keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky

I really did love Jean and her storyline so much. I'm so burnt out on exhausting Marvel villains and convolutedly complex motives or whatever and it was so refreshing to have the story center around two young people wrestling with exactly the same issue from opposite ends and in opposite ways. I loved the messiness and brashness of the way she behaved and I loved her meanness? The scene where she takes over MJ is so beautifully chilling and it feels so like something a hurt teenage girl would do. She sells it correctly at the beginning and you wonder for a second if it's true and then you can see it fits together tOO perfectly and the only reason he falls for it is because he's desperate.

I also loved the undercutting of the V-Max of it all in her storyline; I felt the weight lifted from having to care about something called V-Max and i love that it showed her youth and desperation.

I loved the resolution of her storyline too. Peter's kindness in letting her in to his mind freely, after the struggle of the movie, and then the words of the mom she didn't have but needed to hear coming to her through the Aunt May memory. I love that she had the choice to believe Peter that she has someone at least --the simplicity of him saying you have me is so much---or to choose destruction. And I love that she didn't choose destruction. Felt real and resonant and powerful.

I really loved that all the things that were happening to Peter physically also didn't have an explanation? Besides just his development, his transitioning into adulthood, and the emotional pain he was experiencing heightening it all. It was just something he had to accept and grow through. Which is one of the more subtle themes of the movie to me--just acceptance of reality as it is without fighting it unnecessarily.

Speaking of things he has to accept??? The loss of his relationships?? Was so good??? And so poignant???? His feelings for MJ first of all. The movie picks right back up where we left off—same look of awe and repressed grief and love on his face when he looks at her. It doesn’t pretend anything has changed for him. The movie both centers and honors that grief but also gives it to him as something to work through and get past. So he can keep moving forward. And his acting??? Is just everything. The way he goes so still when he first sees her; the way he almost chokes when he says “I’ve been trying to live my life without you but I can’t”; she says that she doesn’t love him and you can almost see the pain of it enter his body. And yet there’s also a softness to the way it all unfolds for him, learning that it isn’t all or nothing. That he can start over. He almost has to set aside his own heartbreak because it’s not all about him—and he does!—and because life goes on.

And that leads me to one of the main thematic threads of the movie! There’s such a recurring theme of Peter learning he can’t do this alone, that he needs people. But it’s also about letting people back in under less-than-ideal circumstances. And doing it even when it’s hard and easier to hide. It’s about working with what you have, not with what you wish your life was like. Frank’s little speech to Peter about not glorifying a life of living alone hits on the root of it. Because even though he’s not really aware he’s doing that he IS kind of. So He has to let his friends back in even though it puts him on the back foot of having to hear that they don’t remember him. He’s unmasked several times in the back half of the movie, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But he has to bear being a little known. By Jean. By Frank. By DeWolff. MJ says “tell Ned who you are; he can handle it” reminding him that he can’t go back to the way things were but he can start now. Both Jean and Peter have to make that choice and build something new out of the ruins of the old. I love that.

Other moments I loved:

Peter taking MJ home after their conversation about the letter. Just the shot of her face processing the bittersweetness of it all.

The flowers for May being such a visual throughout the movie, and doubling as the housewarming gift at the party. Something so resonant about that.

After Peter sees MJ kiss her boyfriend and he Has To Leave and the audience goes careening through the air with him but this time not as Spider-Man. Just as a boy whose emotional life has been turned upside down.

Zendaya’s acting. I’ve always liked her as MJ but she was at the best I’ve ever seen her in this one. Just totally natural and totally lovable. She captured someone who felt like they had grown up and changed but was still the same person at the core.

The way Tom delivers “your boyfriend sounds like a jerk.”

Just the whole behind the curtain scene. The way the connection is so palpable. Just. GAH.

The way the city felt so palpably New York but little more heightened/colorful. It felt like a comic book (positive.)