>>130200658>>130200985Norman by himself was not a bad person. He was kind of a dick, but not quite terrible. He just needed help that he never got. Goblin was for all intents and purposes a separate identity. I was never all that comfortable how the first movie just swept that under the rug. Every bad thing Norman does is done under the influence of the Goblin identity. When he's just himself, he's portrayed as mentally suffering and exhausted.
When he's talking to the mask, he doesn't look angry at Spider-Man or whatever, he looks like a man who is hurting and wants to break free from his illness but cannot do it. He was as much of a victim as anyone else. I'm glad at least No Way Home acknowledged that.
I know people are nostalgic for the movie and are gonna throw some superficial rationalization at me like "Goblin was just all those evil thoughts he had repressed!" or "he's bad for not having le epic willpower to fight it!". But first of all, I'm not trying to dunk on the movie, I still enjoy it but I wish Norman's tragedy was acknowledged explicitly OR the movie actually spent more time establishing Norman himself as a shitty person. Second, we're on a website where people casually joke about rape and stuff like that, so if "having evil thoughts and repressing them" is a crime then all of us deserve to be killed I supposed. And not being able to fight off your own destructive uncontrollable mental illness is definitely not a crime.
