Major spoilers ahead.
I’ve recently watched this movie in the theatre so my memory is very fresh in terms of what the first impact the movie made for me.
Now to introduce myself I am a genuine Spider-Man fan and I have a deep knowledge of the universe. I would say I am familiar with like 60-70% of the universe considering I’ve yet to actually read one of the comics but besides that I’ve consumed most of the content, I’m talking all the movies, Insomniacs Marvel’s Spider-Man / -Miles Morales (not 2 though). So I’m generally interested in this character and the universe.
I want to somewhat structure this review so I don’t repeat myself. I want to talk about the visuals, the characters and the plot.
Starting off with the visuals, I am absolutely stunned by the straight up beauty of the film, the compositions of the shots, the color grading, the action sequences were top notch. To be honest, I thought I’d only see this kind of combat in video games but this movie definitely proved me wrong. The set designs and the costumes were also excellent, Spider-Man’s suit was seriously phenomenal.
Continuing with the characters, I wasn’t quite as happy with them as I was with the visuals. For starters, apart from Spider-Man himself, I felt an imbalance on how the characters were weighted in terms of how important they were for the plot. I would even go as far as saying that I didn’t like some of the characters that were shown in the movie and that they could’ve just not include them at all, one of them being Yelena. Now to be fair I haven’t watched thunderbolts so I might be wrong but as far as I know, Spider-Man had no way of knowing her in the first place. If you think about it, the thunderbolts movie took place in nyc, where Peter resides, so I think it would be too wrong to assume that Spider-Man must’ve somehow made contact with one of them or something like that, yet I don’t think he appeared in the thunderbolts movie (correct me if I’m wrong), which means for me he wouldn’t even know who yelena was in the first place. I know the producers can’t account for every single small detail but like that just proves my point I believe, that we didn’t need her appearance in the movie and that it just caused more confusion for people who aren’t familiar with that character. Also I found her dialog with Spider-Man kind of corny, like wdym big potato stuff small potato stuff like you’re not captain america or so like stay on your level.
One character I wasn’t too happy about either was Bruce Banner. Now I definitely liked his appearance as Professor banner don’t get me wrong, I think they nailed that scene but from what I think, they should have left his arc right there, like I think all the stuff that happened later with Jean were just unnecessary, like they brought him, just for like 5 minutes without even a real purpose. Also I kinda didn’t understand how he was like a human in the first place like he was smart hulk in endgame and I understand that he found a way to like keep the monster inside of him but you’re telling me he found a way to be the hulk without causing chaos in endgame, but couldn’t keep that posture now? And alright we accepted he is savage hulk or so, he barely did any damage, neither to Peter nor to NY. I thought that was the only real thing the hulk could do. I mean I at least expected like a building to collapse or that Peter breaks himself something or so but literally nothing happened.
I really liked the Punisher, there’s not much to say about him, he was everything I wanted, he served a nice bromance kind of thing with Peter, he was funny in his own way, genuinely no negativity on his part.
I want to rate Ned and Mj together, I think those two needed a more effecting role in the movie than they already had. I mean we got like 25 minutes I believe where Peter talked to them and stuff and I actually don’t even know what I wanted more tbh but like I couldn’t like really emotional connect if that makes sense. Especially in the scene where Mj found out, I imagined that scene much differently, I feel like they tried to play it safe there, but I wasn’t really touched or something after or during their conversation but maybe that’s just on me. Overall I’ve would have wanted them to have more of an importance then some other character…
Now Peter was actually good, I really liked him in this movie, we saw his struggles, his evolution, generally I think that’s the best Peter Parker/Spider-Man we got from Tom Holland. However what still scratches my head is how he managed to afford all his high tech equipment.. like I don’t have anything against him having all this ai software and stuff cause like let’s be honest Peter is damn smart he could figure something out but still all the things he runs these stuff on costs money, which he obviously doesn’t have but I think that’s something I’d let slide.
Now to the elephant in the room Jean Grey. I think Jean was a really well written character with her own struggles and stuff. I think her powers were beautifully portrayed in this movie with all the mind control stuff. However the good stuff end there for me. I think she was not a good antagonist, not that she played bad but overall she didn’t fit in this scenario in my opinion. First off, her stuff against Spider-Man didn’t make any sense considering they don’t even know themselves whatsoever. All the V-Max plot was kind of lame as soon as you found out what it stood for, her going on absolute terror rampages with like tanks and stuff was absolutely unnecessary in my opinion considering she only wanted to find her sister, and most importantly, that she faced basically no consequences for her actions, I’m not even talking about what she did to NY necessarily but rather how she treated Peter, like she played with his feelings and like broke his heart and you’re telling me Peter just let that slide? I don’t know man..
Also a major criticism I have regarding her character, which doesn’t even have to do with what she does, is the question: why is a X-Men character introduced in a Spider-Man movie? Like I would understand if she’d played a smallish role and we got to know her along the way but like we genuinely got a Phoenix origin story in a Spider-Man movie. Like come on. Ironically, there is a new X-Men movie planned for 2027 or something which sounds like the perfect first movie for a Jean Grey if you ask me. Like was there no other villain left so that they had to settle with a mutant? And that the fact that the second half of the film basically turned around her and what happened to her and so instead of Spider-Man fixing his relationship with his friends or so felt kind of wrong to me.
After all the characters, I want to talk about the overall plot. The thing is, the plot is heavily connected to the characters therefore I do have some negative aspects for this one too. Now to be fair I actually thought the plot was rather okay, like it wasn’t boring or there weren’t too many mistakes or such, but rather why they chose this kind of plot really stressed me. First off, this somewhat has to do with Jean Grey but not entirely, there was no real ‘villain’ in that sense. Like there was no one who was against Spider-Man or hated him or something. Now you might say Jean Grey was that person, but I think this conflict with Jean and Peter were so forced like it didn’t even make sense, Spider-Man didn’t even know Jean like at all and Jean didn’t even see Spider-Man in any way before, like what could Spider-Man have possibly done to idk make her mad? Her problem was with the service or whatever they’re called. I feel like they could have used any other villain then Jean, although I know that No way Home kind of took that aspect away, since they basically mass cleared out several of the OG villains but anyway, there should be enough villains they could have used in my opinion. It also didn’t help that all the media, for me for example Vetzmovies and doomblazer, were always talking about this ‘grounded, street-level’ Spider-Man story with no multiverse stuff. I don’t know about you but when I hear something like this, I’d rather think of a movie like Tobey Maguires Spider-Man 2 or heck even the story in Insomniacs Spider-Man, but not what we’ve got in Brand new day.
I’m sure I could go on and on and go into every single detail but these are the main things that came into my mind.
So overall I’d sumerize my experience as disappointing, since I’ve received stuff I didn’t really care about or in other words, didn’t get some stuff I’d wish for a Spider-Man movie.
I’d also want to emphasize that this is just my opinion and I’d totally understand people who’d say they totally enjoyed the movie or so, so with that being said, please let me know your thoughts on this, if you agree or disagree or if you fell completely differently, I’d love to discuss this if yall want.