Alfred Molina is just out here spoiling Spider-Man: No Way Home and fans thought it was absolutely hilarious. But my Spider-Man-loving brain instantly went to work. Talking with Variety, Molina said that he had a conversation with director Jon Watts who told him that “In this universe, no one really dies,” as to why Otto Octavius is back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Now, you may recall in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, Molina brought Doc Ock to life and we all collectively agreed that no one could play Otto like he could. (The exception to this rule is Kathryn Hahn’s Olivia Octavius in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.) So when Molina revealed to Variety that he was coming back to the role and it picks up where his character left off in Spider-Man 2, I just … had a lot of thoughts.
First of all, this basically confirms a multiverse. Right? Like, how else are we following up with Otto Octavius right after his storyline in Spider-Man 2 unless we’re going to see Tobey Maguire’s New York and Otto? Unless there is some timey-wimey stuff and villains like Doc Ock and Jamie Foxx’s Electro end up in the main MCU timeline just on happenstance, there isn’t really a way to revisit his Otto unless we go into different timelines.
So has Molina, in his wisdom, just confirmed that we’re going to see both Maguire and Andrew Garfield in No Way Home? Honestly, I’m happy just having little things like this to keep me guessing so I don’t really know what we’re getting until I’m sitting in the movie theater. My only problem with Far From Home was that I knew we couldn’t trust Mysterio, so I almost wish I had no idea who Jake Gyllenhaal was even playing. (But that’s maybe just because I know the comic villain? Either way, I still wish I was surprised.)
So heading into No Way Home, a movie we already know so much and so little about, I just want to keep getting these very misleading and confusing little tidbits of information about it and nothing set in stone, even if we all think we know for sure that we’ll see Maguire and Garfield.
I do like that Molina is just so excited to return to the role. He told Variety, “It was wonderful, … It was very interesting going back after 17 years to play the same role, given that in the intervening years, I now have two chins, a wattle, crow’s feet and a slightly a slightly dodgy lower back.” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that Tobey Maguire isn’t my favorite Spider-Man (which is fine! We can all have our own favorites), but the villains of that original trilogy are next level. Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina cannot be matched as Norman Osborn and Otto. Even J.K. Simmons made it clear that there would only ever really be one choice for J. Jonah Jameson.
So to have both Molina and Simmons coming back for Spider-Man: No Way Home with at LEAST Jamie Foxx? It just feels like a marriage of all the worlds of Spider-Man I love very much coming into one. (I hold Spider-Verse to a completely different level because that is a … perfect movie.)
Whatever does end up happening in Spider-Man: No Way Home, I’m just really happy to have Alfred Molina back.
(image: Sony)
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