Like, the cast is great. I like what they did with Mysterio. No *real* complaints.

But nothing even *remotely* verging on a classic action scene or even Spider-Man moment, really. It's honestly more of an Iron Man movie than a Spider-Man movie in a lot of ways. I'm not necessarily complaining about that... but a lot of this is familiar and/or stakesless to the point that it all amassed to a bit of a shrug. And I wonder if it's because it focused *so much* on being funny that we lost the emotional engagement.

There's no excuse with *this* cast and how great it is for these movies to fail to hit the heights of, say, Spider-Man 2. Nothing in this *sniffs* the Doc Ock action. Or the train sequence. Or the MJ identity reveal. Or the "Go get em, Tiger" at the end. Raimi understands how to stage action, and he understands that sometimes, to create those big emotional moments, you have to get earnest. Maybe even risk getting corny. Watts simply isn't down for that at all. So often in this movie, scenes that are building emotion undercut that emotion with one-liners or zingers or whatever.

The most effective emotional scene is when Happy sees Peter tinkering with the armor and is reminded of Tony, because it's one of the very, very few scenes where they don't immediately hit us with a joke. I think back to the Michael Keaton car scene in the first Holland Spidey too: it's got humor in it, but the emotions are real, they aren't undercut, the threats are real. These movies need more of that, imo.

Also, the first Mysterio illusion sequence where Spidey gets his ass kicked-- it starts getting actually scary, sets Mysterio up as a real threat, doesn't joke around. But then Spidey is just like, "Okay, I just have to sense where he is," and then he can do it perfectly next go around. No real build, no real threat, no explanation beyond "I have to do it, so I guess I will this time." Like, as corny as the sequence is in Raimi's Spider-Man 2 where he summons the strength to get his powers to work again, at least the movie is showing us *how* he develops. I feel like these movies shortcut a lot of those steps. Maybe because Watts just isn't the same caliber filmmaker. Maybe they needed to show Mysterio as the bad guy earlier (especially since, let's be honest, we ALL knew it was going there, and guaranteed the majority of audiences do too), establish the illusion threat earlier, etc. I don't know the answer. I just didn't love how easy it was to beat him immediately after it seemed impossible to do so.

Again, all this makes me seem way lower on it than I am. It was a fun time. But with this cast, there's *no excuse* not to create a classic Spider-Man movie. They've got real characters and the perfect cast-- so give me *real* stakes, *real* emotion, *real* threats, *real* classic action. So far they seem fairly content two movies in to create amusing, entertaining, but forgettable flicks.

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