Finally decided to watch it.
What happens when you scrape together a shit ton of old stale crap and dump it all over the MCU Spider-Man franchise? You get 'No Way Home'. Being reminded of all those bad movie versions of iconic Spider-Man villains does not make for a good movie.
The metallic version of Green Goblin was always bad. No one needed to be reminded of Jamie Fox's race-swapped Electro (funnily enough, pairing electric powers with black characters was considered a racist trope back in the nineties). Did they ever explain why Octavius wasn't a shredded bullet sponge? Did the Lizard even have a role to play? I can't even recall the motivation for Sandman from the 'original' movie or what compelled him. And where was Venom? (Aside from the end sequence bit part.) They were obviously going for a 'multi-dimensional' Sinister Six approach. Venom would have at least made having three Spider-Men worth the time.
What else sucked?
- Somehow coming up with solutions to all these 'supervillains'' problems within a couple of hours in a high school laboratory.
- Why would MIT be a problem? Stark Enterprises via Happy would probably remove this obstacle with the snap of a finger. Why would he turn to Dr. Strange for a solution?
- And why was Dr. Strange rushing into dangerous spells without carefully planning the perimeters? It went wrong because Dr. Strange allegedly had to modify the spell mid-casting. He was also a medical doctor, which means he should know that good preparation is one half of a successful surgical procedure.
- When things went wrong, they didn't go back to Dr. Strange and instead tried to solve it themselves.
- Where was Wong? He may have decided to stay out of things, but once the fabric of reality was ripping apart, he should have returned.
- Where were the Avengers? This screamed an Avenger problem as soon as the Sinister Six appeared. In the comics, Spider-Man always had help dealing with all six.
Tobey Maguire looked like shit by the way.
The movie was too long, too convoluted, and made no sense.
All of a sudden we're supposed to care about reforming the villains? Why? That was never Spider-Man's MO. Would have made more sense if DareDevil was involved somehow because he actually DOES want to reform people, and it's the common tension between him and Frank because of Matt's faith. For Spider-Man, it just made no sense.
Aunt May dies while trying to convince him to reform Green Goblin.... just... why?!?!
It would be different if this was something present in the other films (to be fair, the other films were also bloated and boring and goofy, so maybe there was a theme of reforming villains and I just missed it?) but sacrificing people to save the villains came out of nowhere. It was like the writer's had to think of something to create the tension and a reason to bring all the villains together, otherwise they would have had to write something really smart to explain how and why Spider-Man would be interacting with them and not the Avengers (which is a good point you made).
The thing is, I'm willing to forgive weak plots if a movie is at least entertaining throughout, but this film was not that. Other than the Green Goblin fight in the apartment complex, all the other fights were overwrought and pointless. The fight with Doc Oc on the bridge was overtly long and had Spider-Man just swinging around and doing stuff but none of it was meaningful. Why should I care Spider-Man is doing a thousand flips and Doc Oc is flinging cars around?
It reminds me of John's Woo's old motto, "Every bullet needs a destination". It's how he frames his action set pieces, and it makes sense from a practicality point of view when it comes to in-universe dangers and audience engagement. If every bullet has a destination, the hero is at risk of getting shot because his cover is being slowly chipped away by gunfire, or every explosion has intent, so someone has a risk of being wounded or damaged, or every punch has a purpose, so damage isn't static; it scales.
In a lot of these cape-slop movies the action doesn't mean anything, and the stakes are all contrived because the movies aren't written to tell compelling, logically-progressive stories, but to hit whatever beats the studios want in order to set up a sequel, add or remove a character, or sell toys. That's exactly how it felt watching Spider-Man No Way Home... they even found a way to undermine Uncle Ben by giving his famous line to Aunt May as a way to really drive home the female empowerment narrative.