Buy it... if you can admire Michael Giacchino's proficient but not spectacular handling of an extraordinary number of themes, some by Danny Elfman and others, in this aggressive mashup.

Avoid it... if you expect the composer to excel at enunciating those themes with memorable results, for this score makes the right amount of noise but fails to touch your heart.

Spider-Man: No Way Home: (Michael Giacchino) It's nearly impossible to surprise audiences with cameos in this age of film production, but Sony and Marvel did their absolute best with 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. The two studios almost failed to come to agreement over the future rights of the Spider-Man concept over the previous few years, but the schedule of this third film of the Tom Holland trilogy of Spider-Man movies managed to keep its place after blowback from throngs of concept fans. Whereas this concept's movies had at one time teased connections between each cinematic entry and the larger universe, Spider-Man: No Way Home sought to intentionally launch itself in the other direction, using the increasingly popular "multiverse" idea to explain the constant reboots of the franchise and conveniently bring heroes and villains from the prior Spider-Man franchises into the narrative of the current one. With Doctor Strange carrying over from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his powers accidentally unleash a multiverse collision in which both Peter Parkers and many of their villains from the prior franchise iterations return to conduct an ultimate battle. For concept enthusiasts, seeing characters going back to the early 2000's in Spider-Man: No Way Home, some de-aged as necessary to maintain their original appearances, is an immense treat. The plot supplies Doctor Strange with a central role in both causing and healing the spell setting all of these characters in motion, and the movie takes an intriguing twist in that the three Peter Parkers endeavor to salvage the villains of all their various reasons for evil rather than outright defeat them. This decision is particularly poignant in the Otto Octavius character, who always remained the most sympathetic villain from the prior movies. In the end, Spider-Man: No Way Home is an ultimate "reset" story to shift all of the franchise's iterations back to their early narrative times, and audiences rewarded the effort with immense box office returns. The soundtrack for Spider-Man: No Way Home, like the story of the film, presented incredible potential for intelligent integration between the franchise iterations, and Michael Giacchino returned to tackle that delicate task.

Giacchino's output for the Spider-Man franchise has ranged from fairly proficient to occasionally impressive, a decent entry for 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming enhanced by a rousing villain's theme for 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home. Without considering the sudden inclusion of material written by other composers due to the multiverse components of its story, Spider-Man: No Way Home falls somewhere in between its two predecessors in quality. The general palette remains the same, Giacchino's recordings lacking vivaciousness and often struggling to enunciate themes in ways that make them impactful. What nuance that does exist in Spider-Man: No Way Home has eluded some viewers because of the underemphasized mix of the score in context. When separated from the picture, the composer's trademarks are all in action here: solo piano for sensitivity, conservative choral applications for fantasy, and a touch of electric bass and other synthetic elements for coolness. The biggest change in the equation instrumentally is the carryover of the processed East Indian tones for Doctor Strange, though these influences are seemingly downplayed given the character's secondary role in this story. The symphonic presence in the work is extremely standard for Giacchino, which gives it a safe but rather generic tone that reinforces the composer as a prudent choice in the genre. The word "generic" is key, because it also extends to the phrasing of the composer's themes. Throughout the score, the structuring of his new themes is not always satisfactorily pronounced, causing the listener to think that a theme is constantly being hinted without actually being stated. Giacchino extends his tendency to use repeating phrasing in his themes while altering the chords underneath, and some of the new melodies build upon the same chord shifts as his main theme as a means, it seems, of keenly blending purpose. There may be intellectual merit behind these choices, but the end result for some listeners will be a set of themes that doesn't distinguish itself and therefore fails to stir memorable emotions. The primary reason Spider-Man: Far From Home remains superior in this trilogy of scores is because of Giacchino's rousing identity for Mysterio. No equivalent identity lingers in your mind from Spider-Man: No Way Home even though three new major themes are introduced.

