Why ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Succeeded Where Other Recent Marvel Releases Failed

Before last weekend, there was little doubt that the post-Avengers phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) was struggling.

On the domestic front, films released in the last two years like “Black Widow” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” made headlines for topping the box office or breaking records, but such reports came with an asterisk. They were breaking pandemic records.  Meaning they topped the box office as measured against the last two years’ worth of films. Hardly worth crowing about. Stacked up against all-time records, these films barely registered a blip (pun intended) on the earnings radar.

Then October brought “Eternals,” widely promoted as the future of the MCU’s Phase Four (that is, the stage of the franchise following the original Avengers lineup). Stars of that film like Salma Hayek and Gemma Chan made interview rounds praising it for having the most “inclusive,” “diverse” cast ever.

The movie also offered the increased LGBT representation that Marvel head Kevin Feige had long been promising with the franchise’s first gay superhero, Phastos, who shared a lengthy kiss with a same-sex partner.

Overtly marketed as evidence of the MCU’s progressive evolution, Feige told Variety that it was “past time” for Marvel to feature more LGBT characters and Phastos was “just the start.” The result: “Eternals” was one of only two bona fide flops in the studio’s history (the other being Ed Norton’s 2008 version of “The Hulk”).

Fans had even started to sour on the Disney+ streaming series. As Feige led the charge in championing Loki’s supposed genderfluidity and Falcon’s retconned feelings of BLM-style hostility toward the country he once served, audiences began tuning out. The latest release, Hawkeye, attained the dubious honor of lowest-ranking MCU to debut on the platform.

As studios are wont to do, Marvel and its parent company, Disney, blamed fans’ cooling interest on anything and everything but their decision to push woke agendas in their products. It was the result of new releasing models, they claimed, or bad timing or superhero exhaustion. But mostly they and the media insisted it was simply the new reality of Covid. No movie could expect to put up pre-pandemic numbers.

Then came “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”

In its opening weekend, the film didn’t just break pre-pandemic records, it decimated them, scoring the second-highest domestic opening of all-time, just behind 2019’s “Avengers: End Game.” In just three days, it brought in more money than any other Covid-era film has in its entire theatrical run.

Globally, “No Way Home’s” performance has been arguably even more impressive, with the third highest debut in history, behind the last two Avengers movies. And it did it without China, the world’s largest film market. Both the Avengers releases had the advantage of a huge number of Chinese dollars in their totals.

So clearly, the idea that post-Covid Marvel can’t compete due to virus-averse audiences is a myth. The question is, why has Spidey succeeded where all the other recent cinematic superheroes have failed? No doubt, the movie boasts a number of streams of appeal, including the social media popularity of stars Tom Holland and Zendaya, as well as a genuinely inventive, fan-servicing plot line. But there’s one factor you can’t overlook but probably won’t hear much about in mainstream box office analysis: That is, f you don’t go woke, you not only don’t go broke, you stand to rake in piles and piles of cash.

Here are all the ways No Way Home bucked the woke MCU trend.

It Doesn’t Try to Fundamentally Alter Spidey

Read their chat boards and you’ll learn just how weary faithful Marvel fans have grown in the last few years of race-, gender-, and sexuality-swapping with major characters for no better reason than so Marvel and Disney executives can brag that they’ve done it.

When significant changes are made with an integral backstory to explain them, as in the case of Miles Morales’ version of Spider-Man and Sam Wilson’s turn as Captain America, audiences seem to have no problem with it. But do it purely for the virtue signaling, as in the case of the female Ajak in Eternals and the “queer” Loki, and it grates.

Spider-Man avoids this problem on every front. If you grew up as a Spider-Man fan, “No Way Home” takes great care to protect and celebrate the hero you knew as a child. He doesn’t suddenly develop confusing feelings for his friend Ned or discover some new commitment to battling climate change. He’s the same Peter Parker we’ve always loved in a new story.

“I wouldn’t mind if, Peter Parker had originally been black, a Latino, an Indian or anything else, that he stay that way,” Stan Lee said of his creation in 2015, “But we originally made him white. I don’t see any reason to change that. It has nothing to do with being anti-gay, or anti-black, or anti-Latino,

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