They did, that’s what the first fucked up spell did.
They didn’t, though – when Doc Ock and Electro saw Tom Holland without his mask on, they had no idea who he was.
Unless you mean a sort of unconscious “know” where they don’t actually know Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, but they sort of feel him in a way they can’t express, and then the spell at the end reversed that. I can buy that, I guess. I’ll shut up now.
I enjoyed that Otto saw Tobey Maguire after Otto was cured and they had an exchange. Lots of great little payoffs in this movie.
Post-credit scene ideas:
- Andrew Garfield meets a girl and she reveals her name. Her initials are “MJ” and his eyes light up. There is an MJ out there for him!! Yay!!
- Tom Holland shows up at the Daily Bugle with a couple pictures of Spider-man.
I’m sure there other ideas out there, but the Andrew Garfield one would have gotten a cheer from the crowd.
I’d really forgotten how much I liked Andrew Garfield’s Spiderman. That moment he catches MJ and then breaks down was the most heartbreaking in the movie.
Okay, I’m back, still trying to parse through the implications of that ending (but I’m on a different thread now – I promise!).
TL;DR – I’m a huge nerd.
So, Dr. Strange’s spell:
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I’m assuming it didn’t change actually events – everything we saw happen in all of the MCU movies still happened exactly the way we saw – it’s just that everyone has forgotten Peter Parker. Otherwise you’ve got some serious butterfly effects to sew up.
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Also, people still obviously remember Spider-man, so everything Peter did while masked and anonymous is still remembered by everyone who witnessed it, heard about it, read about it, etc.
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Making a leap here – I have to assume that the spell included not only people’s memories, but all records as well. For example, I assume that when Spider-Man was part of the Avengers, there was a substantial vetting process and there are detailed files on him – I assume all mention of Peter Parker is erased from them. Similarly, any news footage of the past few months when people were actively siding with or against Spider-man is gone too, as well as any posters, billboards, fanfic, etc. made linking Peter Parker to Spider-man. Otherwise, it would be pretty trivial for everyone to learn who he was all over again.
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Following that, for people who were actively participating in the pro- or anti- Peter Parker campaigns of the past few months, there would probably be a significant amount of “lost time” where folks can’t remember what they were doing the night they went to a Peter Parker protest/rally, etc. And J Jonah Jameson might find it weird that not only can’t he remember what his shows were about over the past few months, he can’t seem to find any saved recordings of then anywhere either.
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But Jameson’s a clown – think about someone intelligent like Nick Fury. Suppose he’s trying to remember who Spider-man was for some reason (he wants to get in touch with him about something Avengers-related, or something). He goes to look him up and finds that there are no records about his true identity, even though he was a member of the Avengers for a while there. “That’s strange,” he thinks, “it’s like someone went through and expunged his name from the records. Banner, what do you make of this?” “I can’t find any evidence of any tampering with the records, sir. Maybe we should ask Strange. This seems to be more up his alley.”
It’s best not to think about it, and just assume it’s magic so it will work itself out. Otherwise you have to start thinking about that whole ass mural sitting in their school that spells out the whole thing.
He teared up too, which really made it hit home.
I have to admit that I wasn’t a particular fan of Garfield’s Spidey in his earlier films but damn, both he and Maguire have matured as actors (by which I don’t just mean ‘got older’) and the writing has improved since their time in the suit quite a lot as well. It was an absolute joy to watch the three of them interacting.
Actually I was quite impressed by a lot of the performances here. Dafoe in GG mode was standard comic-book villain fare but Dafoe as “frightened and confused mentally ill man in a shelter kitchen” was heartwrenching. And Molina’s transformation as well gave him a chance to show off his acting chops. Even Zendaya and Batalon managed to raise the bar for sidekicks everywhere.
On the other hand: there’s a story about how, when Bruce Willis was making Twelve Monkeys he was given a list of Bruce Willis-isms to avoid, to get him out of his usual rut, and I really wish someone would do that to Jamie Foxx. Foxx has shown in the past that he is capable of sublime performances, but lately he seems more interested in looking cool on film than in actually inhabiting interesting characters. He really could have done more with what he was given but it felt phoned-in to me.
And Cumberbatch got the short straw on writing - a few goofy quips and cantankerous barbs for the fans, and then off to the Grand Canyon for most of the film because really he was only there to set up the plot and the next film in the series.
The mid-credits stinger suggests otherwise.
Heh. “You’re from Queens and you help out poor people - I thought you would be black.”
ETA: On JJJ, I noted they were really hammering home the Alex Jones /Infowars thing, complete with fake supplements. Schadenfreudelicious!
I just came from seeing it. I liked it but have a couple of questions.
- Did we seen Doctor Strange at the Grand Canyon? I didn’t think so but while watching those endless credits, noticed a couple including a helicopter pilot or camera operator at the Grand Canyon. So did they film there but leave the scenes out?
- When did the Statue of Liberty acquire a Captain America shield? And was the statue damaged in a previous MCU movie, explaining the need for the scaffolding?
And I was thinking that re-watching all of the previous Spiderman films might have helped, as I couldn’t remember where all the villains appeared.
- I think the train chase sequence with Doctor Strange had some very Grand Canyon-esque backgrounds.
- This movie is set immediately after the second Spidey, and that one was only a few weeks after the blip reset, when Cap “died”, which was (will be) 2023 sometime. So that’s when.
- This particular alteration to Lady Liberty was also mentioned in last week’s episode of Hawkeye but I’m not sure which year that is set; it may also be 2023, or more likely 2024.
That really struck me when we see “Tenement Apartment Dweller Peter” holding a GED book. So no records of Peter Parker getting into MIT, or even going to high school!
