Film Theory: Spider Man Saved NO ONE (3 Spider Man No Way Home Theories)

okay let's be real spider-man no way home was a blast if nothing else you have to admire a movie that brought together three separate franchises spanning 20 years sure end game was impressive and all but that was always the uh it was always the end game for the mcu from the very beginning but here no one could have seen this one coming just absolutely so much fun which means that now we have to rip this thing to shreds because that ending man we have gotta talk about it well the movie was great and all peter parker's final wish left me with a lot of questions and it seems like i'm not the only one i mean does the guy have a birth certificate a social security card what happens with all the videos and news reports about him being spider-man so what did old tommy holland actually wish for in the final moments of the movie and what does that actually translate to based on every clue that we see in the film's final moments and more importantly what does it mean for the future of this character and this franchise that my friends is what i'm aiming to answer today hello internet welcome to film theory where i use my peter tingle each and every week to spot and solve lore mysteries obviously get your minds out of the gutter guys okay so spiderman no way home really needs no introduction at this point it seems like everyone in the world has seen this thing probably has actually considering that it had the number two opening weekend of all time of any movie ever that is insane in fact it only took that one single weekend to make the highest grossing movie of 2021. after a year where theaters were really struggling to find their footing the old web head proved that people were willing to come back provided you have a huge ip pay off one of cinema's biggest cliffhangers and tap into 20 years of built up nostalgia you know no biggie but this movie really does have it all lots of bad guys come together toby mcguire getting his back cracked great power great responsibility all that stuff really solid across the board but gotta be honest here any time you tamper with the multiverse you're gonna be getting some questions from lore nerds like me and this movie leaves open some big ones questions that i aim to definitively answer today or you know as definitive as i can until they retcon something to fit the ongoing narrative that they're looking to tell first and foremost why are we only seeing the villains as a reminder the entire premise of the movie kicks off when peter parker asks doctor strange to cast a spell that makes everyone forget that he's spider-man after peter tampers with the spell one too many times it breaks the fabric of reality opening the door for villains like lizard and dr otto octavius to come through from other universes because as the movie tells us they knew the spider-man peter parker connection at least most of them did prompting our first major discussion here electro is a bit hazy on this point since in the amazing spider-man 2 max dylan never explicitly makes the peter parker spider-man connection in fact it seems like no way holm acknowledges this there's even a joke about it where electro upon seeing andrew garfield's face at the end of the movie says that he'd assumed that peter parker was gonna be black the entire time so is that just the writers being sloppy so they can fit in a miles morales joke or are they actually playing some level of 4d chess that we mere nerds aren't privy to well there are two possible ways to explain elektro's presence both of which require a fair amount of squinting to make work first we hear no way home that elektra was and this is a direct quote from the movie that i can't play for obvious reasons he was stuck in the grid absorbing data before his memory disappears and he dies now this isn't exactly true if you go back to the source material electro was actually in a power grid specifically a hydroelectric power grid and i know science wasn't your strongest suit hollywood so this might come as a shock to you but electricity is different than the internet i know i know i was just as blown away as you are but i guess if you're assuming that he's absorbing electricity and internet in this scene then you could say that max got the info through accessing peter's online data maybe like i said it's a pretty weak sauce explanation the other angle here and this is the one that i think is canonical to the story and also works with the whole i thought you'd be black joke is that max does know spider-man's name is peter he just doesn't know his face in the final fight elektra is knocked unconscious after playing the itsy bitsy spider on the power grid because this movie just makes all the worst decisions gwen stacy arrives and calls out to peter at which point we smash cut to electro becoming alert and ready to attack again when i say you turn that power on you turn it on no matter what peter so that definitely explains how electro knows that spider-man's name is peter but i think that there's still a missing piece here and that's peter's best friend harry who breaks elektro out of captivity to help him take care of spider-man i'm harry osborne i want to make you a deal you want spider-man and i can give you at this point in the movie harry knows that peter and spider-man share some sort of connection you took his picture you know him harry most likely tells all of this to electro after he breaks him out so when max hears the name peter from gwen he's able to make that final connection to peter parker harry's friend that he was told about oh boy there you go screenwriters i saved your butts on that one something tells me that no one really intended all of that but it does manage to work out when you read between the lines anyway putting electro aside i'm more interested in the bigger question why only the villains why don't we see anyone else come through here like girlfriends or best friends in the sam raimi trilogy mary jane knows peter's identity all too well go get him tiger and in the amazing