Giacchino is due some credit for his juggling of his previous identities for this franchise and the three new themes. But, at the end of the day, it's hard not to get the feeling that many opportunities were lost in both the spotting and execution of the score. Some of this dissatisfaction may result from an album presentation that is missing key development of the new themes and references to old favorites. But the composer does not rise to the challenge of interpolating all of these ideas into the fantastic and, frankly, evolved and resolved potential experienced by the characters the themes represent. Simply repeating a phrase or two from a previous franchise theme is a really good start, but it doesn't mean squat if that reference has no more than the feel of a token insertion to check a box on the list. The main franchise theme consists of three segments, and only the primary segment receives considerable development in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Giacchino throws in a brief reference to Mysterio's theme, which is great, but the application of the MJ love theme in this work is sorely lacking, restricted to only one prominent performance. The Doctor Strange theme is all over the score but rarely follows the full breadth of the actual identity. Danny Elfman's music for the Tobey Maguire trilogy here includes the two primary themes for Peter Parker and those for the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. The pair of Andrew Garfield films is represented by James Horner's theme for Parker, which was inexplicably and inexcusably jettisoned by Hans Zimmer for the second Garfield film. Zimmer's theme for Electro is seemingly tracked into Spider-Man: No Way Home without formal interpolation. The Horner theme for the Lizard and Christopher Young's theme for Sandman were not referenced by Giacchino, the latter a particularly disappointing omission. These characters are more generally represented by the composer's new theme for the combined villains of this story, one that understandably builds upon some of the structural elements of Elfman's Doctor Octopus theme given that character's outsized involvement in this story. Joining that identity is a new theme of lamentation that serves as Giacchino's answer to Elfman's family and responsibility theme. Finally, an intriguing restoration theme rounds out Giacchino's score, applying itself to a hopeful resolution and providing the score's most significant fantasy presence.

Enthusiasts of Giacchino's main theme will appreciate how often it is conveyed in this score, though the second and third segments of the theme, in some ways its most attractive portions, are rarely accessed. Just as the composer has difficulty conveying the fuller ideas by Elfman and Horner, he struggles to afford longer, meaningful development to his own. The main theme debuts at 0:08 into "Damage Control," its underlying chords continuing for much of the cue. Pieces of it are entangled at 2:36, 3:28, and 3:40 into "Otto Trouble." A quick heroic burst finally prevails at 2:08 into "Ghost Fighter in the Sky/Beach Blanket Bro Down," and brief snippets aid the action rhythms at 0:19 into "Sling vs Bling," after which a fuller rendition at 1:32 fights for survival but accedes to a fragment at 2:34. Later in that cue, the main theme overlays the Doctor Strange theme at 2:34 and emerges on its own at 4:08 and 4:34 with choir. It's softly noble to close out "Octo Gone" and is again relegated to action fragments at 2:36 into "No Good Deed." The second segment of the theme finally appears in the solo cello performance at 1:02 into "A Doom With a View," and a slight reference persists at 1:25 into "Spider Baiting." The closing action scenes do offer the theme some breathing room, fragments on woodwinds at 0:25 into "Liberty Parlance" building up to action that culminates in a major choral and brass rendition at 1:02. It toils with battle rhythms at 1:01 into "Monster Smash" and closes "Arc Reactor" in the same stance. Horns and soft choir carry the theme more softly at 2:24 into "Shield of Pain," a single phrase on flute persisting at 3:36 into "Goblin His Inner Demons." This diminished posture continues on solo piano at the outset of "Forget Me Knots" and extends out of the Doctor Strange theme at 1:45; an epically sized, slow version at 5:47 eventually succumbs again to a solo piano reduction to end the cue. The main theme opens "Peter Parker Picked a Perilously Precarious Profession" on solo piano again before another major choral version sends the story off, this time with more female voices in the mix, at 1:06. The first two minutes of the "Arachnoverture" end credits suite are dedicated to the main theme, and it is only here that all three segments of the theme receive due attention. After rotating through the other themes, Giacchino returns to all three segments at 7:20, this time at a faster pace and with choir. Hidden at the end of this album track at 9:32 is the obnoxious version of the theme with rock-like Doctor Strange instrumentation for the humorous Undercroft scene, and it should be placed before "Ghost Fighter in the Sky."