Does he have a driver’s license or a birth certificate?
And when he met Happy at May Parker’s grave, he said that he knew her through Spiderman. I think Happy also says he knew her through Spiderman. But we know that Happy only met May when he was visiting Spiderman’s alter ego. So how does Happy remember how he met her?
I thought so as well. I wasn’t a huge fan of Garfield’s Spider-Man movies and his Parker wasn’t a very good Peter Parker, imo. He was a cool skateboarder trying to disguise as a nerdy and unliked high school student. I’m not really familiar with Garfield otherwise but he was great in No Way Home while still getting to poke a little fun at the previous movies. “I fought a Russian in rhino armor.”
Definitely. I thought the wierdo nerd he played in ASM2 was just too far over the top (we can blame the script or director or studio interference or whatever else) but his character here seemed like such a far swing in the other direction. They did address it in the dialog but it seems to me that he could have been something between goofball electrical engineer and angry thug.
My 14-year-old and I saw it late Friday and we loved it. He was very giddy throughout the screening and even got up and spun around in circles after the final credits and post credit finished. I liked the story and the idea that Spider-Man had the opportunity to try to save the villains, I liked that some of the goofier stuff from pervious films were discarded (Green Goblin’s mask always looked terrible and distracting to me though I wonder how he was able to smash it with just a brick), I wish that Aunt May didn’t die but I thought that making it a part of Spider-Man being unable to save his loved ones and building character from it was very well done. I’d like to know what happened to Uncle Ben though - he was mentioned once in a prior movie but not referenced again.
And that post credits with Dr. Strange was very cool and I liked seeing America Chavez in it. I’m looking forward to that movie now.
Anyone know if Tom Holland will be returning as Spider-Man or is this the last one?
Same way he was smashing Spiderman through a whole building.
He is not contracted, but wants to and they want to.
This movie is clearly setup to:
- give Marvel the negotiating advantage over Tom Holland. If he wants a lot of money…out he goes
- give Sony an out if they want to split with the MCU
I hope that Spider-man stays in the MCU and it remains Tom Holland.
I kind of hope he does return as Spider-Man because I’m curious how the “no one recognizes Peter Parker” works. Say all of the Avengers need to show up at S.H.I.E.L.D. Central for the latest crisis threatening the world and everyone removes their masks. Spider-Man does so, and the others greet who exactly?
I loved this. My main issue with the MCU Spider-Man was always that he was basically Mini Iron Man and had none of the Heroic Angst that is a hallmark of Spider-Man. All of that is fixed now. Also maybe this will finally vindicate my liking of Amazing Spider-Man 2. I always felt that was a pretty good movie (good enough that it made me like the first one more than I originally did) and I was sad the third never got made.
But this one, Amazing ( no pun intended). I loved the way it looked at heroism and the sacrifices that are made to do the right thing sometimes. I wanted to immediately see it again when it was over.
I only saw that movie about a a week and a half ago. Good thing I did, to be honest. Anyway, I liked it quite a bit. However, I would have simply had Electro be the villain to kill Gwen Stacey. Forcing a Green Goblin back into the mix was not effective in my opinion.
I do think Electro seemed really different in this movie compared to the previous one.
I just got back. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t think it was as good as Into the Spider-Verse, but it’s also a very different movie despite the obvious similarities.
I agree with several others, it was fun seeing all of those old characters and actors again. I didn’t particularly like the Andrew Garfield movies, but I thought he was fine in them, and it really was a moving moment that this time, he caught her. I liked the Tobey Maguire movies, but I didn’t actually like Tobey Maguire much in them. But I really liked him here as a the somewhat older and wiser Peter Parker. I was really impressed with not just the script but also the subtle acting. There were cadences and inflections and mannerisms, where I thought all three of Maguire, Garfield, and Holland did a really great, understated job of conveying both their similarities and their differences.
I also really enjoyed that this movie wasn’t about super-punching some randomly evil opponent, but about saving people. And we did get a bit of a CGI mess of a fight at the end, and the required glowing sky portal with hordes of enemies, but at least no giant monsters or two armies charging across a flat plain at each other.
Yes, as the train is mirror splitting and flying through portals, we also see rock formations reflecting and splitting around it. And Dr. Strange wound up suspended in mid-air…somewhere. I don’t think it was clearly established that he was at the Grand Canyon on-screen in the footage that actually made it into the movie, though.
Poking around online, it appears that this is just something that happened off-screen at some point in the MCU. I don’t think it’s been directly addressed on-screen anywhere, but apparently there’s some supplemental material suggesting that it’s being refurbished and fitted with a shield as a monument to Captain America I and the Avengers.
As to Peter and records, it seems to me like there must be records of him. Otherwise, how does he even have any money? That should mean that SHIELD would have records of his identity, but SHIELD got literally blown up. So did Avengers HQ. I think his school should still have records that he’s enrolled there, but none of his classmates or teachers remember him. So, if he shows up as a senior with records indicating he’s been there the whole time, but no one has any idea who he is, that would open up a huge can of worms, so he decided not to deal with that. Anyway, I think that’s one element of the plot it’s best not to think too much about. Also, Magic!
On a side note, I think this movie was yet another exhibit in how big a meta-mistake it was for the MCU to blow up SHIELD. They just keep bringing in not-SHIELD organizations to fill SHIELD’s role. We’ve had remnant-SHIELD and new-SHIELD in Agents of SHIELD, Fury’s remnant/resurrected SHIELD in Avengers: Age of Ultron, SWORD in WandaVision, whatever unnamed post-SHIELD org Fury is running in Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: Far From Home, and now the Department of Damage Control.