spider-man gwen stacy treats it like it's the most casual thing in the world consider coming in through the lobby the best friends in these movies also tend to know the harry osborns from both universes know peter's secret first we'll see who's behind the mask peter so was this just a decision made out of convenience or is there an actual in-universe explanation for it well believe it or not but this one actually lines up pretty well with the lore i don't know again if this was intentional or not but as doctor strange prepares his magic peter requests that his girlfriend his best friend and aunt may all get exempted from the spell so mj's gonna forget about everything we've ever been through oh my god ned my aunt may should really stop talking it's so strange removes them from the magic to try and meet peter's request however when the whole thing goes haywire and people who knew peter's identity start crossing over those people are still eliminated as such all the girlfriends best friends and ants aren't included and therefore don't cross over into the mcu was it intentional no probably not is it a cool coincidence that helps explain the rationale for that part of the movie yeah i think so one of the other things the movie just kind of glosses over that i thought was interesting to think about was the implication of curing all of these characters the whole second act of the movie is peter sacrificing and losing everything including ant-may to try and cure these villains working under the assumption that he's saving their lives and giving them a second chance in their own universes except uh nope nope that is decidedly not true the sand man doesn't die in his movie so kind of a lost cause there same thing with a lizard who already is transformed back into a human by the end of his movie so redundancy is redundant that leaves electro and green goblin neither of whom want to be cured which opens a big old can of ethical worms about forcing a cure on individuals that don't want to be cured but worst of all perhaps is the situation for doc ock who if you actually look back at the original movie wouldn't be saved at all in no way home he says that he's portaled over into tom holland's reality in the middle of a battle against spider-man specifically he says quote spider-man was trying to stop my fusion reactor so i stopped him i had him by the throat then i was here one teeny tiny problem with that by the time doc ock has spider-man by the throat and spider-man 2 his fusion reactor is already seconds away from exploding it is far beyond the point of saving the good doctor himself is mere seconds away from his own redemption at this point listen to me now seriously doc ock already makes the decision to turn good and sacrifice himself so tom holland's help with a fixed neural implant here also amounts to just a meaningless gesture for something that was gonna happen anyway in short this whole movie was extraneous because you either don't change any character's outcome or you just cure people who don't wanna be cured in the first place sorry about your sacrifice aunt may doesn't look like you did much good but hey at least you got to say the iconic line but now the big one the ending wish at the end of the movie the green goblin uses a pumpkin bomb to destroy the deus box machina causing reality to shred and even more entities to try and cross over into tom holland's universe doctor strange tries to repair the rift but it's just too much he can't contain it so with no other option peter makes one final sacrifice he asks strange to make the world forget about peter parker now i've rewatched the scene a couple of times and this is exactly how it's transcribed they're here because of you what if everyone forgot who i was they're coming here because of me right because i'm peter parker so cast a new spell but this time make everyone forget who peter parker is make everyone forget me that would mean everyone who knows and loves you would have no memory of you would be as though you never existed and it works the rift gets repaired and the world no longer knows the identity of spider-man hooray but it comes at the cost of mj ned happy and all the others have no clue who peter is so it's just a simple memory wipe spell right what's so complicated to understand about that well if only it were that simple as peter and disney are more than happy to remind us of repeatedly throughout the movie peter is the most famous person in the world at this point because mysterio outed him as the identity of spider-man and he did this in the form of a video did that video get wiped away by the spell sure let's assume that it was but then what about all the other physical evidence of peter parker before the big climax peter takes a selfie video that gets broadcast out to the world does that disappear too or his text messages to mj or flash's book are those all just gone what about his application to mit the simple answer here would be that the spell dusted all of those things too all physical traces of peter parker just poof away like doctor strange said it'll be as though you never existed except yet again it's not that clear cut we see in the final scenes of the movie that mj is wearing the broken black dahlia necklace that peter gave her in the previous movie in addition we learned that both ned and mj have gotten into mit something that peter had a direct hand in earlier in the film so it seems like his physical actions have had some sort of memory on the world even if the world doesn't necessarily remember him so maybe peter's just gone then right everything he touched and altered up that point stays but anything with the name peter parker on it's just dusted away not again on one hand we see peter studying for his geds for those who don't know the ged here in the us is a test that allows you to show that you have high school level skills by taking it and passing it functions pretty much the same way as a diploma so the fact that he's taking it implies either a that his academic record has been erased as part of the spell or b he isn't