I saw this today. Some of it was good; some of it felt like it was written by (bad) AI, but mostly it felt like no one bothered to think about what the movie was trying to tell us.
The big problem comes with Jamie's decision not to kill. At one point in the film, the suit goes to kill a threat, and Jamie stops it... saying "We don't kill." The threat then gets up and beats him, and almost kills him until his family rescues him.
Later, the threat identifies Jamie and they go to attack his family home to kidnap him. By "They" I mean a private military force that announces they have been "authorized to kill," (I know it's a fictional universe, but that's clearly a lie.) and illegally invade his home and drag his family out. Jamie comes in to save his family. The bad guys shoot at him... no luck, so they're told to shoot at his family (WTF?); so Jamie uses the Scarab to save them... temporarily, but refuses to use non-lethal force on them. (MISTAKE!) His sister trips, his father goes to save her, but has a heart attack and dies. He gets captured because he's distracted by his dad's death.
Later, when his family goes to rescue him, his family - most notably his grandmother - explicitly shoots people, killing them. At one point his uncle uses a giant robot to step on a stormtrooper, who gets stuck on the bottom of the robot shoe. That guy's dead, but the movie uses it as a joke.
Later, in the big CGI Wonder Woman scene, Jamie wants to kill the bad guy, but the suit stops him, showing him the bad guy's memories. They bad guy, then, blows himself up, killing the villain behind it all.
Spiderman is, I think, a super hero most people are familiar with. Spiderman starts out using his powers for selfish gain, has the opportunity to stop a bad guy and refuses, and this leads to his Uncle's death. Spiderman learns that with great power comes great responsibility; that he cannot stand by and let bad people get away with things.
In contrast, Jamie is an extreme pacifist. He stops a villain from killing another person, but because he doesn't use lethal force, he almost dies, he puts his family at risk, and gets his father killed. His remaining family use lethal force to save him. He learns to use lethal force, but his computer sidekick convinces him not to... but the bad guy he spares uses lethal force to commit suicide, killing the woman who ordered an illegal strike on his family, tried to kill him, and killed What We Do In the Shadows' Guillermo because he got pissy his boss kept forgetting his name, and if he's willing to commit murder for her, the least she can do is remember his name!
If Spiderman had stopped the crook, his uncle would be safe and alive.
If Jamie had killed the evil cyborg child soldier in self-defense, his father would still be alive. But at no point does Jamie learn the lesson the script was trying to teach him (in between vacuous chatgpt dialogue about family), nor does he have a reason to do the thing that drove the plot. There was no scene where his father refused to kill a rat, where his grandmother refused to kill a soldier, etc. that lead to good things. The only "good thing" refusing to kill lead to in this movie was that it let someone else do the killing!
The actors were all serviceable. The CGI was a mix of Green Lantern and Spy Kids at worst, and video game cutscene at best. The story they're adapting was cool and engaging. But the script seems to be written inexplicably to teach Jamie that lethal force is morally justified, and this is a lesson that flies over his face... even as his Grandmother mows down two distinct sets of stormtroopers trying to kill him.
Another, admittedly lesser, problem with the movie is that Jamie has just graduated college, but not graduate school, with a Pre-law degree... that literally does nothing but put him, and his family who will lose the hose, into debt. Just as the movie seems to want Jamie to learn the lesson "killing in self-defense is not only morally justified, but good" it also seems to want to teach that college and hard work is a waste of time, and you should get a rich white sugarmomma to pay for everything for you. You know, after you help get her aunt killed so she can inherit the company.
This is not a good movie; but it is a good character and setup. I wouldn't mind seeing sequel, but DC is probably going to cut their losses here. Too bad.
