Spider-Man No Way Home Review With Spoilers! It Sucks!
Explicit Content Warning!
There were a couple things I missed from showing up ten minutes late and having to pee twice while I was in there, but I got most of it. The movie takes us shortly after the last movie ended when JJ Jonah (Jk Simmons) appeared (or reappeared whatever) and gave us footage that Mysterio (Jake Gylennhall) had shown at the end framing Spider-Man/Peter (Tom Holland) for the attack of the drones in Spiderman Far From Home as well as showing his identity. Peter is hanging out with Not MJ and the fat Asian odious comic relief friend (Ned?) and finds out that everyone knowing his identity is a drag man. Now if you remember reading older comics like this like the fallout of Civil War you’ll remember that there was a lot more menace in there. Everyone knowing Spidey’s identity means that all his villains can get to him or just anyone at all. You would think whoever would be kidnapping MJ oR Aunt May just because they can or coming after Peter but none of that is dealt with. The force that you would think would protect him, Nick Fury, is completely absent in this movie mostly because if he was involved at all none of it would make any fucking sense. If Peter is friends with Nick why even go to Dr Strange and try to rewrite history when he could just ask him to launch a disinformation campaign or he could go up publicly as Peter and admit that he stopped Mysterio and was framed and let the public react to this.
Anyway Peter, MJ and fat fuck get rejected from colleges because everyone knows he’s Spidey and somehow knows that these are his friends. Whatever. Couldn’t a call from Nick get him into whatever college he’d want to go to? This story has a lot of similarities to One More Day but that story, as much as it sucked, at least had good motivation for why Peter wanted everyone to forget him. Everyone was trying to kill him and his family and had shot Aunt May and she was dying (or had died? I’m not sure) and he had to reset retcon to make everything go back to normal. A lot of people hate that story-line for retconning Peter/MJs marriage but no one’s going to care here because no one gives a shit about MCU Spidey side characters. Back to the plot, Peter goes to Strange and tries to get everyone to forget that Peter is Spiderman (again just because he and his friends were blocked from going to MIT) so Strange is like ok dude and starts doing the spell but Peter starts getting all anal about who can remember he’s Peter (he wants Not mj, Fat Fuck, Aunt May, Happy, Reed Richards, Spider-Pig all to remember, just kidding on he last two) and Strange seems to give up on doing the spell and tells Peter to get fucked for almost ruining it. Peter decides to go harass the principle of MIT in the middle of traffic (after Strange scolds him for not even trying to reason with the principle before casting a spell that will make everyone forget him which…. yeah he’s completely right) and the principle barely gives a shit before Dr Octopus (returning Alfred Molina) shows up on the bridge. He confuses Spider-Man for his Spider-Man and starts attacking him. Pretty decent fight scene happens that has some tension as Peter’s trying to save the MIT principle as she’s conveniently stuck her passenger back seat of van she was in that is being sent tumbling off the bridge. Doc Ock gets ahold of Spider-Man and is about to kill him before taking a piece of his suit off which molds into his arms. Its the nanotechnology that molds into his arms making them tinted red. Dock Ock thinks this is cool before Spider-Man uses the suit to show his unmasked face and then Ock is of course, shocked that its not Tobey. Peter than rewrites Ock’s arms using his suit which somehow controls the nanotechnology that’s surped into Ock’s arms basically making Ock a complete bitch for the rest of the movie. Peter controls Ock’s arms saving the principle and making Ock tie himself up.
