For a while over the past few decades, superhero movies and cinematic universes have been at the top of the cinema totem pole, with Marvel Studios and their esteemed “Marvel Cinematic Universe” leading the way. Over the years, however, the trend has pretty much died down, with Marvel having a surprising number of critical and financial problems and DC’s “Extended Universe” finally being put out of its misery last year with four consecutive box office disappointments.
But in the background, in between their truly masterful Spider-Verse films, Sony continues to work hard on its plans for a live-action cinematic universe centered around Spider-Man’s wide range of villains and allies. It seems like an intriguing idea, especially since Spidey has some of the biggest and most iconic villains in comic book history, like Venom and Kraven the Hunter. There’s just one problem with Sony’s plan:
It’s supposed to be a Spider-Man movie universe… without Spider-Man.
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A bit of history: Marvel was struggling financially in the 1990s and to avoid further financial problems and bankruptcy, Marvel sold the film rights to its biggest characters to other studios. Universal got the rights to Hulk, 20th Century Fox bought the X-Men, Deadpool and Fantastic Four and Sony bought the rights to Spider-Man for $10 million, although there was an option to buy the entire Marvel film lineup for $10 million. 25 million US dollars. After both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 faltered critically and financially, Sony and Marvel struck a deal to introduce Spider-Man in 2015.—played by the then up-and-coming actor Tom Holland—into the MCU, with Sony playing the leading role.
The deal that made Sony billions with Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home wasn’t enough for Sony. Although their attempts to create a larger universe failed with the failure of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, they were determined to have their own shared universe to compete with the MCU, and the results were… complicated.
Despite the terrible reviews, “Venom” was a huge success, grossing over $850 million worldwide and becoming one of the Highest grossing films of 2018The audience also liked the film in general—although ironically—and particularly enjoyed Tom Hardy’s performances as Eddie Brock and the titular symbiote, as well as the “old married couple” dynamic the two shared. While the 2021 sequel, “Let There Be Carnage,” only about half of them worldwideHowever, it received better reviews than its predecessor and holds a respectable approval rating of 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.
And it went downhill from there. The next film in the series, Morbius, was delayed for countless reasons before finally hitting theaters on April 1, 2022, and not only received terrible reviews and was quickly labeled as one of the worst superhero movies of all time, but also managed the impossible and became a box office flop twice. After the film initially flopped at the box office, there were ironic memes about the film—including famous pieces such as “It’s Morbin’ Time” and “Morbillion Dollars”—went viral and prompted Sony to bring the film back to the cinemaswhereupon it exploded a second time.
This brings us to Madame Web, which was a flop of similar magnitude and somehow received even worse reviews than Morbius. The train doesn’t end with Madame Web, as there are two more films coming later this year, Venom: The Last Dance in October and the long-delayed Kraven the Hunter in December. There are also many other films in development, with the clear goal of combining many of these films into one “Sinister Six” film, which Sony has wanted to develop for years.
But now the question ultimately boils down to a simple “why.” Why is Sony making these movies in the first place without retaining the rights and keeping Spider-Man out of the clutches of Disney? Why are they so careless with their biggest moneymaker, and why are all but one of these movies so sloppily made and downright bad? There are a variety of reasons, in addition to the obvious meddling of Sony and producers Avi Arad and Amy Pascal, and it’s important to look at those reasons to answer this question.
First, you have to consider the talent behind the films themselves, particularly the directors and writers. Venom was directed by Ruben Fleischer of Zombieland fame and written by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel, who previously wrote The 5th Wave, The Dark Tower, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and Fifty Shades of Grey, among others. With all of their previous scripts being received mediocre to poorly, it’s easy to see why many disliked Venom and its script, even if the dynamic between Eddie Brock and Venom worked. Marcel returned alone to write Let There Be Carnage, but not only was the script much faster and almost more confident than its predecessor, but the director was none other than acclaimed actor Andy Serkis, who had a clear understanding of the type of film he was working on and managed to make it entertaining as a result.
Needless to say, the writing and direction have been a clear disadvantage in all of the films so far. As for the upcoming films this year, not only is Marcel returning for Venom 3, but it will also be her directorial debut, which may make expectations for the film uncertain, and the trailer doesn’t help. As for Kraven The Hunter, it was directed by JC Chandor, best known for A Most Violent Year and Triple Frontier, both of which received relatively positive reviews. The writers of Kraven are Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Richard Wenk, with the former two having written Iron Man, Transformers: The Last Knight, Men in Black: International, and Uncharted, and the latter having written the screenplay for the Equalizer films and the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven.
The largely lackluster writing and direction is just one of the major problems plaguing Sony’s recent Marvel films. Arguably an even bigger problem is that the films revolve around Spider-Man characters who, quite frankly, can’t exist without the web-slinger. The only one that has worked anywhere near well without Spidey is, once again, Venom. Although Venom was born out of Eddie Brock’s rivalry with Peter Parker and Spider-Man is an integral part of Venom’s story, the character has had his own stories separate from Spider-Man and his own villains like Carnage, so it’s not impossible that Spider-Man will play a role in the future.—all the more unwise—for Venom to exist on his own. The same can’t be said for other characters like Madame Web and Morbius, whose only notable claims to fame were their appearances in Spider-Man media like the ’90s cartoon.
The most blatant example is probably Kraven. The character has always been a Spider-Man villain, a vicious animal hunter who pursued Spider-Man out of a desire for a greater challenge. Based on early information about the film From star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, this version of Kraven without the cobwebs is an animal lover who hunts his father (Russell Crowe) for revenge. He’s simply a completely different character, and defeats the purpose of a Kraven movie in the first place.
There’s no telling what Sony really intends to do with this bizarre attempt at a Spider-Man cinematic universe without the titular hero. While no Sinister Six film has been officially greenlit yet, there are signs that Sony is attempting just that. After two terrible box office flops and four films that were less than enthusiastically received, is it even worth it for Sony to continue this endeavor? What comes after Venom: The Last Dance remains to be seen, and we may not know for many months, but whatever comes next, we can’t be too sure that Sony will recover after what they’ve accomplished so far and make this universe work.
