is my favorite movie of the summer. I am going to start this review by saying it is one GIANT SPOILER. I typically create dropdowns for a few specific plot spoilers in my reviews, but this movie proved difficult to use that tactic. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, go see the movie and come back to see how it relates to the faith.
Spider-Man has always been one of my favorite superheroes. It is cool to see the scale at which some superheroes have to fight to protect the planet, but there is something special about having a friendly neighborhood hero.
Tom Holland’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man has been through a lot up until now. Among other hardships, he was introduced in the middle of the Avengers infighting during “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), he was a victim of the “blip” in “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018), his mentor and father figure sacrificed himself in “Avengers: End Game” (2019), and the world has forgotten Peter Parker due to the events of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021).
It is here we find our web-slinging hero, trying to do his duties as Spider-Man and maintaining his full anonymity.
Solitude versus Loneliness
Peter goes out of his way to pour his entire identity into Spider-Man. He even says, “Spider-Man has to do the hard thing even if it breaks Peter’s heart.” By putting Peter aside, however, he fails to recognize that his grief is not only over the loss of Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), but also over the loss of his own identity as a human being.
His self-isolation creates
an aura of sadness around him, even as he continues to save the day. Other characters he encounters recognize this sadness and point out that he either needs to take a break from being Spider-Man or acknowledge the toll it is taking on him. Throughout the movie, Peter denies these warnings.
Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) serves as a cautionary tale for Peter. His response to grief has led him to swear off human connection almost entirely and to define “doing good” as killing criminals without giving them an opportunity for redemption.
When Peter tries to subtly re-enter the lives of MJ (Zendaya) and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), he discovers that MJ has a boyfriend. His trauma and unresolved grief cause his powers to evolve. When driven by anger, he loses control of those powers and begins to resemble The Punisher in his ruthlessness.
From a Catholic perspective, there is an important distinction between solitude and loneliness. Solitude can be an intentional period of being alone in order to grow in one's relationship with God and, ultimately, to reconnect more deeply with others when that period of solitude ends. St. Alphonsus Liguori speaks of the fruits of solitude in The 12 Steps to Holiness and Salvation, stating, “Souls that love God feel a strong attraction for solitude, for they know that God converses familiarly with those who shun the noise and distractions of the world.”
Loneliness, by contrast, is an unhappy state of being alone. It carries a longing for connection, but the individual has—or feels that he has—barriers preventing him from connecting with others. For Peter, his self-imposed isolation has no conscious end date. Rather than helping him heal, it gradually eats away at his humanity.
Peter's use of technology, and his literal use of a mask to connect with others as Spider-Man, also reflects
the way many of us use social media to seek connection while lacking deep relationships in real life. As four years pass at the beginning of the film, Peter watches his friends move through MIT by watching Ned's reels. The reels show highlights of their lives and the good times they share, but they keep Peter from knowing the full story of their lives and ultimately deepen his sense of isolation.
How true is this for many people who rely heavily on social media? We can see only the surface of another person's life. We may know where someone went, what they ate, or what they did over the weekend, without ever knowing who they truly are behind their own “mask.”
It is only when Peter begins to make meaningful connections—allowing his true identity to be known by a select group of people close to him—that he begins to embrace the changes in his life and succeeds as the hero of the movie. His journey comes full circle at the end, when he brings flowers to Aunt May's grave and says, “You'd be happy to know that I've decided I'm not going to do this alone anymore.”
Embracing the Responsibility of Adulthood
Hand-in-hand with Peter's loneliness and grief is his character arc of embracing the responsibilities of adulthood.
The famous line associated with every variation of Spider-Man is, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Uncle Ben is usually the one who utters this line before his death, sending Peter on his hero's journey. In the MCU, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) delivers this lesson in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Peter is clearly exercising great responsibility as a superhero, but he is not taking the same responsibility in his personal life. His loneliness and grief cause his arachnid DNA to evolve in the same way a spider's does when entering adulthood. This transformation gives him heightened senses and organic webs, similar to Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man. Yet his fear of his new powers causes him to act uncontrollably.
Instead of learning to navigate these new abilities responsibly, Peter immediately jumps into action and causes significant harm, nearly killing a police officer while fighting a mind-controlled Scorpion (Michael Mando).
Under the weight of this transformation, while simultaneously facing a threat unlike anything he has experienced before in the mind-hopping Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), Peter attempts to suppress his changes by creating an inhibitor. He even pretends to be a student and seeks advice from Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who has created an inhibitor to suppress the Hulk.
Based on Peter's questions, Bruce asks him, “What if what you want to control needs to be expressed?”
Bruce becomes another cautionary tale for Peter. When Jean Grey's mind control breaks the inhibitor, Bruce finds it nearly impossible to control the Hulk as his long-suppressed emotions are released.
With the inhibitor, Peter can continue fighting as Spider-Man, but he is unable to realize his full potential. Only when he embraces his changing powers and takes responsibility for them is he able to fight through Jean's defenses and help her receive the help she truly needs.
Although Peter's story is grandiose because he is a superhero, he is still experiencing the same transformational periods that all of us encounter as adults. People die. Friends drift apart. Relationships change. The weight of the world can sometimes feel as though it is resting on our shoulders.
Part of maturing into adulthood is recognizing that we are responsible for our actions and for the direction of our lives. In the life of faith, this means that we cannot continue practicing the faith simply because it was handed down to us. We must take personal responsibility for developing our own relationship with Christ.
Christ remains with us regardless of the changes we encounter as we persevere through life's challenges. He also established His Church as a means of uniting His people and allowing us to participate in the sacramental life as the Body of Christ. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
