THE AVERAGE SPIDER-MAN
I do not care about the Tom Holland movies at all, and to be honest I had a lot of criticisms about the Sam Rami trilogy (The Holy Trilogy) when they first came out, but looking back at those with my 2021 goggles on, good lord they have aged like a fine wine.
THE CAST:
SPIDER-MAN TINY (Tom Holland): First off you have Tom Holland who is 4’11, which is just way too short, there is a scene with Tom and Tobey next to each other and Tobey straight up had to take a knee to be on eye level with this small child.
MJ (Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman): Next you have the new version of Mary Jane…or…err…excuse me, it’s just M.J., if you are going to have a new love interest for Peter that isn’t Mary Jane….okay I guess……but at least make her hot, this potato head straight up looks like former President of Nintendo Reggie Fils-Aimé.
AUNT MAY (Marisa Tomei): In this universe Aunt May instead of being a shriveled up old sea hag is a bit younger, which hey…I get…..no one likes looking at old people. For this role they cast Marisa Tomei, which is fine, I’m still uncertain why Gen Xers go ape shit for her so much, I missed out on being a Gen Xer by about 2 years so I guess I just don’t see it.
FLASH THOMPSON (Tony Revolori): The bully/jock/popular kid who traditionally is played by a juiced up Chad type character, but nope….not in this nightmare cast, Flash is played by a 4’6 Bollywood child actor who’s never even been in the parking lot of a gym before. In a realistic fight even Tom Holland would be able to send this kid to the E.R.
J. JOHAH JAMESON (J.K. Simmons): J.J. is hands down one of the best castings in any movie ever, his role in The Holy Trilogy never fails to crack me up, he is right up there with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine as far as perfect castings go. With that out of the way, his role in this movie confused me…..is he from Tobey or Tiny’s universe? I get that he’s more of a Alex Jones type character instead of working for The Daily Bugle in this movie, since newspapers aren’t really a thing anymore, but why does Tiny’s J.J. look exactly like Tobey’s J.J.?
SPIDER-MAN THE HOLY TRILOGY (Tobey Maguire): The actual Spider-Man Tobey Maguire dons the red and blue for the first time since 2007. Tobey does about as good of a job as a 46 year old tired actor wearing Spider-Man pajamas can do.
SPIDER-MAN AMAZING (Andrew Garfield): I actually really enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and Andrew Garfeild did a decent job in his movies, but I didn’t mark out for his return like I did for Tobey.
GREEN GOBLIN (Williem Dafoe): Dafoe returns and nails it.
DOCTOR OCTOPUS (Alfred Molina): Molina returns and nails it.
SANDMAN (Thomas Haden Church): Exit light, enter the guy from Wings.
THE LIZARD (Rhys Ifans): Okay.
ELECTRO (Jamie Foxx): No thanks.
DAREDEVIL (Charlie Cox): Netflix boy shows up for a cup of coffee.
DOCTOR STRANGE (Benedict Cumberbatch): I am so sick of this guy.
THE STORY:
In between jokes being told, Dr. Strange opens a portal for Peter Parker to fix something, when all of a sudden….UH OH BIG BOO BOO….now there are many Spider-Mans.
PROS:
-I never thought that two decades after seeing Spider-Man (2002) that I’d be back in a theater seeing Tobey Maguire return as Spider-Man, so that was pretty cool.
-The Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus are fantastic villains and steal the screen whenever they are on.
-The one scene with all three Spider-Men swinging towards the villains at the end looked really epic.
CONS:
-WAAAAAAY WAAAAAAAAAY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY TOO MANY JOKES. I made this comment on social media and some rube replied with….
“Yah, jokes in movies, what a bad idea.”
…and I replied with…
“I've already got Step Brothers Unrated on blu-ray if I want to crack a LoL. I get that a action movie needs a few jokes, but the let's make an awkward joke every 2 minutes was pretty cringe. It was even worse than the Joss Whedon Justice League.”
Seriously though, the movie felt like I was watching a sitcom and needed a laugh track. It was extremely painful watching Tobey have to force his MCU comedy bits. The Holy Trilogy had several few well thought out comedy moments sprinkled about and they all worked, it wasn’t a total comedy movie like No Way Home was.
-No return of any of Spider-Man’s other love interests.
I would have really liked to have seen Kirsten Dunst return as the actual Mary Jane and share a moment on the screen with Tobey’s Spider-Man, a massive feel good moment missed out on there. Maybe it would have overshadowed the current Peter and MJ’s romance, that’s the only reason I can think of as to why they didn’t include her.
It would have been nice to see a glimpse of Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy as well, while she is sort of forgettable in The Holy Trilogy, she’s so breathtakingly beautiful, I’d never complain about seeing her on screen.
Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy returning would have also gotten a massive pop out of everyone, but again I think it would have overshadowed the current Spider-Man and MJ’s romance.
-Bruce Campbell could have easily been used for a thirty second cameo as ANYONE in the movie since he played a different character in each of The Holy Trilogy movies, and was even supposed to have played Mysterio in the canceled Spider-Man 4.
-A lot of the action scenes in the movie were filmed in very dark locations or during night time, which kind of takes away from the entire point of the movie, which is being able to see thirty different characters on the screen all at once.
OVERALL THOUGHTS:
-As a lifelong Spider-Man fan, and as a fan of The Holy Trilogy, it was worth watching on the big screen to see some old favorites return, outside of that……it was just your average monthly Marvel movie.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) gets a 🥞🥞🥞 out of 🥞🥞🥞🥞🥞
