Am I reading too much into the plot... it seems way to deep for a movie like this. However the send them back vs. cure them vs. fix them debate, and them being in dungeons just made me think of this.
shareOf course. They hit us over the head with it. I also thought they didn't do a very good job with their rehabilitation argument. It made sense for Goblin and Otto as they were basically suffering from mental illness. But Electro was a completely normal dude who decided to misuse his power and hurt people. Taking away his superpowers and setting him free is the equivalent of taking the gun away from a school shooter and sending them back to school
shareI assumed Electro would not have been able to recreate the conditions to get his powers back, which would make it impossible for him to relapse. Compared to a school shooter just buying another gun. But you bring up another point, yes this cool Electro was perfectly normal and decently well adjusted. Nothing like the nerdy one we initially saw years ago who clearly had mental problems.
But I had more of an issue with "curing" the Goblin. This sends the message that mental illness can be cured by medicine, when often it can be the result of traumas or other things that do not have a physiological problem that can be fixed.
The Goblin thing is more palatable if you see the 'cure' as a metaphor for therapy. But yes, overall the movie/Spiderman is pretty naive for assuming that bad people can be fixed and will go back to being good. Especially when the movie is set in the Marvel universe where we have seen people who do evil things just for power and greed (Obadiah Stane, Hela, Red Skull). Now imagine Peter Parker trying to rehabilitate them.
shareThe Goblin was created by the medicine so that would send the message that medicine caused the problem that medicine is trying to cure.
Many of the school shooters are just like the goblin actually, drugged up with SSRIs. So the issue isn't like Electro who was more of a natural bad guy who got his hands on super powers.
Even if he could not become a supervillain again, hes still a criminal who thinks might is right and people that gets in his way should be killed. He wasnt rehabilitated, just got his toys taken away from him.
shareIt reminded me of a Star Trek Voyager episode where they aided a prison transport ship. One the prisoners was a murderer who threatened several Voyager crew and taunted the main guard about knowing his children's names.
The guards beat him up and in saving his life, the doctor discovered a genetic brain issue that caused his violent tendencies and some cured them.
The whole episode was... people are only bad because of a thing that can be fixed in the brain.
It's a naïve worldview and this film essentially promoted the same thing. Science will cure bad people.
It's utter nonsense.
This actually comes down to the question of free will. A lot of people do not believe in it. There is a view that all our choices are simply the consequence of our particular brain chemistry and experiences up until that point. There are many cases of twins separated at birth who as adults have the same job, and very similar spouses. The question of choice was also explored in the Matrix. They have done brain scans where they can show your brain making decisions before you are consciously aware of them.
There are also cases of people who have brain trauma, and their personalities completely change. The movie Regarding Henry is based on this.
You are just describing determinism and it goes a lot farther than brain chemistry. The fact that we will have such exact brain chemistry was decided by billions of determining factors before even the starts that our body matter is made out of exploded.
Also yes, Twins tend to be similar, especially the clinical ones where they both come from same egg and split during multiplication. To the point where a deviation of more than 3 IQ points has a chance lower than one in a million.
But hey, dont let science get in a way of a feel good moral fingerpointing.