No Way Home Overcorrects Amazing Spider-Man's Electro Mistakes

Jamie Foxx's Electro was a big challenge in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as Marc Webb tried to make him a sympathetic and understandable villain, but the character never really hit the mark. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Electro got his second chance, but was shifted to more of a background role as the villains' powerhouse. His visual design was a massive improvement, but his original Amazing Spider-Man 2 character had a lot of redeeming qualities that unfortunately didn't make it into No Way Home due to the emphasis given to the other characters, mainly Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock.

Since No Way Home had to tackle five villains, there were always going to be some members of the team that got more screen time than others. Electro follows along with Peter's plan to cure the villains until the Green Goblin attacks, where he immediately switches sides by stealing one of Tony Stark's arc reactors from the fabricator being used to create the cures. In Amazing Spider-Man 2, Max Dillon's story is about a man that just wants to be seen, and lashes out with his newfound powers when he feels betrayed. While it's not perfect, it's a more complex character than what was carried over into No Way Home.

Why Electro Needed To Be Fixed After TASM2

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is very controversial, mostly due to the studio interference that forced it to become a setup film for future Sony Spidey projects that caused it to collapse under its own weight. Director Marc Webb saw Electro as a way to show the darker side of looking up to someone, having Electro go too far in his Spidey obsession. Unfortunately, general audiences saw him as a generic bad guy that just wanted to kill Spider-Man, and blamed him for the film's split focus. His motivation wasn't terrible, but the character shifted away from that motivation too much and wasn't able to deliver on Webb's original vision.

Electro Would Have Been Better If NWH Didn't Go So Far

While Electro's original story didn't work for a lot of audiences, it had good intentions. Having a Spider-Man fan turned villain is an interesting concept, one that Spidey's comics have explored many times over the years. After The Amazing Spider-Man 2 received critical reception, Spider-Man: No Way Home was the opportunity to correct all of it, and the character came out completely different. Everything from Electro's design, to how Foxx played the character, and how he had almost no recognizable love for Spider-Man. The design is a massive improvement, but giving Electro an arc reactor to empower him wasn't enough to fix the character.

No Way Home had a monumental task, bringing back two decades of Spider-Man villains without making them feel unrecognizable, and the entire team did an incredible job. But that restriction meant they couldn't change Electro's original story from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and he kept the powerful abilities and pure hatred the character had right before he died. If his powers had been reeled in, and he was kept as a Spidey fan turned Spidey villain, Electro could have been a much more interesting character in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Next: How Electro's No Way Home Costume Compares To Comics And TASM