As part of the MCU, Spider-Man has become the screen superhero that has been promised for so many decades but never fully realized in quite the way Jon Watts's Spider-Man trilogy of films has managed. Now that Spider-Man: No Way Home is sitting with the highest ever audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and has singlehandedly pulled in more money at the box office on its opening weekend than most films of the last two years have taken during their whole run, Marvel Studios is pushing for that holy grail that has always been just out of reach: a Best Picture Academy Award.
Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed a massive $50 million on its opening Thursday night in the U.S, which led to a $260 million domestic opening weekend and culminated in a worldwide gross of $600 million by Sunday. Considering how even Marvel movies have struggled to hit the $100 million mark on their opening weekends this year, pulling in the second biggest opening of all time has been no mean feat. Additionally, the 94% critics approval rate achieved at one point on Rotten Tomatoes is higher than any of the other Oscar contenders such as West Side Story, King Richard, or Belfast which perhaps means that Spider-Man: No Way Home could have just a glimmer of a chance at Oscar glory.
Of course, there is one thing that seems to be constantly standing in the way of Marvel walking away with numerous awards, and that is its genre. In the entire history of the Academy Awards, 2018’s Black Panther is the only comic book based movie to have received a nomination for Best Picture. Kevin Feige recently commented that he believes there is a lot of genre bias against superhero movies when it comes to the big awards. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Feige doubled down on that, saying:
“I think both of these types of films deserve recognition. It’s a good thing when people are in a theater and they stand up and cheer. It’s a good thing when people are wiping tears because they’re thinking back on their last 20 years of moviegoing and what it has meant to them. That, to me, is a very good thing — the sort of thing the Academy was founded, back in the day, to recognize.”
When it comes to the achievement of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the movie is probably one of the most ambitious and potentially disastrous releases in the entire thirteen year history of the MCU if it had not been done exactly right. Bringing together the last 20 years of Spider-Man movies and making a story that coherently works in a universe that would a decade ago have been unthinkable is a monumental achievement for all involved, and as Feige argued, just like Lord of The Rings: Return of The King, Spider-Man: No Way Home is the culmination of a story that has been told over a number of movies.
“In the way The Return of the King [the third and final installment, which swept the Oscars] was sort of a celebration and culmination of all of that amazing work that had been done on that trilogy, this is a celebration both of our Homecoming trilogy [the three most recent installments] and of the five other incarnations of Spider-Man that had happened before,” Feige said, with Sony chief Tom Rothman adding, “Like the third Lord of the Rings, this is the conclusion of an epic series, and is quality commercial cinema. Black Panther was quality commercial cinema. It is essential that the Academy does not lose its connection with quality commercial cinema.”
Will Spider-Man: No Way Home break the Marvel curse at the Academy Award, or will Feige and his team once again be left disappointed when another, less well received movie walks away with the top award? We will know when to expect an answer once a final date for the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony is announced along with the shortlisted nominees.