Spiderman No Way Home: Thoughts/Reactions Pt. 1
I actually gave you all seven days before posting my No Way Home fangirl scribblings, but here we go. Just to reiterate, if you have not seen Spiderman No Way Home, you DO NOT want to read this post. I swear, I am the last girl to lecture one on avoiding spoilers since I tend to actually seek them out like a fool, but this is a movie that if you love Spiderman, if you love the MCU, if you love Marvel, if to any extent you are interested in seeing the movie, you don’t want to be spoiled. You want to run to the theaters and watch it. Now with that said, enjoy my rantings.
GENERAL
You can see Dum-E in Happy’s apartment which is adorable. I don’t think we’ve seen him on screen since Iron Man 3 when Tony pulled him out of the water after the house was attacked and much of it fell into the ocean.
The blind lawyer with the red oval glasses in case you didn’t know, is Daredevil, whose real identity is the lawyer, Matt Murdock. It seems he took a break from protecting Hell’s Kitchen to help out Spiderman. And to please the fans, it’s the same actor who played Daredevil in the tv show. The alternatives would have been Affleck (shudder), or hiring a new guy, but many were pleased with the tv shows interpretation of the man without fear.
It’s about damn time J. Jonah Jameson was added to the MCU, and there is no doubt that it was the right move to keep JK Simmons and his brilliant mustache in that role.
THE VILLAINS
Osbourn’s hoodie costume is a wonderful homage to the original Green Goblins look with the purple hat and tunic replaced with a loose hoodie. If I’m being honest, I may actually like this one more than the green suit of armor Defoe originally wore. Superhero movies when based off of a comic are held to an impossibly high standard, and the costumes of characters are iconic so recreating them, while still making them seem as realistic as they can be, is a very tall order. To many that means removing the spandex and replacing it with armor. And while I can definitely understand why they do that; I think I honestly would have preferred to see the Green Goblin flying around in those sweats than the armor he wore in Maguire’s first flick just because it looked so freaking good and right.
Fans were not impressed with the second Amazing Spider Man movie (I didn’t think it was all that bad, but maybe I’m the outlier.) One of the many thing’s fans took issue with was the blue skinned Electro who looked a little too alien and strange for a classic Spiderman movie. For this flick they got rid of the skin paint, citing it as an effect of the new world, and gave Electro a costume more accurate to his comic book counterpart. Though they still omit the triple lightning bolt mask, which may be for the best.
When listing their coolest villains Maguire talks about a “black goo from space” (Venom) and Tom talks about fighting Thanos on and off Earth. And then Andrew goes “I want to go to space. I’ve done nothing. I’ve only fought a robot rhinoceros.” The pure absurdity of the villains hits you full force and it’s great.
Electro and Sandman both talk about how they became what they are today. Electro fell into a vat of electric eels and Sandman fell into a particle accelerator. They then quip that they should be careful where they fall. A common comic book villain origin seems to be them falling into something and this hilarious exchange got a chuckle from the whole theater. If these people just put railings around their science experiments, there would be a whole lot less supervillains.
William Defoe deserves all the praise in the world for bringing to life the most iconic Spiderman villain, both in Rami’s 2002 flick and in this one. Every time I watch him I just get so amazed at how wonderfully he portrays a true comic book character who really shouldn’t adapt so well to the screen.
Two famous Spiderman villain lines are requoted in this film. The first is by Green Goblin, who says in Maguire’s first film “You know, I’m something of a scientist myself.” when he was introducing himself to Peter while dropping off Harry. The second is done by Doc Oc who says, “The power of the sun in the palm of my hand.” Though that one was said by Otto as a direct and intended callback.
