Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts, December 17, 2021) Movie • Page 78

I really liked this article’s reading of it a lot:

Power and responsibility, and their relationship to each other become a course learned throughout the Spider-Man Home trilogy, each time taking on different contexts and leaving Peter to face different repercussions and have time in which to process them. And this brings us to No Way Home in which Peter reluctantly agrees to try to cure a collection of Spider-Man villains from the multiverse on behalf of his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). He tells her that they aren’t his responsibility, and that looking out for his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) and ensuring they are able to go on with their lives are his priorities. May reprimands Peter and reminds him that helping people is who they are. Just as it seems Peter might be successful in curing this cross-dimensional baddies, tragedy strikes when Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) sinks into his Green Goblin persona, destroying the cures and ultimately killing Aunt May. In her dying moments, it is May who delivers the iconic Spider-Man mantra. If it seems as though Peter is hearing these words for the first time, it’s because he is.

Rather than have Spider-Man’s origin as a hero begin with the “with great power, comes great responsibility line,” his origin story, his training concludes with it. Those words and the death of Aunt May mark the end of his childhood, and segue into a more mature Spider-Man. What’s important about this revision of events that every Spider-Man fan knows by heart is that Peter gets this final lesson in responsibility not because he did the wrong thing, but because he did the right thing. He isn’t guilty of Aunt May’s death, and by removing that guilt it allows Spider-Man to continue to be Peter Parker’s choice, rather than a burden, or the fulfillment of someone else’s dream.

I believe this will lead to Peter Parker having a healthier relationship with his Spider-Man persona because the role isn’t his punishment. What’s more is that Watts, and screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, drive home the idea that May’s death and delivery of those words isn’t the same as Uncle Ben’s to the other two Spider-Men (Maguire and Andrew Garfield) who come to Peter’s aid. It’s not as though Peter being responsible for Ben’s death made them better Spider-Men as both of these Variants of Peter admit they’ve dealt with their fair share of darkness, with Garfield’s iteration admitting he stopped pulling his punches, and forgot the Peter Parker side of himself, resulting in the deaths of his adversaries, and Maguire’s version admitting that things were still complicated between him and Mary Jane and that he was still “trying to do better.”

There’s a healing moment across three generations of Spider-Men as they all deal with the fact that there is no perfect version of themselves who made all the right choices. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a process which there is no right way to find. But it’s made clear that for three Spider-Men, who all wish they had done something differently, holding onto guilt and grief doesn’t make the mantra stronger or more noble. In having the chance to cure others they cure themselves, emerging vindicated as better heroes and better people.

In the epilogue of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter visits May’s grave, which is notable in the fact that there is no Uncle Ben beside her, lending further credence to the fact that Ben may not have been someone Peter even knew, and didn’t shape his journey as Spider-Man in the same way. It’s refreshing to see Peter Parker get back to the basics of the character at the end of the film, a poor adult in a crappy New York apartment, with a homemade costume, and content, because of the lessons he learned across three films from a superhero idol who initially seemed so different from him, from two other versions of himself who solidified for him what it means to be Spider-Man, and from Aunt May who not only got to raise Peter Parker but Spider-Man as well, leading him to go off in the world and continue her legacy of helping those who need it most.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/m...n-no-way-home-ending-peter-parker-1235064885/

 

I thought it was funny that Andrew's Peter recognized the "great power..." line, but his Uncle Ben never really said it that way lol

"You are a lot like your father. You really are, Peter, and that's a good thing. But your father lived by a philosophy, a principle, really. He believed that if you could do good things for other people, you had a moral obligation to do those things! That's what's at stake here. Not choice. Responsibility."

 

Yeah that’s the good stuff right there. Imagine thinking these movies don’t have a lot going on thematically lol

 

“vindication” i’m above making the obvious joke here…

 

I’m very pro just using the damn line, but the ASM version works very well in context. Probably mostly because of how it was delivered. And how the whole scene played out. Loved that version of the Parker household; it felt very familiar and real to me, personally.

The Civil War one was fine enough in context from what I recall, but it’s so weird to have ended that thread there. The only other hint is when Peter says something to Ned about what May had been going through recently (notably her and not himself).

And, yeah, I fundamentally disagree with that article’s take, lol. I do love the Aunt May thing here, and love that it uses the Amazing Fantasy #15 line verbatim to mean something different (it’s not to save her life, but to save the five villains’ lives, which rules). But, the burden aspect is fundamental to the character, more so than having webs or a red mask or brown hair. If you want Spider-Man without that, you don’t really want Peter Parker. Which, is fine! Other people have been and can be Spider-Man! But, if you want Peter, the burden of responsibility is the character.

 

He took on the burden of becoming a person who may as well have never been born solely to protect the people he loves and to maintain his responsibility as a hero. It’s the most Peter Parker decision he could’ve possibly made. The article is just saying he’s taking on the burden willingly in this version of the origin story, instead of being guilted into it. Raimi covered similar ground in Spider-Man 2, when Tobey-Peter rejected being guilted into the role of Spider-Man and had to come back to it on his own terms, willingly accepting the burden and rejecting his selfish desire to throw away his responsibility. It’s just a different take on the same origin story. All the elements are there just put together differently. It isn’t beholden to what came before it, and that’s exciting.

Fans of the character should really be applauding them for finding a new take on something so well-known. This character is Peter Parker through and through.

 

One of my favorite aspects of the movie is the redemption. It was also one of the criticisms I had when I first watched the trailer because I thought it was just going to be used as “young Peter gives them the benefit of the doubt and later has to kill them.”