Ock gets bitched at by the principle because its a marvel movie and we need more laughs, sigh. This was incredibly lazy, taking Doc Ock out of the movie this early was just bullshit especially considering how many people wanted to see an actual Ock/Spider-Man fight and how good an actor Alfred is. It just makes modern Spider-Man look like a pussy who can’t beat Doc Ock but has to rely on new tech which is WAYYYYY too much of what MCU Spider-Man has looked like anyway. Green Goblin (Norman Reedus) shows up on the bridge and before we can examine that Peter is teleported back to Dr Strange’s Sanctum. He has Doc Ock and Lizard (from Amazing Spider-Man) in magical see through prison cells. He gives Spider-Man a thing on his wrist that teleports people and puts them in the cell. Peter says he needs help to do this…. so he calls Not MJ and Fat Fuck. Yes…. because when you have the Avengers and the entire M-She-U (yes I stole that from nerdrotic) and Nick Fury at your disposal you need these two useless fucks. They go downstairs and make fun of Otto’s name because its an MCU movie and they probably have small dicks about the fact that they’ve never been able to create someone as cool or memorable as Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man goes to go look for Norman but runs into Electro (Jamie Foxx who may I remind you NO FUCKING ONE REMEMBERED HE WAS ELECTRO IN THE FIRST PLACE SO THIS WAS A GIANT WASTE OF MONEY!!!) and Sandman (returning Thomas Church who gets almost no screen time in the movie for some reason even though he came across as a decent actor in Spider-Man 3 because he’s got to be sand for most of the movie). I also don’t want to forget to mention that during this Not MJ and Fat Fuck have cameras on Spider-Man’s costume for absolutely no reason and give out terrible advice that does nothing to confuse Peter. So if you’re annoyed by these characters you’ll be even more so in this scene as it just feels so forced to even have them in the scene at all. Sandman helps out Spider-Man and they take out Electro, Spider-Man zaps him with the thigny from Dr Strange to transport him back to sanctum and prison cell, Sandman gets pissy thinking Spider-Man killed him so Spider-Man zaps him too. Back to the prison cell, Norman gets there somehow and has a sob story for Peter but Strange shows up and zaps him into the cell.
Doc Ock freaks out about the fact that Norman’s dead so Sandman tells Doc Ock and Norman they’ve both been dead for years. Foxx realizes he died in Amazing 2 and Lizard…. wonders if he’s dead. I have no idea if he is or not. Strange pulls out this magic box and says he’s going to send all the villains back to their universes. But Peter pusses out because oh they’re going to die in their own universes (well not Sandman who’s actually not evil but whatever) and decides to steal the box from Strange. I want to examine the illogicality of this reaction for a second. So imagine your Spider-Man, you’re fucking around with other dimensions and have summoned a bunch of villains from other dimensions that you know nothing about. What right do you have to stop them from dying? Most of them died in ways that the Spider-Man in their world couldn’t do anything about. Green Goblin died in a pretty similar way to Mysterio in the last movie, you want to bring him back too? But lets examine the villains death’s. So Green Goblin died in the first one trying to impale Peter on his glider and Peter dodged it and Goblin ate blades. Ok so Green Goblin was completely irredeemable in that scene as Peter did try to reason with him but couldn’t break through and only saved himself because of his Spidey-Sense. Even if Norman was “cured” of his Green Goblin powers that doesn’t mean he’s still not going to be crazy as shit. Also if you cured him of his powers and then threw him back into his universe what does that even mean? Does he come back a few seconds before his death but this time unpowered?
I think if anything that would just make him die sooner. Ok Doc Ock, now they seem to want you to forget this from Spider-Man 2 but Doc Ock actually did end up “cured” at the end of that movie and realized what he was doing was wrong and sacrificed himself to destroy the giant sun thing that was going to blow everything up. Sandman hasn’t even done anything and doesn’t even need to be in this situation and will be unaffected either way unless he can’t get home. The Lizard…. I honestly don’t remember what the hell happened to him in Amazing but I think he might’ve gotten cured? Either way just curing him of his lizard powers might not stop him from doing evil though this is probably the character that it makes the most sense with as Lizard is usually portrayed as Connors wanting to cure himself and Lizard taking him over (its the same thing as ManBat). Electro even after everything still seems pretty damn evil and I think even without his powers he could be a threat. What point do you really have to be saving and curing all these people? Why do you think you can meddle around in other people’s timelines and universes and what if by saving them you cause problems in the other universes or potentially cause the other Spider-Men to die? What if by curing them and sending them too far back in time you destroy the whole reason for Spider-Man to exist or a very important building block of that Spider-Man’s character development? Its just so…. narcissistic to assume you can meddle in other people’s timelines/universes and it doesn’t really ring true for the character either.
This Peter has no emotional connection to any of these characters and he just comes across as a retard for trusting Norman or any of these villains over Strange who actually can fix everything. No this smacks completely of plot contrivance and no matter how much they wave oh Peter cares about everyone and oh this is the right thing to do and oh with great power comes great responsibility, nope it just doesn’t feel authentic. I know MCU Peter is young but he’s certainly not stupid and that’s basically what you have to buy here because the moralizing doesn’t make any sense. “With great comes great responsibility” does not mean you have to save evil super villains from different dimensions. That’s just nonsensical. This is where the movie really drew me out as the other logic gaps I can deal with but this was a step too far because it involved incredibly dumb character motivation. Its the part of Pitch Meetings where the writer goes “So the movie can happen.”
