I figure the idea is that they declared for supervillainy because of, and while nursing a grudge against, Tony Stark (and while maybe never even having heard of Spider-Man).
Ok, this is fair.
I don’t really consider them his since they were inspired by Tony. Silly quibble, I guess.
Edit: Spider-ninjaed!
That’s nice for them and I wish them happiness but it doesn’t change that when they kiss in No Way Home they seem like they are cousins.
Maybe they were acting like friends that were kissing for the first time, which can tend to be awkward sometimes. If they are real life in love, but looked awkward on screen, which is more likely? Acting? Or they have a zero chemistry yet in love relationship?
In any case, I don’t remember that when I saw the movie. I just remember really enjoying myself while watching the first MCU Spiderman movie.
Watched this a few nights ago on streaming. Definitely wish I’d seen it in theaters, but COVID gonna COVID.
Overall, I thought it was… OK. Low-to-middling for MCU movies. Lots of fun moments, but an overall plot that was held together by bubblegum and tissue paper to a frustrating degree.
It definitely felt like the writers knew where they wanted to end up (3 spidermen fighting lots of old baddies, redemptions), and just made up whatever shit they wanted in order to get there, and rushed through it and hoped we wouldn’t notice. In particular, the scene with Strange actually casting the spell was just bonkers ridiculous. Yes, Strange is arrogant. And yes, Peter is a teenager. But they’re both also extremely intelligent stress-tested heroes. It’s just beyond nuts for them to be as haphazard as they are about that.
Similarly, Peter knows how much damage a super villain can do if let free. Does he want to cure them and redeem them? Great. But it’s just contrived as heck for him to let them out of magic-super-prison while trying to accomplish that laudable goal.
And, finally, the entire premise, that somehow people will believe this fairly ridiculous claim about Spiderman being a bad guy after he saved the entire universe not long before is just silly. It won’t take long to dig up the fact that Jake Gyllenhaal (can’t even remember his character’s name) was a disgruntled former Stark employee, not an multiversal savior. And all the other superheroes will presumably stand up for him.
Still, hard to deny that the three spidermen working together was great fun, and the Peter Parker/MJ/Ned chemistry is fantastic.
Keep in mind it isn’t leading man/femme fatale/loyal sidekick chemistry, it’s Awkward Nerd Chemistry!
I’d rebut that people have believed in a lot dumber things than that “Mysterio was a hero and Spider-man killed him.” That part felt pretty believable.
I didn’t seen the last one but saw this one today and we really enjoyed it. Certainly upper tier of Marvel films.
This part struck me as inexplicable, because making everyone just forget who Peter Parker is doesn’t change the fact that physical evidence of his existence is still around… including the video of Mysterio saying “Spider-Man is Peter Parker!” MJ will still have a photo of him in her wallet; Ned will still have texts and emails from him. His student records will still exist. He still has a social security number. His belongings are in a room dedicated to him in May’s apartment. And since the memory of Spider-Man still exists… like, it doesn’t work.
No, it’s not just you, she does pull off being a teenager (where I find most 20-something actresses look obviously like adults when playing teens.) She’s got the skinny, awkward, young-deer-just-learning-to-walk look typical of a lot of teenaged girls. She also just plays it well (she doesn’t seem young in “Dune”) and it’s written well. One of the dead giveaways is that adults playing teens just seem a bit too confident and comfortable. It’s subtle but an adult picks up on that really quickly.
Famously, if at any time you come across something in fantastical fiction you don’t think makes internal logical sense, the answer is “A Wizard Did It.” And in this case, it was literally a Wizard that did it, so, problem solved.
They constructed the plot so as it works on first pass as long as you don’t think too hard on it. It’s fine, it’s a comic book movie, and those kinds of situations are part of the deal.
Haven’t seen it yet - but why not just remove the video/memory of Mysterio?
Because there are somethings a wizard can’t do. We don’t know what those things are.
My take was that the spell didn’t eliminate “Peter Parker” so much as put in a blind spot that follows him around. Happy still knows May had a nephew named Peter. He just won’t recognize him when they meet and won’t put the two people together in his mind. The school still has his records etc just they’re not “his.” Much simpler. And “Spider-man” just won’t fit next to the name Peter Parker-it will be dismissed instantly.
That definitely could have been within Dr. Strange’s ability to do, I’m sure.
But then, Peter went to him and asked him to wipe the memory of every living person on Earth because the scandal had prevented him and his friends from getting into college, rather than simply ask the MIT dean of admissions to review his case and possibly change her mind. Strange specifically called him out on that after the fact. Peter didn’t know that was a thing he could do-- he jumped right into “ask a wizard to do it.”
Sure, it makes sense for some people to believe it. I would have liked it a lot more if we’d seen a crossfire-style show where one person is saying “for goodness’ sake, we know that Mysterio was actually (his real name), a disgruntled former Stark employee, and (several other logical reasons why it makes no sense for Spiderman to be a murderer)” and the other person said “sure, that’s what they WANT you to think”, or something… to make it clear that Mysterio’s claim was believed by some but not by sober-minded people who fully examined the evidence. But the way the movie presented it (at least to me) was that no one critically examined the claims at all, there was no actual evidence against them, it was purely he-said-he-said, etc.
Then there wouldn’t be a movie. The plot of a Spider-Man film is, Peter makes some dumb-arse mistake, then, in trying to fix it, just makes things worse.
I love that movie! And before that, the comic arc, and the original Ditko version before that!
I can’t wait for the next “Peter makes some dumb-arse mistake” movie… anybody knows when that’ll be?
At the risk of pooh-poohing, I don’t really think that’s a particularly relevant response. It’s entirely possible to write a story in which a character does something stupid or reckless and then has to deal with the consequences of that mistake without also having moments where the in-story-genius-level-main-characters miss something incredibly obvious that would have solved all their problems if they’d just thought of it, leaving the audience frustrated at their incompetence.
I mean, that is what he thinks he’s asking for when he says “Make everyone forget I’m Spider-Man”. He realizing that he wanted all the people who knew him before the video to remember screws it up.
Another thing is, it looks like what Doctor Strange did to fix everything back to normal is what is predicating his next movie, and possibly the entire next phase of the MCU. So as awkward and plot-holey as things may have gotten, certain story beats were required for the saga to continue.