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Spider-Man: No Way Home is out in theaters now, and all the rumors are true. The film sees five villains return from the previous Spider-Man films starring Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.
Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) was teased in the trailer, as was the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). The Marvel movie, however, also had room for three more former villains: Electro (Jamie Foxx), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and Lizard (Rhys Ifans).
Those actors may contain an Oscar winner and multiple nominees, but let's just say not every actor gets the same amount to do.
Everybody's hidden under a large amount of CGI, but some of that work is better than others. And while some people get emotional speeches, others seem to be there simply because they wanted a villain from each film.
Now the film is out, it is time to separate the Spider-men from the Spider-boys. Here's who comes out best and worst from the new movie.
6. Lizard
Is it possible that the CGI on the Lizard looks worse now than it did in The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012? That was the question that every frame of this movie posed.
With six villains in play (there's another bad guy that you might have forgotten), one was always going to be wasted, and it was Lizard. The show has so little for him to do, in fact, that for a major part of the movie he is just sitting in a van.
And of the returning actors, Rhys Ifans was clearly the one who could spare the least time on screen (fair enough, seeing as he is currently filming the Game of Thrones prequel). At a conservative estimate, he cannot have been on set more than a few hours.
5. Sandman
Spider-Man 3 is pretty much the definition of a flawed film, but Thomas Haden Church gives a good performance as a conflicted man forced into petty crimes due to his daughter's illness. Oh, and he also falls into a particle accelerator, because this is Spider-Man.
No Way Home has no time for this drama, however, and so simply makes the character a wise-cracker, with one reference to his daughter being the only thing that ties him to the Sandman we know.
His arc also makes the least sense—surely if anyone would jump at the chance of being cured, it would be the man made of literal sand.
4. Electro
One of the three Oscar-winners of the No Way Home cast (alongside Marisa Tomei and JK Simmons), Jamie Foxx loses points by refusing to wear his Amazing Spider-Man 2 goofy wig and teeth in this film—it makes no sense how his trip into the MCU also gave him a super-hot makeover. It almost seems like Foxx refused to look uncool in this film—which, it has to be said, is a pretty uncool move.
The CGI on Electro is better than it was in 2014, but they still have not figured out how to make this character look good. Foxx is fine (when is he anything less), but you cannot help but wish they had got Paul Giamatti to don the Rhino suit again.
3. J Jonah Jameson
He might not try to throw the Peter Parkers (Peters Parker?) off the Statue of Liberty, but JK Simmons is still a villain in this film. Without his smear campaign, after all, Peter would not need to get Doctor Strange to cast the spell in the first place.
The idea of JK Simmons as an Alex Jones-type right-wing vlogger is such a delicious idea that you kind of wish the film had taken it further. The real Jones, after all, shared conspiracy theories that the government controls hurricanes, so Marvel had room to push their character much further.
There is still much to enjoy, however, from the sight of Jameson being forced to hawk pseudoscientific supplements.
2. Doctor Octopus
As Tom Hiddleston proved, the best superhero villains are British actors who can deliver whatever nonsense they are scripted to say with Shakespearean gravitas. And though Terence Stamp may have invented the type in Superman II, Alfred Molina is among the best in the field of British baddies.
He also has the hardest job of any of the returning villains, as he has to convincingly play his move from supervillain to Spidey-ally across the course of the film. And he succeeds.
1. Green Goblin
First, a shout-out to the effects team. Lizard may not have been fully worked out, but kudos to whoever had to de-age one of our great craggy-faced actors, Willem Dafoe.
What tips the Goblin into the top spot is not just the fact that he is the OG onscreen Spider-Man villain. It is also that Dafoe is an actor who can play unhinged villains like Bobby Peru (in David Lynch's Wild at Heart) but also Jesus (in The Last Temptation of Christ). This angel/devil dichotomy makes him an exemplary villain, able to switch from vulnerable to villainous in an instant. It also helps that he is willing to chew any piece of scenery you put in front of him is given the chance And Spider-Man: No Way Home gives him the chance.