So Spider-Man steals the box from Strange, Strange brings him to another dimension that makes everything all trippy and Inceptiony but Spider-Man uses math (one of the few parts of the movie I liked) to figure out the geometrical positions of everything to web up Strange and trap him in the dimension. So Spider-Man then decides to get all the villains out and takes them to Happy’s apartment with Not Aunt May (who is completely fine with this retarded plan btw) where he then works with Norman to create ways to cure all the villains. He cures Doc Ock by fixing his stem problem which was established in Spider-Man 2 as the chip was broken so it malfunctioning causing the arms to control Otto instead of the other way around. This was actually a nice throwback to Spider-Man 2 and made sense.
Otto turns face and helps Peter with the rest of his stuff which involves curing Electro of his electricity. Norman turns heel because he was really the goblin the whole time, gets Electro to join him, they toss Ock and Lizard gets out of a prison van they were keeping him in. Also Jonah has shown up with cameras and a fuck ton of SWAT are about to come. On SWAT why are they even here? Where tf is Nick Fury? Where tf is Shield? Isn’t Happy part of Shield???? Shouldn’t he be able to call in any resources he wants to help them that will actually be on their side? Again this universe makes no sense. Norman and Peter have a fight scene where Goblin busts out a powerbomb and a spinebuster and sends Peter through a bunch of CGI ceilings so they can get to the bottom. May’s there and hits Norman with a cure they made but it doesn’t work. Norman summons his glider (how tf is he controlling that thing btw?) and uses it to kill Aunt May. Peter looks super sad and has a pretty well acted scene where he sells May’s death. May then gives him the with great power speech. Ok so did Uncle Ben just never exist in the MCU? This was decently handled but it justt felt so cheap. They needed a reason for Tom Holland to actually care about Goblin so they used May’s death. The problem comes twofold, first off I never gave a shit about MCU Aunt May. She was ok but she wasn’t Aunt May, she was way too young, obnoxious and more seemed like a modern single Mom and the most development we had from her was that she probably wanted dick from Tony and Happy. I mean she was cool with Peter being Spidey so that’s cool but I don’t really give a shit about her dying. She doesn’t feel like Aunt May and they just never developed her enough. In this movie they didn’t even try developing her and just gave her shitty jokes (she asks Doc Ock if he wants salt water because he’s an octopus because we just can’t go one fucking minute in an MCU movie without a joke even though she obviously knows whats wrong with Ock as evidenced by her scenes with Peter where he’s explaining how he’s going to cure him). I just couldn’t be bothered to care and its just a cheap way to give drama between Peter and Goblin because they have no shared history. Oh yeah and then SWAT comes and tries to kill Spider-Man, even winging him before he escapes. You know this would be a really cool scene…. if it made a lick of fucking sense. Where tf is Nick Fury? Hellooooooo!??? Did you forget he exists MCU? You know, Samuel L Jackson with the eyepatch? This scene makes even less sense as Happy is getting to his house that is blown up in the action. Hello Happy, did you go retarded? Did you forget you’re an operative of Shield and have infinite resources at your disposal? You’re going to let the local police destroy your house and try to kill Spidey? Whatever.
