I’ve never been one to be worried about the MCU and its films but with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness being pushed to May because of extensive reshoots in November and December and the mind-numbing secrecy surrounding Spider-Man: No Way Home I’m starting to notice something rather unfortunate.
For months, fans were clamoring for a trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man flick. It finally dropped on August 23, roughly four months before its release in theaters, and that felt right. But now we’re heading into November and as more details a.k.a promotional pictures start coming out for the film I hate to say it but this film just kind of looks…bad.
Check out this picture that got turned into an instant meme.
I wanted to like this picture but there are so many things wrong with this image. First off, the CGI for Doc Ock looks ridiculous. I mean, is this an early 2000s’ movie?
Secondly, Spider-Man doesn’t run from a fight? He didn’t even run from Thanos who’s way scarier than this guy so what the heck is he doing in this picture?
There’s also a level of secrecy around this film that feels less like Kevin Feige wanting us to be surprised and more like the editors are scrounging to put this convoluted movie together.
This is the MCU’s first foray into the multiverse theme and this, unfortunately, is where stories can start getting wacky real quick. Spider-Man has had two solid films so I shouldn’t be too worried but my gut is just telling me there’s something off with this movie the more I see it.
And, considering that I often base a movie’s quality off of their teaser trailer, I was one of the small crowd who found the No Way Home teaser to be very underwhelming and not that great. The only thing I liked about it was Doctor Strange because duh, he’s my favorite.
What do you think? Do you still have faith in Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s chances of being a great movie? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
I thank you for reading and I hope you have a spectacular day.
Annlyel Online 
I’m not a good one to judge because I already never saw the last 2 Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, due to my dislike of his MCU interpretation. The only reason I may see this one is because of them bringing back characters from the Sam Raimi Spidey trilogy. In the No Way Home trailer, the tone seemed too jokey and Parker seemed too flaky, but that’s the opinion I always had about these movies. Having Parker mess up the spell just by talking seemed goofy and not believable. But, to be fair, this was a teaser, and seems to be only showing us the beginning of the movie. The intro may be the necessary evil to get to the entertaining stuff.
One problem with a Multiverse storyline is that it’s something Marvel Comics never used to indulge in. Even as recently as the 2000s, Marvel’s editor-in-chief said he was against the idea of having more than two “universes” in Marvel Comics, and against any kind of crossover between different universes (quotes at bottom). Later, he seemed to waver on that position, and in recent years Marvel seems to have gone all in on the idea of a multiverse, especially the Spider-Verse. DC of course famously had “multiple earths” in their comics for years, and tried to end the practice in 1985’s Crisis series. Marvel never had anything like that until the Ultimate universe launched in 2000. That seemed to be the gateway drug that eventually led to them embracing a multiverse.
In essence, both DC and Marvel are backing into the multiverse in their movies for the same reason. They created alternate versions of their characters in the past with no intention of ever crossing them over, but are now retroactively putting them into a multiverse just for the “fun” and novelty of it. It seems innocent enough, but can lead to confusion for audiences, and less believability and stakes in a storyline. It’s one of those things that people say they’re going to indulge in “just one time,” but it always seems to become habit-forming in the long run.
Marvel Editor-in-Chief quotes below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-616
“…in my world, the language and distinctions are simple, there is the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe. Anything other than that reeks of all that DC Earth 1, Earth 2, Earth Prime stuff which I’ve never really taken to, but then again, I got into DC when they got rid of all that stuff so it was from and for a different era than my own.”
— Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada[7]
https://web.archive.org/web/20120413231901/http://www.newsarama.com/comics/spider-men-joe-quesada.html
“Joe Quesada was asked if the Ultimate Universe and the Main Marvel Universe would ever cross over and he replied no. Quesada said he’d rather close down one universe than have them cross over because it meant they were officially out of ideas.”
“That said, yes, I did say that we would never crossover universes. Have I changed my mind? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see.”
— Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada
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