I still haven't watched No Way Home (I'm getting to it, I just need to get up the energy, but I'm thoroughly spoiled) but the Alex Jones J Jonah Jameson thing really bothers me because the thing is, even with his anti-Spider-Man crusade, in the comics JJJ has usually, with a few exceptions, been portrayed as a good journalist. JJJ cares about the facts and he cares about the people and when he goes too far in his crusade, he is either held accountable by outside forces (usually Robbie, who is conveniently missing from the MCU's narrative despite MCU Spider-Man's surface level commitment to diversity) or ultimately by JJJ himself.
"I love this newspaper. I won't see its journalistic integrity questioned because of my mistake -- so I'm stepping down as editor in chief." (ASM #250-251)
Jonah can be out of touch, and he's very clearly a product of a different generation, but he's a good person. And yes, Jonah hates Spider-Man, but you know who he loves! Peter Parker! This smart-mouthed kid who brought him photos no one else could get and who he's watched grow up in his newsroom! Yes, they argue and butt heads and snipe at each other, but that's their love language! Jonah really, honestly likes Peter Parker.
"I like "our star" the way he is." (ASM #377)
"What would he do without me?" (ASM #800)
But of course in the MCU, Peter has had no need, at least in the canon that has been established, for a job, so he doesn't need to go to the Bugle and he doesn't need to sell pictures of himself because that's too old-fashioned probably. So you lose this connection between Peter, the stubborn young New Yorker, and Jonah, the old news goat, and that push and pull of Jonah hating Spider-Man but still being a good person who does, in his own gruff way, sincerely care about Peter. It's a very New York story between these two specific characters who belong to this specific landscape! And now even if with the end of No Way Home they bring that forward in the future, they've already painted Jonah as this Alex Jones type character who hawks fake news and snake oil and who would throw a teenager under the bus instead of trying to get to the heart of the real story. So you can't ever recapture that genuine dynamic between the two of them, because the audience has already had their expectations colored. And I just hate that because I think the original relationship, and you see an echo of it in the Raimi movies, is so sincere and so funny and it's a dynamic you don't get to see every day, and I think the MCU is less for eschewing it and for eschewing the notion of Jonah as a complicated person but a good journalist who cares about the truth. And for what? Like the above says: for a joke that won't even be funny in five years.
