I saw it! Small spoilers, then big spoilers beneath the cut:
This film is one hundred percent fan service (references to the comics, the games and even the memes are all included) and it’s all the better for it. A absolute crowd-pleaser, even in the subdued and quiet cinema I went to (ya gotta avoid that Omicron) there were some muted cheers at a few points.
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In celebration of going to see No Way Home tomorrow, I decided to give myself Spider-Man themed nails! The web is only on one finger because I could only pull off detailed work with my right hand, not the left. Still, it looks pretty cool! (It’s much, much better in real life than the photo.)
No Way Home did actually come out in the UK today! But I don’t get to see it until Saturday. All reviews for the movie seem very promising, but yet I’m still DREADING it in some very specific ways. God I hope it’s good.
One month before the movie, it’s here! And no sign of Tobey or Andrew, though the last scene rather heavily hints at them.
I’m… not sure what I think. I guess my thoughts here still stand. I’ve also seen a lot of people take umbrage at the Doc Ock “What’s your ACTUAL name” joke and I’m not a fan of it either, partly because it’s a rip-off of a much better joke from Spider-Man 2 and partly because, this tweet says it best-
But I’ve probably have completely overlooked it if the MCU wasn’t doing it all the time, you know? Almost all the movies (save Black Panther) are very, “Ha ha! You’re not taking this comic book stuff SERIOUSLY are you?” before immediately asking us to take it seriously. And that really grates after a while.
This whole movie is still shaping up to be a tour of Spider-Man’s greatest hits (Ock! Goblin! Lizard! Woman plummeting to near-certain death!) rather than a story in itself, and I’m not really sure what I think about that either.
Hey, didya see that one big supposed Spider-Man leak today? I don’t dare repost the pictures here. I’ll just say they were featuring the two other Spider-folks everyone expects to show up, plus Daredevil (which is kinda what made me lean on the side of “probably not real”). And I am DREADING THIS FILM! I mean, I’m excited too, it’s hard not to be at this point, but I love the Raimi trilogy y’know? It’s why I still have raimispiderman going over on tumblr. And I just don’t want the MCU messing with the core story of the Raimi movies. I can accept some cameos from what appear to be slight variations on Molina-Ock and Dafoe-Goblin, but bring Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man back and it just sort of… disrupts the canon of the original movies, you know? They were very down to earth (as far as superhero flicks can be) and just don’t fit in with the wider MCU and its multiversal gods-and-monsters stuff at all.
I am looking forward to seeing what’s apparently a new Green Goblin costume (worn by a stuntman here-)
but Goblin is on the poster released yesterday and as far as I can tell it’s the same costume from the Raimi movies, so that’s a wee bit disappointing.
It also occurs to me that poor Tom Holland hasn’t really had a solo solo film yet, another big MCU superhero is always there with him and in this one he’s kinda by necessity playing second fiddle to the supervillains. Aww man, sorry Tom.
Is anyone else feeling the same way? Just sort of a bit :/ about the whole enterprise?
So Cultured Vultures let me review Amazing Spider-Man #74 for them! You can probably guess it’s not positive, right?
https://culturedvultures.com/amazing-spider-man-74-finale/
I’m still a big Spider-Man fan, always will be, and I still have plans for harryosborn.net! But god, this run. It took years off my life, I swear.
Perhaps you’ve been following my complete mental clusterfuck rage over this story. Nick Spencer’s last issue dropped yesterday, I read it today. And after all that… This godawful story ends on a horrible damp squib. It was depressing, it was pointless, it made no sense. Nothing made sense. It contradicted long-past stories and recent stories and itself.
My only solace is that Harry was never actually a demon after all, just suffering in hell. I know how he feels.
So the infamous Spider-Man story Sins Past is about to be retconned, according to some leaks that have just come out about the end of Nick Spencer’s Spider-Man run. I’m… not looking forward to it. (You’re bound to hear all about it on harryosborn.net.) For a start I suspect it’s not going to deal with the actual sin.
In the years after Sins Past came out there was so much complaining about how the story “ruined” or “tainted” Gwen. But let’s look at what she actually does in the story, shall we? Not much, because the story doesn’t seem nearly as interested in her as it is in her uterus, but-
Gwen finds herself attracted to Norman after he (during one of his spates of non-villainy) helps rescue her and her dad. Okay, fair enough. Gwen actually wasn’t technically Peter’s girlfriend at the time, and even when she was it didn’t seem completely exclusive, since Harry and MJ were in the mix there too. So she was really free to pursue whoever she wanted. Norman is, uh, an odd choice but his design was based on Tommy Lee Jones around this time and I’m sure Tommy Lee Jones had his share of female admirers, so whatever.
Now let’s look at what Norman does in the story!
He has a girl young enough to be his daughter turn up at his house and fawn over him. Norman must have known Gwen as a teenager at least a little, surely, since she and Harry were close friends since high school. He must have some idea of her personality, that her mother was dead and she was devoted to her father. And then…
What exactly passed between them to make them instantly fall into bed together? We don’t know, but we do know that it’s heavily implied this is the first time Gwen had sex with anyone–
-that Norman wielded quite a lot of power and influence at the time, even without bringing his superhero alter-ego into things-
-and that, this is rather crucial I always thought, they didn’t use protection! That’s where the twins came from!
Does any of this sound like a regular “affair”? No! You know what a decent man does if a girl so much younger makes a pass at him? He SAYS NO!
But that’s not what happened. Gwen soon found out what sort of man Norman was and found herself pregnant. (You’ve got to wonder if she considered getting an abortion, but the story isn’t interested in that.) She gave birth to the twins and then Norman murdered her. The Death of Gwen Stacy was written long before Sins Past came out but one thing SP didn’t retcon was that Gwen meant less than nothing to Norman.
Oh, and eventually he then proceeded to creepily hit on her alternate self too.
….Where there was an even bigger age gap, I’m assuming.
Long story short, Norman is a misogynist who took advantage of a younger woman, and Sins Past just never really acknowledges it. The Gwen/Norman encounter is treated like a regular affair, albeit one where superpowered sperm is involved (ugh) but it wasn’t. Yes it was between two consenting adults, but oh god the power dynamics. It’s a story that plays out time and time again in real life and yep, always ends badly for the woman.
Gwen was Norman’s victim in all of this but was treated like his collaborator. That’s the real sin of Sins Past.
Okay you gotta see this, even if you’re not a Spider-Man fan. Someone remade the No Way Home trailer using only footage from the 90s cartoon and it’s… I’m in awe of this person’s editing skills, okay? And the fact that they did it within DAYS of the actual trailer coming out!
