Saw this last night. Should have been titled Spider Man: The Retcon.
I see people saying that this is basically the "Endgame" of Spider Man films, but it's closer to "X-Men: Days of Future Past" in how that film cleaned up the shitpile that was X-3 The Last Stand, No Way Home essentially takes this entire, for lack of a better term, "Iron Man Jr" era of films and just very neatly places them into the garbage.
It was a really great spectacle, and certainly the most entertaining retcon that I've seen, but this story for better or worse acknowledges the rumblings throughout the fanbase that this iteration of Spider Man just was not being done right as by the end of the film, everyone has forgotten that Peter ever existed, even Dr Strange himself.
Pete abandons his friends to their new lives where he will no longer endanger them, he has no access to any Stark Tech, and he creates the classic red and blue suit on his sewing machine in his new apartment before strutting it in the films final swing sequence.
So this sets up a do over of sorts with the next Holland films. With my main gripe essentially being retconned, I am interested to see where they go from here with it.
In a way it feels like "One more day" without the payoff of saving May's life. He loses his relationship with MJ, but also anyone who knew he ever existed in exchange for his secret identity having never been disclosed, and May remains dead. An odd choice, considering that One More Day is reviled by many fans almost as much as the Clone Saga. But for a Hollywood film, it's kind of the only way you can go such a different direction.
A good ol fashioned forget spell.
I'm not sure why we retconned the deaths of Electro, Norman Osborn, and Otto Octavius though. It's not like Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina are going to be popping back up in future films due to their age, and Electro just isn't very interesting.
They should have retconned that dumbass idea that Flint Marko was the one that killed Ben in Raimi's universe. They actually rehashed that ****ing bullshit. Saying once again, hey. It wouldn't matter if you stopped Carradine. Your uncle would still be dead. I ****ing HATE that change to Spidermans origins.
The whole idea is supposed to hit you like a truck. My God. If he had just stopped that man like he should have, Ben would be alive.
Hated it in SM3, hate it more now.
Loved Dafoe's performance, and makes me even more sad that he spent most of the original film under that stupid ass helmet. His ability to play two characters with the same face, and be so wildly different is just awesome. His conversation with the Goblin in the mirror in the original film is one of my all time favorite scenes. He pulls off making Norman a tragic character extremely well.
In the end it was a fun movie having the other Spider Men come and assist. While I'm interested to see what's next, after this one ended I couldn't help but feel these first 3 movies were just a big waste of time. Like, it took 3 films to get where you should have started.
But hey, it's gonna make a metric shit ton of money so no harm no foul.
As an aside for anyone who saw this.
When did the spell to make people forget Peter Parker was Spiderman, suddenly turn into make everyone forget Peter Parker ever existed?
Not sure when that change got made, and it didn't really make a lot of sense that his best friends now not only don't know he's Spider Man, they don't know who he is at all.