Spidey’s sad, MJ’s sad, Fat fucks sad, I didn’t care I had to take a piss and got some popcorn too. Came back and somehow Andrew Garfield and Tobey Magurie made it into the movie. They were explaining the Uncle Ben With Great Power thing to him and say that killing people is wrong yada yada. They decide to all start working together to cure the monsters. This feels off, why wouldn’t the older Spider-Men, Andrew and Tobey, not be mad at Tom Holland for creating this mess? Not to mention that the idea of curing these people is wrong and doesn’t even make sense in the context of when they died. You think Tobey would explain that Ock sacrificed himself and was cured before he died or that Green Goblin killed himself and that even without the cure he’s batshit. Andrew I suppose has less to argue on that perspective and he seems more hung up on Gwen’s death which makes sense considering they literally didn’t explore that at all in Amazing 2. But nope, instead of wondering about where exactly the villains are going to go back in time (like ok for example if Spider-Man doesn’t kill Goblin in 1 Harry never becomes Goblin in 3 right? So then Spider-Man never has anyone to help him in fight against Venom and Sandman and would get killed. Also what the fuck does curing Doc Ock do when he sacrificed himself in the first place?) or if this is even the right thing to do or justifying that they had to die in those situations and who is he to judge, etc… they’re just like sounds cool bro lets get started on curing these people. There’s some cute character stuff here like Holland and Garfield giving Tobey shit for being able to shoot webs out of his arms instead of having to make them, Tobey talking about how Harry died (too bad James Franco is cancel cultured btw as I’m sure people would’ve loved to see him in this) and Garfield talking about how he couldn’t save Gwen. Both of these characters look far deeper and far more developed than MCU Spidey btw and have actual gravitas and seriousness built around their stories where Holland’s main loss is that he just now lost Aunt May. Doesn’t have the same effect and he still comes across short in that department compared to the other two.
Tom goes to the statue of liberty, calls the villains out on a live stream, they show up big fight ensues. Before fight goes off some more cute dialogue with Tobey and Andrew, Andrew gets a kink out of Tobey’s back, Tom and Andrew ask Tobey about his ability to shoot webs without a web shooter and they compare notes of craziest things they’ve fought (venom gets a mention here which will piss you off even more that he’s not in the movie). There’s a pretty funny scene mid fight where Holland is trying to hype everyone up and tells them he’s part of the Avengers and they’re like what is that a band? Also the reason the other two Spider-Men aren’t lame and Tony’s little bitch and have to rely on nano tech to do everything for them. Fight rolls on they pretty much cure all the villains and Strange comes back. If you’re wondering how Not MJ and Fat Fuck are forced into the movie Fat Fuck now knows magic for absolutely no fucking reason and they’re trying to teleport the box away so Ned can do a spell or something…. but it doesn’t work as Fat Fuck doesn’t know how to close the teleport holes and they end up running back into it so basically they accomplished absolutely nothing but freeing Dr Strange when Fat Fuck tries to open another teleport portal and accidentally releases Strange.
Strange is like whatever I guess I’ll let the three Peter’s finish so they “cure” everyone with the help of face Doc Ock until green Goblin shows up and throws a bomb into Strange’s box just as he’s trying to send everyone back. Also Garfield saves MJ from falling which felt like a nice character moment from 2 as he’s redeeming himself for not saving Gwen in ASM 2. This fucks things up so badly it seems to cause all the other dimensions to start merging into this one in tears on the sky that Strange is struggling to keep closed. Spider-Man goes to kill Green Goblin and gets pretty brutal with him in a decent fight scene but Tobey stops him from straight up impaling him with the glider (ok so how is Tom Holland going to moralize about saving this guy or saying that what Tobey did was wrong when he’s now ready to impale the fucking guy?). Tobey gets stabbed and we get a fake death scene as the theater freaked out but later he’s just like its fine I get stabbed a lot. Andrew throws a cure at Holland and he uses it somehow forgetting that he wanted to completely kill this guy and has even more reason to do so if he thinks he just killed Tobey. I mean what the fuck, this movie just makes no sense at this point. I think we’re supposed to take Tobey sacrificing himself as a lesson to Tom so that he won’t kill Green Goblin but Tom is so pissed off he’s ready to kill the guy for killing Aunt May and the one reason he had for not killing him just got stabbed so you think he’d be even more pissed instead of this somehow diminishing his anger.
