Export thread

It was a lot of fun seeing the three Spider-Men interact. The whole debate over Tobey's organic webshooters was especially funny. But a lot of their interactions, while fun, dragged on way too much, to the detriment of the plot. Like, there was a part where they were in the middle of fighting the villains, and all three suddenly stopped to chat. It created the gameplan to win, but then there was jokey ad-libbing on top of it that dragged the scene on longer than it needed to be.

Maybe it was just me, but did it seem like there was more emphasis on Andrew Garfield than Tobey Maguire? Unlike Tobey, Andrew got his own little character arc about saving MJ. Which, honestly, I saw coming a mile after seeing the trailers, but still. Tobey didn't really do much compared to his counterparts. It was kind of a wooden performance, honestly. Garfield, though, you could tell he was elated to just have one more chance in the suit. It came through in his performance and I'm glad because I didn't think he was bad, though his movies certainly weren't that great. I did like the one touching moment between Tobey and Alfred Molina, though.

Molina, himself, was an absolute delight any time he was on screen. Like Garfield, you could tell he was having a blast being back in the role.

The only one odd to me was Thomas Haden Church. I didn't understand why Sandman walked around in sand form the whole time. It not only didn't make sense for his character, but I feel like they could've saved a little bit on special effects if he didn't. Was he just not available for filming or something? It was an odd choice.

But the standout, of course, is William motherfucking DaFoe. He proved that it was absolutely a mistake to throw a Power Ranger-like helmet on him in Raimi's first movie. Because my god, the way he just gleefully hams it up in every single scene is a delight. And oddly enough, I thought he and Tom Holland had insane chemistry. I thought their fist fight in the apartment complex was the best action in the film, save for the Doc Ock bridge fight.

One thing that REALLY bugs me, though: Uncle Ben does not apparently exist at all in the MCU universe. Neither Peter nor May ever mentions him. She's not buried with him at the end. Holland doesn't act like he recognizes the name when Tobey or Andrew mention him. So, what made Holland's Spider-Man be Spidey in the first place? Because we skipped his origin, we never saw. Was he just a free-wheeling teenager out on Spider-joyrides when Tony Stark found him? He's only learning about "great power also means great responsibility" NOW? That...I don't know, I'm open to adaptations and interpretations, but that one really bothers me.

Everything between Zendaya and Holland was gold. Their chemistry is ALMOST better than Tobey Maguire & Emma Stone, but in terms of romantic Spider-Man chemistry, those two are still number one. I was kind of surprised by how much of the total movie runtime was used for the quiet moments between them, but they acted the HELL out of this thing.

Regarding the Venom mid-credits scene, it's not really that big a deal. It was cute and funny, but mostly harmless (MOSTLY because now we might get us an MCU Venom symbiote saga). I had more to say about that in another thread here.

And how about that Doctor Strange 2 teaser, eh? Looks like America Chavez is heavily featured, a character I know absolutely nothing about and might have to read up on before the movie drops.

I was confused about the Uncle Ben thing as well. In his introduction in Civil War, Peter mentioned to Tony that May had been going through some really touch times lately, implying Uncle Ben's death. I mean, I thought Kevin Feige said we weren't going to rehash it BECAUSE everyone already knew that story. For them to... retcon? it in this film is such an odd choice, and probably the only thing I can think that really bugged me, aside of shoehorning Venom in.

Yeah, I vaguely remember him saying something about losing someone in Civil War, but they never spelled it out. Uncle Ben's absence in all three of these movies always bugged me. In the first two, I figured they just ignored it because they didn't want to dwell on the origin story again. Which, you know, that's fair. But then to learn in this movie that he seemingly doesn't have an Uncle Ben at all? That's just...I don't know. I feel like that's a fundamental aspect of Spider-Man's mythos. To not include it at all doesn't sit right with me. I like the Aunt May gave him the "great power" line. Although, Marissa Tomei is barely in these movies, I felt like her death didn't have as large an impact as it could have.

As I mentioned in the MCU thread I felt that the Aunt May death here was expertly handled. I believe the Tom Holland line that everyone assumes is about Uncle Ben is " “Look, when you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you. " which is totally fair. But they never bring him up in any other film or appearance of Spider-man in an MCU film so I can only assume one of 2 things: They just didn't want to dwell on that part but the opportunity to change things up presented itself for this film and they took it, or, they planned this from the beginning. I'm thinking the former but honestly it doesn't change how brilliant the move was and how well it worked for this film. There was no Uncle Ben moment for Tom Holland's Peter. He became Spider-Man because he's a good person and he wanted to do the right thing to stop bad things from happening and it's totally understandable that he could come up with the "they happen because of you" philosophy on his own without a tragic death in his life. By not acknowledging Ben, but also not directly un-acknowledging him either, they set up Aunt May being the "Power/Responsibility" death so perfectly I didn't see it coming. Depressing as hell but so very well done.

I rather like Aunt May being MCU Peter's Uncle Ben moment. This means that no one told him that with great power comes great responsibility before. This means all that stuff he said to Tony in Civil War, about it kinda being your fault if you have the power to stop bad things from happening but don't, that all came from Peter himself. This high school kid was being a hero out of his own sense of right and wrong, and that's admirable. Sure, Uncle Ben's death is such an integral part of Spidey's origin story that doing things this way does feel almost blasphemous, but then again the MCU has never been afraid to shake things up.

Overall I think this is the best-acted Spider-Man movie in existence. The MCU's original cast already had some very competent actors, like Holland, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, etc. But this movie added some real heavy hitters. Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire are both excellent actors, with films such as Hacksaw Ridge, Silence, Brothers, the Great Gatsby etc under their belts. That scene on the rooftop where they talk about great power and great responsibility really allowed all of the Spideys to show their acting chops. Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe were delicious as their villains. And Cumberbatch, Jamie Foxx, JK Simmons, etc all delivered strong performances in supporting roles.

It was also a movie clearly made for fans of the previous Spider-Man and MCU films. My wife isn't as big a fan of comic book movies as me so she was lost in a few places. She also didn't know why I was laughing at certain scenes, such as when Tobey kept saying Andrew's amazing. Thus, I get what Nick means when he says there's too much ad-libbing and banter, because it's basically all fanservice.

Finally, MJ is so hot. And Aunt May is also so hot.

Peter Parker has been erased from everyone's memory. For this to work in the long term way that the film seems to imply, all traces of Peter Parker existing must be removed from any method of record keeping, be it physical or digital. Defeats the purpose of a spell that's suppose to erase all memory of him, only for someone to google "Spider-Man" and get the millions of "PETER PARKER IS SPIDER-MAN!" twitter hits that would have been created by then.

That is kind of implied due to it being magic. Best similar example I can give from another franchise was in Harry Potter when Hermione erased the memory of her existence from her parents to protect them, and the minute she used the spell her image faded out of family photographs. It's likely the same thing, with anything anywhere even implying the existence of Peter Parker just vanishing into thin air.