I’m glad that isn’t how it went down and I felt it was handled well. None of the villains were truly evil, they were corrupted and/or misguided. Fear of what lies ahead got the best of them. I was kinda disappointed how Strange was so willing to send them to their deaths, but he doesn’t have the heart that Peter does and he also looks at the overall universal threat. Narratively, he filed the role that played out the drama.

I do like how he later was swayed by Peter’s decision to save them as soon as he realized it was possible, so in a way Peter also managed to change Dr Strange a bit.

 

His Peter essentially got a 6-movie origin story.

But in reality, I think Feige knew that the core Avengers were on their way out so he wanted Peter to have some experience with them before it’s an option that is no longer available. Now that the entire Stark relationship, Civil War, and “oh boy, the Avengers” stuff is done, you can start new with Peter while the audience was able to see some Spidey interactions that had never been on screen before.

 

It very well could have been a Watts thing and an attempt to give something fresh in any way, shape or form. He probably had a lot of pressure to prove himself that he could take something as giant as an MCU Spider-Man film and just went with something he felt would differentiate it from other Spidey films.

We also have the suitcase with Ben’s initials which is weird. You’d think May’s grave would have been next to Ben’s grave. At one point Watts perhaps thought the rolling snowball of ignoring Ben had become too large so he didn’t want to touch it.

We still have Freshman Year being released and I have no idea of the extent of Watts’ involvement, but I’m sure it will feature Ben and make everything more confusing for us.

 

Question on the ending of this if someone knows. Peter had Strange cast a spell that made everyone forget who Peter Parker was right? Not just knowing that Peter was Spider-Man? Was there a reason for that specifically?

 

This reminds me both of someone else's post wondering why they brought the villains to Happy's apartment instead of anywhere else and also of a connection I didn't make while watching the movie that had to be pointed out to me later.

And that is that clearly the reason they used Happy's apartment is because he has that Stark Industries device that allowed Peter to create the things he needed to resolve the issues with the villains. What I didn't figure out is that this is exactly what Matt Murdock was talking about when he mentioned Happy being under investigation for missing equipment. That's the missing equipment.

I don't know if I'm the only one who didn't pick up on that, but I just thought I'd share anyway.

 

I was all gung-ho to answer this question, and now I'm finding I have a question of my own regarding this.

Presuming that the spell was pulling in everyone who knew that Spider-Man was Peter Parker, then it appears their solution was to make no one know who Peter Parker is, basically cutting off the attracting force pulling them in.

My issue with this is that the villains don't know this Peter, they know a Peter in their universe, so wouldn't they need to make everyone forget all Peters in the multiverse for this to work properly? If it's just in his universe, then the other multiverses still know of a Peter, so wouldn't the spell still be pulling them in?

I feel like I'm thinking about this way too hard, but now that we're tugging this thread...

 

The damage to the fabric of reality had just gotten to the point where the only way to stop them from coming was for them to forget about him entirely.

 

The MCU reality is where the damage to the multiverse was originating from, and where the villains were all being drawn to, so presumably MCU Peter is the only Peter that actually needed to become a nobody. Once that specific Peter became a nobody, none of the villains would be drawn to him anymore.

 

I guess. The disconnect for me now is that the original spell seemed to not need to rely on Tom Holland's Spidey, because it was pulling in people who knew that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, regardless of the Peter or the Spider-Man. So if everyone forgets that only this particular Peter Parker is Spider-Man...

It feels like the end spell should match the parameters of the original spell. The original spell was all inclusive, so it makes more sense to me for the spell to fix it to also be all inclusive.

 

The first spell turned MCU Peter into a multiversal magnet. The second spell turned it off, basically.

 

Will the villains die when they return? Doc Ock said he was taken when he had his hands hand Peter’s throat. So he wasn’t taken during the end of SM2 but during a fight. So perhaps it’s before he started the machine at the finale and of SM2 and he will live?

 

I mean, I get it, but when you start picking at the threads, I feel like the logic doesn't entirely hold up. It's whatever, I loved the movie and this doesn't really change that for me in any way, but this is definitely a fridge logic moment.

I mean, if we think of it like code, it'd be like: first spell was

IF (Spiderest-Man U know) = Peter Parker
THEN GOTO MCU Universe

So the second spell should be just replacing that value for Peter Parker with ???.

 

When they start throwing magic into the mix I basically just turn my brain off. There's no basis for it in the real world and Marvel has historically been very bad at being consistent in how it works (I'm talking about the comics here too). The spells were just a means to an end, which is fine IMO. The meat of the movie is Peter grappling with the responsibility he has as Spider-Man to help people, even when it costs him personally.

 

To use that (way over-thinking it) concept, after the second spell it would actually become

IF (Spider-Man you know) = Peter Parker
THEN [Nothing]

but also, just go with it

 

Someone who's seen the movie recently can clarify this, but I just checked Wikipedia, and it looks like Doc Ock doesn't learn Peter is Spider-Man until that final battle, and not until after he's already started the machine, so he can't possibly have been taken from any point other than then.

 

My assumption (stealing from others' thoughts on YouTube) is that sending them back "cured" just branches their timelines since pulling Dafoe Goblin out of SM1 should've resulted in Tobey being different.

What that means when they actually get back to their new "home" universe, I have no clue. Seems weird that in this movie the two options presented are curing them or sending them back home, but then they just send them back home anyway without any real explanation about what curing them does to change their individual outcomes.

 

What if this causes the plot of Across The Spider-Verse?

 

it technically could tbh

 

Maybe the spell could only do one and not the other? There had to be stakes and for Peter to make a crucial decision while learning to let things go.