Anyway all the villains are cured now but Strange is still dealing with the interdimensonal tears in the sky. Peter realizes that the only way he can get rid of this is to make everyone forget he’s Peter Parker. Strange tells him the importance of this in that he’s going to make everyone forget who he is which opens up a trillion questions but I’ll leave them alone for now (if MJ forgets who he is does she just forget long periods of her life? Does she remember dealing with the other Spider-Men who were also Peter Parker?). Peter goes to say goodbye to Fat Fuck (bye Fat Fuck), Not MJ and makes out with her and they’re really trying to sell you on the sadness of this. I don’t feel sad at all, first of all I fucking hate that actress. She’s just a cunt in everything she’s in. Both women from the other Spider-Men series Kristin Dunst and Emma Stone were actually likable and seemed to like Peter. This MJ is just a bitch, not white, doesn’t have red hair and looks like she’d rather be doing anything than hanging out with Peter throughout most of the last movie only saying she liked him after admitting she knew he was Spider-Man which begs the question of why she was being a bitch to him throughout about him bouncing on things. I don’t think most people disagree with me on this and she was just forced on us as MJ in the names of progressiveness but the only times she came across as likeable was when she wasn’t being a bitch which wasn’t very often. Again neither Dunst nor Stone’s careers were hurt from Spider-Man. This chicks was and hard. I see her in Dune and hate her immediately even though she actually fits in with that character way more than here. Anyway her and Pete kiss, I yawn, Pete tells Strange to do it and everyone forgets who he is. He tries to go see Fat Fuck and Not MJ but they don’t know who he is so he’s super sad. All I can think is goddamn are we finally going to get a recasted MJ or can we skip to Gwen or Liz or Betty? Not really sad about Fat Fuck either, maybe we can get MCU’s Harry. Peter gets an apartment that looks just like Tobey’s apartment in Spider-Man 2 and 3 and goes out to fight crime as the movie ends.
Mid credits: VENOM is here….. and he learns about the MCU only to vanish back to his universe. FUCKING LAME! I WANTED TO SEE TOM HARDY VS TOM HOLLAND YOU COCKSUCKERS!!! PEOPLE LIKE VENOM FUCK OFF DISNEY!!! But wait…. a little bit of symboite fell off so bankrupt Disney can play with that and probably give Holland black suit.
Post credits scene was just an ad for new Dr Strange movie and felt really lame after sitting through the whole goddaamn credits just for that. Looks like Wanda’s going to be invovled which pretty much everyone guessed and an evil Dr Strange. Yawn who cares.
Final thoughts: 3.0/5.0 Parts of the movie were good, Alfred’s acting was good and his face turn mostly made sense knowing what we do about Spider-Man 2. It was nice seeing Tobey and Andrew get to interact and I was actually surprised by how likeable Andrew came across. Tom Holland’s acting was decent in parts, he really did sell the Aunt May death and his anger at Green Goblin even if I couldn’t share those emotions with him. Other than that this felt like a cheap cash grab nostalgia grab that everyone’s going to splooge over because OMG LOOK AT ALL THIS CRAZY SHIT THAT HAPPENED instead of actually considering any of the huge logic gaps involved. Just the entire idea of Holland’s Spider-Man trying to cure all the villains makes him look like a retard. To trust NORMAN REEDUS’S CREEPY ASS you HAVE TO BE STUPID! And the movie keeps on trying to make this out as to be the obvious or right thing to do to the point where Aunt May is telling Peter that he did the right thing. No he didn’t, he fucked everything up on his own, could’ve saved everything and then decided to be a dumbass and try to save a bunch of creepy villains from different universes that he has no personal connection to. NO ONE WOULD EVER DO THIS EVER! This is the most obvious plot contrivance since goddamn Mr Freeze had a giant rocketship to take him into space for no fucking reason in Batman and Robin! And I’m supposed to feel bad for Holland’s Spider-Man after this? Why? He literally brought the entire thing down on himself and the only reason it happened anyway was so the movie could happen. Basically Peter does a OMD at the end but without any benefit to himself. At least in One More Day he got May back, here he gets absolutely nothing but saving the universe. I feel like you could basically just kill Spider-Man in MCU at this point because everything’s been retconned so he doesn’t exist but it doesn’t look like that’s what they’re doing. They did put Peter in a depressing situation but honestly I’m just glad we’re away from the awful MCU side characters because I didn’t like them at all. Movie was average, you might want to go see it for the Spider-Fest but the plot isn’t really that good and its more individual stuff you’ll like. It just feels like this movie could’ve been done a lot better. Instead of having Strange capturing the villains or making so they could so easily be captured why not space out the villains and introduce Tobey and Andrew earlier in the movie? That way we could’ve gotten team ups and them fighting the villains without THE GODDAMN STUPID IDEA OF CURING THEM ALL AND TRUSTING A BUNCH OF VILLAINS!!! The only way this makes sense is realizing that the writers, who already completely want to you to forget that Fury exists, realized they couldn’t keep the movie going with Strange around because he’s too overpowered. So…. why not have him get knocked out by Goblin or something or have his magic incapacitated for a while instead of making Peter look like the biggest retard this side of Forrest Gump? Ugh.