returning to finish the school year again most likely because he no longer has a student record but on the other hand we see peter get himself an apartment this implies that he has to have himself some level of an identity as well as a fairly decent credit score as anyone who's ever tried to get an apartment can tell you you need a social security number and a history of income to be able to lease from a landlord so a lot of conflicting information there but of all the conflicting evidence we have none perhaps is as confusing as his interactions with happy at ant-may's grave when peter asks how he knew her happy replies through spider-man so happy knows spider-man but again not peter parker how could that possibly make any sense because happy knows mei not via spider-man but because spider-man is connected to peter parker without the link of peter parker there's no way for happy to meet may and yet somehow under the arbitrary rules of the spell he does apparently know her which then prompts the question does that mean mj under the memory spell remembers being spider-man's girlfriend because again she knows spider-man but she doesn't know peter same thing with ned does he know that he's spider-man's guy in the chair so taking all the evidence and questions into account i think there's only one way to explain all of this this spell doesn't erase peter parker from existence it just erases people's memory of him and along with that erases any physical thing that would be considered or connected to a memory of him but peter's achievements the aftermath of thing that he's explicitly done those all remain it's a difference of qualitative versus quantitative actions which is pretty confusing so let me explain with some examples mysterio's video claiming that he's being attacked by spider-man that still exists because it was tied to an action that was being done by spider-man but the part where he calls out peter parker that now is gone because it would be dependent on mysterio knowing peter parker flash's book gone because again it's based on flash's relationship and memories with peter parker meanwhile peter's bank account and social security number those would remain earning money and putting it into a bank or being given a social security number are physical acts that don't hinge on the memory or identity of peter parker just like giving a physical necklace to mj she has the necklace but i would guess she doesn't remember where she got it from those actions exist separate from the identity of peter basically when people see his name they'll just think of him as some random anonymous person like we see mj do in the coffee shop so what then would this mean for the series well if i'm right it would mean that both mg and ned shouldn't remember their interactions with spider-man to both of them he was peter parker first and when they're helping spider-man they're really helping peter so all of those memories have gotta go happy meanwhile is able to fall into the opposite bucket his relationship with peter started through the identity of spider-man and while he certainly grew to love the boy behind the mask the root of that relationship was the secret identity thus allowing him to remember aunt may and chalk those memories up to spider-man's influence likewise spider-man should still be able to continue on as an avenger but here no one will know his real name making the eventual reunion with the guardians of the galaxy real awkward who are you we're the avengers man but to me what's probably most interesting about all this is how it relates to the vulture as you might recall he's the biggest dangling threat in the series the only one who knows spider-man's identity and who keeps getting teased as pulling together a sinister six this is that on you it's on our little spider friend i've got some boys on the outside who'd love to meet him in fact he's so important that he's being used to market the upcoming morbius movie hey dr mike you and i should stay in touch leaving many to question whether morbius is now a part of the mcu and sony's response thus far has been yesent there being real kg about it but in reality no no he's not this is all just a fake out by the rules that we've just gone over the vulture wouldn't know peter's secret identity the scene in the current homecoming would be a forgotten memory as such all of the teases from both morbius and tom holland's spider-man movies should ultimately amount to nothing then moments in trailers like this are just more instances of movie studios pulling boners that's a ralph boner for those who don't get the reference ralph boner boner all of it fake outs to sell tickets so there you have it friends no way home a lot of seeming gaps in the plot that just squeak by getting solved if you look at them deep enough well done screenwriters you've escaped me this time which leaves us then with a single spider-man who has literally no history when a nice clean slate to start a brand new trilogy on one might call it a reboot of sorts and wait who was it that predicted that by whatever means wanda maximoff zaps in during the post-credits scene to set us up for the multiverse of madness the story is going to wrap up in such a way that while there can be a path forward for tom holland's peter parker he can also be soft rebooted i guess sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut but hey that's just a theory a film theory and cuts [Music] you

Channel: The Film Theorists

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Keywords: spiderman, spider-man, spider man, spiderman no way home, spider-man no way home, marvel, disney, disney+, marvel theory, spiderman theory, spiderman no way home theory, no way home, no way home trailer, spiderman no way home trailer, spiderman no way home scene, dr strange, multiverse of madness, multiverse of madness trailer, doctor strange, theory, spiderman no way home ending, no way home ending, ending explained, film theory, film theorists, matpat, film theory spiderman

Id: IHZII4u57-A

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022