So coming into this movie, I was jaded and cynical about the whole conceit. But it was good, somehow, in spite of basically being exactly what I thought it would be.

Things:

  1. So we saw this on release day, obviously, which means: release day crowd. We’ve normally been seeing movies on Saturday mornings when they’re deserted, and this is, yeah, a very different experience. People kept cheering and clapping and I can’t decide whether I like it or hate it. (It did get me uncomfortable enough to keep a fancy mask on the whole movie, which I was not anticipating doing.)

  2. So I’ve never seen the Andrew Garfield Spidermen, so the parts of it that came from that movie didn’t land the same way as the ones from the Maguire Spidermen. Based on crowd reactions as expressed in clapping and cheering, this is a widely-shared sentiment.

  3. The intra-Spiderman banter really worked. Like, the way that even though they’re from different universes, they all kinda get each other, but also still had distinct personalities, with Andrew Garfield as the clown (which I have no idea if that’s how he played the character in his movies, or if they’re kinda riffing on everyone hating those movies) and Maguire as the sober, grown-up conscience (which works not only because he’s way older than the other two, but because he’s Tobey Maguire).

  4. But for everything I just said about Garfield as the clown, the absolute biggest tearjerker of the whole movie was when he saved MJ from the Green Goblin in the way he couldn’t save Gwen Stacy. Which I think works because the Gwen Stacy thing is what happened with the real Spiderman, so it felt larger than just Garfield’s character — “here’s a second chance, and this time he succeeds” has decades of buildup. At least if you’re a Spider-fan.

  5. Which, this whole movie is the biggest fan service imaginable. Like, I always shit on critics for not being able to take these movies on their terms, but honestly, this one is asking a lot of its audiences; it really wants you to be deeply invested into not only the MCU but the cinematic history of this character. The tbf is that all those movies (except the Garfield ones) made infinity trillion dollars so there are lots of fans out there, but still.

  6. Willem Dafoe, man, twenty years later and he’s still scenery-chewing as Norman Osborn. It’s funny, because he’s too over-the-top for a modern MCU villain, but he’s really good at doing his thing.

  7. I hadn’t really realized that this Spiderman didn’t have an Uncle Ben or a “with great power” moment, but giving him one three movies in except with May is a bold choice.

  8. The thing I don’t like about the movie: The end of it seems to have been written to set up an MCU divorce from Sony. It gives them a path to take Tom Holland into their Sony Spiderman movies without taking any of the characters or concepts owned or developed by Disney. (Also, if @kate_nepveu ever sees this movie, I predict she is going to hate how he goes against Zendaya’s expressed wishes and leaves her alone “for her own good.”) On the other hand, Happy still knew who Spiderman was, so maybe they’ll stick in the MCU? I think the optimistic case is that the end was written so that Sony would feel like they had good options in the next round of negotiations.