Grief, Catharsis, and Spider-Man

Given how much I talk about Spider-Man movies, a lot of people wanted to know what I thought about 2021’s No Way Home. And as a movie, I would overall describe it as fun but lazy. I thought the whole thing felt a little thrown together, but I also have no huge critiques from either a filmmakers or audience members perspective. It’s an MCU movie: the themes are relatable and inoffensive, the compositions are aesthetically passable if not particularly groundbreaking and the characters have been focused grouped to have enough cute dialogue to fill twitter and tumblr’s appetite for gifsets. But given my oft stated love for Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Spider-Man, a lot of people also wanted to know how I felt about his return to the big screen seven years after his last appearance. And while it was certainly good to see Garfiled in the suit again after so long, and vindicating to hear a resurgence of appreciation for his portrayal of the character, i had, to put lightly, grievances. Andrew Garfield is only half of what made this character what he was, and the absence of Marc Webb’s writing is palpable. Now there isn’t anything specifically wrong with what he says or does, its just that this character is antithetical to the content of this movie. Fictional characters don’t exist in a vacuum, and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man comes from a story who’s morals are in direct conflict with this one’s. He is a refugee from a genre deconstruction of the exact kind of movie he’s now in, a movie that indulges in the same toxic avoidance of proper grieving that Marc Webb spent two movies criticizing. Let me explain. Part One: Patterns The MCU is not particularly interested in complex emotions. That’s not to say they aren’t emotional, (I’ve seen your fanfiction and angsty fmvs) but Kevin Feige is interested mainly in big, operatic, cathartic emotions. Revenge, and self sacrifice, and rage and true love. Characters do have emotional problems, but they’re more often than not solved with magic keys. The Magic Key is one of the primary ways that hollywood likes to deal with human psychology. People’s psychological problems have a single obvious, often freudian source, and a simple, often very literal solution. In Iron Man Three, for example, Tony’s PTSD and paranoia manifests in the form of him obsessively building new Iron Man suits. Over the course of the movie he regains his confidence in both his engineering skills and his ability to protect his loved ones and symbolically lets go of his paranoia by blowing all of the suits up. This is not a knock at Iron Man Three I actually think its one of the stronger MCU movies, it definitely benefits from being a largely standalone story and having a director with a distinct singular creative vision, but thats a different video. The MCU likes simple emotional problems with literal dramatic solutions. But not all emotions have magic keys. Like, for example, grief. Dealing with the tragic loss of a loved one doesn’t have a simple solution that lends itself to the structure of a popular narrative. It’s just a feeling that sucks, that demands to be felt, and that there is no real escape from beyond time. So the MCU just doesn’t deal with grief. It flat out refuses to acknowledge its existence, because grieving doesn’t sell popcorn. Now you may be saying “But Keane! The MCU has so many tragic character deaths! How could it have made it though 27 movies without ever getting into the subject of grieving?” Well, by distracting you. Lets go back and take a look at the sympathetic characters that bite it over the course of this franchise, and how the aftermath of their deaths are dealt with. In the first Iron Man movie, all the way back in 2008, Yinsen acts as a sort of mentor figure to Tony while he’s trapped in a cave with a box of scraps. He teaches tony to be less of a shitty person, he helps him build the first Iron Man suit, and then boldly sacrifices himself to buy tony precious time. He dramatically imparts some inspiring words then dies, inspiring tony to go storming out of the cave and kick some terrorist butt in a kick-ass action sequence. Then this action scene is immediately followed by a comedy beat, and we forget about how sad we are and move on with the rest of the movie. Yinsen is never mentioned in the movie again. Actually aside from a brief cameo in the flashback prologue of Iron Man 3, he’s never mentioned anywhere in the franchise at all after his death. The guy who’s sacrifice inspired Iron Man is never memorialized or thanked or even just brought up in passing. Because that shits kind of a bummer and we’ve got quips to make! In Captain America Erskine acts as a mentor figure to Steve, teaching him to see the innate goodness within himself. Then he’s shot by a hydra mole and has a dramatic death scene in front of steve which inspires steve to go kick some hydra butt in a kick-ass action sequence, and then he’s hardly ever mentioned again.