radioactive spider. While fighting Green Goblin, Peter Parker gets stuck in Wilson Fisk/Kingpin’s collider and sees the multiverse. Different versions of Spider-Man from parallel universes flash before his eyes and get sucked into his and Miles’ dimension.

RELATED: How Does Spider-Man: No Way Home Leave Its Multiversal Villains?

Through the Spider-People’s early introduction in the film, they become an inseparable part of Miles’ origin story. Each Spider-Person he meets has been a Spider-Person for a much longer time and guides Miles’ transformation into becoming his dimension’s Spider-Man after the death of Peter Parker. The core message of the film is that anyone, regardless of gender, age or race, can be a Spider-Person so long as they can take that leap of faith.

Spider-Verse’s stakes are still remarkably down-to-earth and intimate despite the total universal collapse that will happen if the collider gets turned on again. At its core, it’s an origin story for Miles and a discovery of what it means to truly “be” a Spider-Person. But it also tackles the multiverse, which, while dangerous, is also full of possibilities.

RELATED: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2 Releases First Official Synopsis

How No Way Home Handles the Multiverse

Spider-Man-No-Way-Home-Peter-Doctor-Strange

No Way Home picks up immediately after the events of Far From Home, with Peter Parker’s identity being revealed to the world and Mysterio framing Peter for his murder. When he and his friends are rejected from every college they apply to because of the media coverage around them, he goes to Doctor Strange for help. When he tries to add too many modifiers to Strange’s spell of forgetting, the spell gets out of control and invites people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man to their universe.

No Way Home is a nostalgia trip, drawing on the past two iterations of Spider-Man to help tell the story through the iconic villains and even the two former Spider-Men themselves, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. To have the villains come through the cracks of the multiverse position the multiverse as dangerous. But Peter, who ultimately sees the good in people, wants to help the villains when he finds out that they’ll die when they get sent back home -- his desire to help cure them and give them the opportunity for a second chance in their home universe drives forward the story.

But at the end of the day -- fun banter between Tobey, Andrew and Tom’s Peter Parkers aside -- the multiverse is a threat in No Way Home, and its consequences outweigh its infinite possibilities. The final act of the film features the multiverse cracking open and the infinite number of people who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man threatening to break through, and Strange acts as if these visitors are threats. The only way to save the multiverse is to make everyone forget who Peter Parker is, giving the film's finale a much more somber tone.

RELATED: Spider-Man: No Way Home Proves Peter Parker Is Marvel's Best

Which Spider-Man Film Is Better?

Peter B. Parker and Miles Morales in the movie: Into the Spiderverse

Deciding which universe-jumping film is better is a tough call because both are remarkably great films in their own right. Spider-Verse is a comedic coming-of-age origin story for a new hero, while No Way Home is a tragic end-of-the-world tale. Spider-Verse uses animation, while No Way Home uses nostalgic casting to depict the multiverse. But whichever film is better, it’s not by a huge margin since both stories are solid and do completely different things with their shared concept.

But the way Spider-Verse writes the multiverse, as both affirming for the Spider-People and destructive if tampered with for personal gain, generates the space for creative and unique stories that explore all the different sides of the concept. No Way Home suffers because it only sees the multiverse as threatening, destructive and tragic. So, in the end, Spider-Verse’s holistic view of the multiverse makes it the better universe-jumping adventure.

To see how Spider-Man: No Way Home presents the multiverse, the film is in theaters now. 

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