Spider-Man: No Way Home, My Rambling Review

Reference overload

(Image copyright Marvel, and maybe Sony? Used without permission, please don’t sue me.)

(Big spoilers. This isn’t the kind of review you read to decide of you want to see something, it’s more of a post-show deconstruction to find out if other people had the same questions as you.)

It’s a weird idea that an audience is supposed to be charmed or excited to see characters from a slightly less successful franchise make an appearance in a decidedly more successful current version.

I mean, I get why it’s kind of fun to have actors from versions made long ago show up in modern depictions, like maybe having Lou Ferrigno show up in a new Hulk movie, or Lynda Carter show up in a new Wonder Woman movie. It’s a way of acknowledging the winding history of these characters through the generations, as different attempts to depict them in different eras had different sensibilities.

But the two Spider-man franchises that are being referenced here are not that long ago, they’re kind of in the same realm of budget and production value, and they were aspiring to succeed on the same terms as the current movies. Those movies didn’t quite reach the highs they hoped for, though, which is partly why they’ve been supplanted with the current version. As a result, I don’t feel a nostalgia for them, I just feel like they’re the less good versions of what I’m able to see now.