I really enjoyed it.

It had an overarching theme of rehabilitative justice == good which was really cool, MJ is an astoundingly well realised character despite being seen fully from the perspective of her love interest and their relationship feels real and the dynamic between the three spidermen was incredible.

The villain's were a bit of a mixed bag, Doc Oc and the Green Goblin I felt were realised incredibly well both for what they were meant to symbolise, references to past characters and believable, compelling characters in their own right, they didn't really do anything with lizardman, he felt like he was just there, sandman was cool and believable but got less screentime than Oc and Osbourne and had some weaker scenes/less well realised motivatiions. Electro was compelling but something felt a little off about him, and halfway through the movie it hit me like a tonne of bricks.

Electro's character design is INCREDIBLY racist. It's literally "black power" as a Spiderman villain, and No Way Home doesn't avoid that AT ALL. His motivation is that he's had a taste of a little power and wants more no matter it's effect on the existing system or society as a whole and his special no way home "cure" for that is to take away his power and his ability to ever get it again against his will and leave him still wanting that power (unlike everyone else except possibly lizardman who we didn't hear from after, who are grateful for being "cured") to not be a "nobody" unable to escape his situation, but unable to seize power any more, which, :what-the-hell: .

And the way it treated with rehabilitative justice purely through the lens of mental health/ability ignoring non-pathologised reasons people do crimes and get caught for them, and even non-easily curable mental illnesses wasn't great, but it strongly present rehabilitative justice as the only moral option and even violent resistance to punitive or purely preventative systems (spiderman fighting strange for the supervillains lives and the other two spidermen pulling spidey prime off osbourne and making them cure him instead) extremely positively, which was super cool

Overall I really enjoyed the movie. The main characters were compelling, complex and all felt like real people with real relationships, the themes were interesting and had pretty good messages and it used the MCU, "multiverse" and general cultural conception of "spiderman" as a way to skip a lot of exposition and tell a surprisingly deep and compelling story in its (not exactly short) runtime. Some of it felt a little gimmicky (daredevil, stan, "I'm something of a scientist myself") but the vast majority added a lot of meaningful depth to scenes that already stood up pretty well on their own and added rather than detracted from the story telling, themes and character portrayal and development.

So yeah, it was the first marvel movie I've watched in a while that I really liked and thought used the whole MCU and multiverse thing well. If you've read this far and haven't watched it, I'd strong recommend, it's worth the 15 bucks or whatever to watch it (not worth covid tho, if you're somewhere where that's even remotely a risk please just stay home and pirate that shit, it's good but not maybe dying and never being able to jog again just to watch it on a big screen good) and if you've already watched it I'd love to hear what you thought.

  • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Electro’s original character design is INCREDIBLY racist. It’s literally “black power” as a Spiderman villain, and No Way Home doesn’t avoid that AT ALL.

    This is strange to me because when I see or hear "Electro" I am thinking of this goofy motherfucker

    I'm guessing the Electro of today's comics is very different

    • Civility [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Oof, I've never really got into spiderman comics. I guess I just assumed him being black was part of the original design.

      It looks like the first time he was black was in the 2016 movie, where no way home pulled him from, which is even more 😬

      • REallyN [she/her,they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        in the original comic he is just an electrician who gets struck by lightning while fixing a powerline and spiderman literally can't touch him or he passes out so he has to wear rubber gloves.

      • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Yeah it's really weird to me that they chose that character to make that uhhhh point, but then again the last time I even thought about actual comic books was like 20 years ago.