Sony‘s stewarding of the Spider-Man franchise hasn’t been the best, and that’s something of an understatement. The original Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy has two of the most beloved superhero movies of the ’00s, as well as one of the least loved. The Amazing Spider-Man duology started strong but got bogged down in a sequel that was trying too hard to start a cinematic universe. Sony teaming up with Marvel Studios gave fans a great Spider-Man trilogy and made the Spider-Verse animated films on their own, but then the studio also tried to set up a Spider-Man expanded universe with disastrous results — critics and fans panned most of them and several of them were memorable bombs, with the newly released Kraven the Hunter opening to critical jeers.
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Sony announced that they were shelving their expanded Spider-Man universe, a move that has been coming for a long time now. Bombs like Morbius and Madame Web were more than just box office failures; they’ve become jokes among fans of superhero films. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some reticence from many about dancing on the graves of Sony’s Spider-Man universe. There are still a lot of beloved characters from the Sony-verse and ideas that could have made for a great team-up movie, one that we wish was going to happen.
Despite Its Flaws, the Sony-Verse Had a Lot of Potential
2024 has not been a good year for superhero movies. While Deadpool & Wolverine restored faith in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are a lot of superhero film failures. Something like Joker: Folie a Deux seemed like it would be a surefire hit and other ones, like The Crow reboot, had failure written all over them. Sony’s previous 2024 Spider-Man spinoffs both failed, but only one of them felt like it was destined to fail (Madame Web). Venom: The Last Dance‘s failure was more of a surprise and, while it’s too soon to tell with Kraven the Hunter, most fans and critics didn’t actually have a lot of faith in it to begin with. Sony’s failures in 2024 sealed the deal for their universe.
Sony had a lot of plans for their Spider-Man films; one need only look at Knull appearing in Venom: The Last Dance to see that they more than likely had some team-up movie planned at some point. Sinister Six, which they had tried to tease with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, was being set up by mid- and post-credits scenes. Many speculated that all of this was going to lead to Knull becoming a Thanos-like figure for Sony’s Spider-Man universe, possibly making an adaptation of the King in Black story with just the Spider-Man characters. And losing that idea is a disappointment.
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The thing about Marvel is that there are several sub-universes in the comics. This state of affairs came from the popularity of two of Marvel’s biggest-selling comic franchises: the X-Men and Spider-Man. These two “families” of characters could operate on their own, away from the overall Marvel Universe, as each has their own plethora of heroes and villains. Sony had access to all of these Spider-Man characters — some of them extremely popular, like Venom, and some completely unknown to any but the most devoted comic fans like Leap Frog. While they were mocked for trying to create their own cinematic superhero universe — and looking at the box office and reception of their films that mockery was well-deserved — they had the characters to pull it off and create something successful.
Spider-Man has some of the greatest villains in superhero media. Characters like Venom and Knull opens up an entire world of symbiote-clad heroes and villains. Spider-Man has allies like the multiple Spider-Women, Spider-Boy, Silk, Black Cat, and more that could all shine on the big screen. Given the right story, a Sony-verse team-up movie could be a lot of fun, even with Sony’s legacy of bad movies.
Kraven the Hunter is looking to follow in the footsteps of its Sony predecessors, but that doesn’t mean that Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Kraven could never be good. Despite Venom: The Last Dance’s box office failure, people still love Tom Hardy as Venom. Woody Harrelson as Carnage and Andy Serkis as Knull are too good to lose, as is Michael Keaton’s Vulture. However, now they’re gone, like tears in the rain, never to have the team-up movie everyone secretly wants.
Superhero Film Fans Are Losing Out on a Potentially Great Team-Up Movie
The health of the superhero movie market is always measured by how well the Marvel Cinematic Universe is doing. Since the end of Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios had a lot of hiccups on the big and small screen, and it wasn’t until 2024 that things got better, because of the one-two punch of Deadpool & Wolverine and the announcements surrounding Avengers: Doomsday/Avengers: Secret Wars — the returns of the Russo Brothers, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Evans. People are excited for Marvel again. James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU also has a huge amount of buzz behind it, with Creature Commandos showing what the new DC Studios is capable of. Superhero movies seem to have turned the corner.
That’s what makes losing a Sony-verse team-up movie so sad. Fans are excited about superhero movies for the first time in several years. Sony’s sometimes laughable failures are partly to blame for fans losing their excitement for superhero films, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have benefited from this turn of fan esteem. Sony has access to wonderful characters, and they could have made an excellent team-up movie.
A Hail Mary play like this might have failed miserably — there’s a great chance it would have — but it still would have been worth seeing.