this movie is "rememberry the movie" - every time it stops being a rememberry it gets a little more interesting
the movie is a discourse with the past (the meta past of spider-man movies, which we experienced, and the characters did not), the movie's central conceit is that spider-man's past villains are failures of spider-man's character.
it introduces the villains in 2 sets (goblin/doc ock & electro/sandman... the lizard is introduced somewhere between the two) with little action scenes so that for the rest of the movie they can be locked up, confined, not to acts in the world, but to discourse with spiderman, as if in his own mind. (though, brought into reality via multi-dimensional magic)
somewhere in the discourse between himself and the villains of prior eras one of the villains goes "you could've just left us to die, why didn't you?"
and MJ answers, "because that's not who he is" with a large pause that follows while peter stares at her (indicating we should care about that line)
and i gotta be real you gotta earn lines that on the nose - putting it in the first half of the movie, before the movie is even approaching a climax, makes me wince in an embarrassed pain.
final thoughts:
this movie is "Spider-Man: Master of the Biopolitical Order"
it's, presumably, about how The Old Spidermen were just violent and beat their villains to death, but This Spiderman is Different, and he's going to cure them (without any sort of communication or correspondence about what 'cure' means in this context, and inevitably, some of the villains resisting this 'cure' notion)
i said the movie was having a discourse with the past that we experienced - i said it that way because the movie does no work to establish this as "spiderman's past" we don't have any stakes for who these villains are, why we care about them. the first time the Other Peters meet MCU peter, it's because aunt may died and he's off in his Special Alone Spot. each spiderman gives a spiel about managing the sadness that comes with being spiderman, and how revenge isn't the answer. but that all comes WAY after MCU-peter has already had multiple interactions with the villains, after he's already decided he needs to cure them all.
but think about what this undoes! sam raimi-spiderman didn't fail doc ock! he saved him in his last moments! he reached the scientist who wanted to make the world a better place, got him to see that his plans had become destructive, that he was being manipulated by the machines integrated into his spine - manipulated by the reckless pursuit of his goals, beyond the reason for his goals. doc ock's last moments were moments of self-sacrifice.
this could be mitigated if we had our spider-men come together before they interact with the villains, so they can tell us why *they* carry these villains with them still, what they feel ashamed for not having done right.
this movie is a mess of ADR and interactions between characters that don't feel like they're standing in the same country, let alone the same room, relying solely on rememberries to goad you on. eat your slop.
@exiliaex@masto.anarch.cc peter literally killed his gf. by choosing to put her dying wish aside, he chose to kill the person he once loved, only letting a shell of what she was
@exiliaex what a wild ride
@exiliaex this is some of the worst acting i've seen
like the scene with norman osborne struggling with green goblin - the mask hung on the dumpster like the scene where its hung from his chair from the raimi spiderman. completely uninteresting in substance.
norman seeming like a "crazy homeless person" pleading with aunt may about how people live in his house and how his son doesn't exist and how he "loses himself sometimes... someone else is in control sometimes" - that's much more interesting.
i'm a little under halfway through we'll see where this goes