Spider-Man: No Way Home Teaser Released

 After an early leak, Sony and Marvel have released the teaser (though this is a pretty detail-filled trailer to call it a teaser) for the third MCU Spider-Man movie: No Way Home.

The premise, it seems, is a classic case of Peter Parker trying to fix one of his problems by introducing a whole new problem.

In the post-credits scene of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter and MJ take a romantic web-swing around New York, only to see JK Simmons' J. Jonah Jameson, reimagined in the MCU as an Alex Jones-style far-right conspiracy slinger, releasing footage doctored by Mysterio's effects team to not only unmask Peter, but also implicate him in Mysterio's death.

Here, we catch up with Peter dealing with the repercussions of his identity being revealed - though he seems to beat the charges in Mysterio's death, he's hounded by people who no longer trust him and now threaten his family.

But Peter Parker knows a freaking wizard, so he goes to Doctor Strange and has the Sorcerer Supreme cast a spell to undo his doxxing, but when he realizes that this would also mean that those close to him would forget his secret identity as well. The spell, naturally, goes wrong, and it seems that he and Doctor Strange are sent on a universe-hopping adventure.

While it was discovered many months ago, the most exciting and mind-bending reveal here is that this movie looks like it will be melding the canon of the earlier, pre-MCU movies. The trailer reveals both the return of Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus (the latter somewhat more explicitly, as he actually shows up on screen.) Supposedly Jaime Foxx's Electro will also appear, meaning that the earlier Spider-Man movies are, in fact, canonical, but from other universes.

The MCU Spider-Man movies have been delightful, with a great young cast and the requisite ties to the greater Marvel universe. But it definitely seems that Marvel is committed to this multiversal theme, and gets to do some fan service along the way.

Black Widow

 For years, there was a question everyone had about the MCU: why the hell isn't there a Black Widow movie? Black Widow and Hawkeye were introduced in Iron Man 2 and Thor, respectively, giving us a first look at the two Avengers who would not get their own solo movies before the big team-up in 2012 (you could be forgiven for forgetting the the Edward Norton-starring Incredible Hulk movie is still MCU canon, even if they switched to the much better-cast Mark Ruffalo with the Avengers - Norton's a fine actor, don't get me wrong, but Ruffalo is perfect for Bruce Banner.)

While Hawkeye is very few people's favorite Avenger (though one of the better parts of the sub-par Age of Ultron is making Clint a more interesting character,) Johansson brings top-tier A-list movie stardom to her role. So we were all left wondering why the hell she didn't get a solo movie.

As it turns out, it's because the former head of Marvel Studios, Isaac Perlmutter, is kind of a racist, misogynistic piece of shit, who put the kibosh on superhero movies that didn't star white dudes. When Perlmutter was kicked upstairs and Kevin Feige was put in charge of the studio (Feige being a rarity in that he's sort of a producer-as-auteur) we started seeing things like Captain Marvel and Black Panther, which proved (Black Panther especially) that audiences will be very excited to see these big-budget movies that take other perspectives.

But it is a little weird that it took so long to get a Black Widow movie. And now, of course, there's also the controversy over how Disney screwed Johansson out of her cut by releasing the movie on Disney Plus along with theaters. While it's a perfectly natural and responsible decision to do the Disney Plus release (which, in fact, is how I saw the movie) in the midst of a pandemic that is sadly roaring back thanks to the Delta Variant (seriously, if you haven't gotten vaccinated yet, please just fucking do it,) but they should have given her an equivalent cut of the sales. (And if you want to argue that a movie star like Scarlett Johansson doesn't need the many millions of dollars this deal should be giving her, I'll point out that Disney needs it even less, and she's pretty clearly wronged party in this case - I hope they settle with her. And if Kevin Feige was willing to weigh in on her side of the argument, I think that probably means Disney knows it'll have to settle.)

But jeez, we haven't even gotten to the movie.

Spoilers ahead: