i saw the telepath asking questions to a guy who isn't established to be immune to her powers and my brain just did a pop shove it, hurts like a migraine. it seems like she can only inhabit one person at a time so inhabiting the director to read his mind would mean frank is free to subdue her, but that just makes me ask, why did she even bring her own body there?
i wanted to stop watching at that point, but i had to power through cause i wanted to make this post and i know that not watching the whole thing is enough for people to dismiss any criticism.
so to start from the beginning, and i mean chronologically, sarah inhabiting jean to make her walk/run away from the abduction only works if jean was not a target in the first place. but in their conversation, they said their mom cared for them before they changed. both of them had powers already. even if sarah was the only one using those powers in a bad way back then, there's no reason to not take jean as well regardless of where damage control lies in the good to evil spectrum. the inciting incident relying on the incompetence of the entire department of damage control, that's just terrible writing.
moving on though, jean's established powers makes the first act a nothing burger. she can impersonate the people she inhabits pretty well because she has access to their memories, like she did with mj. that's way more than enough to infiltrate any damage control department with zero physical violence. yes, she definitely wanted to be violent, but delaying the search for her sister for that? it just gets peter on her tail in a contrived manner and it makes the talk no jutsu at the end weaker than it already is
at least jean is smart, not actually going in the vicinity of the troubles she's causing, just using her powers from far away. oh wait, there she goes, into the department of damage control where she can easily get shot. did she need to be there? absolutely not, and lo and behold, she got taken down because of it. crucial plot point handled like a slimy fish. and banner gets talk no jutsu'd like ross.
next up, another contrivance, the way peter realized that the director lied to him. peter says that the director "remembered thinking about someone named sarah", so he must be lying since no one remembers anything while jean is inhabiting them, but that's not what the director said. the director just said that he was close with someone named sarah who recently passed, and that, "somehow the memory of sarah must have affected her", peter knows that jean can access the memories of the people she inhabits, as she did with mj. but no, he just slanders the director to further the plot. another crucial plot point written terribly.
then, spidey goes to yelena and she says damage control scrubbed records and data about jean but she still provides the data they need to progress the plot. overall, yelena is just there to further the plot. sometimes, stories need a character like that, but it shouldn't be this blatant. this is still the part of the crucial plot point above so yeah, it just gets worse.
then spidey gets to jean, she freezes everyone besides spidey in the area, which was never explained btw, why is spidey somewhat immune to this? some cringe dialogue happens, jean says "my sister died in this room and her only crime is she was special". no, she possessed people without their consent, that's literally the highest form of invasion of privacy. peter, the surveillance freak who also doesn't care about privacy besides his own, says "you're not a killer jean". bro i can't even put into words how that line makes me feel, she kills so many people throughout this movie omg
then jean comes inside peter. lots of generic dialogue is thrown around so viewers can interpret it however they want, like a banana duct taped to an empty canvas, and frank comes in to end my suffering. thank you frank.
thanks also to every action scene, those were all great. i liked that the peter and mj situation isn't something that's solved in the b plot of just one movie. i enjoyed frank and peter's relationship, as well as peter and ned's.
overall, enjoyable turn your brain off movie. i guess a couple of recreated comic panels/cover arts and a few couple of guest characters are enough for the movie to nostalgia bait its way into a billion dollars in the box office. how it gets so much hype online after the fact, i have no idea. pretty soon they'll be releasing ai movies and everyone will eat it up as the bar will be in the ninth circle of hell.