Where’s Spider-Man? A look at Sony’s Marvel Spinoffs.

After the mediocre audience reception toKraven The Hunter, eyes turned to Sony asking, “What keeps going wrong?” BetweenMorbiusin 2022 andMadame Webin 2023, it really felt like Sony wasn’t going to be able to capture the original magic of their most successful Spider-Man-adjacent film:Venom. And thanks to a recent Variety article, we’ve finally found out why that might be.

Since 2018 and the firstVenommovie, Spider-Man fans—myself included!—have been under the impression that Sony’s deal with Disney limited the options Sony had for including the character in their films. But thanks tothis exclusive info from Variety, we’ve now come to find out that they could have used Spider-Man the whole time. Spider-Man could have been in all of these movies. Venomcouldhave had the white spider on his chestfrom the beginning.

Some of the reasoning for Sony’s hesitation to include the beloved web-slinger isn’ttotallywithout merit. The studio worried audiences wouldn’t be able to accept Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in a context outside of the establishedMarvel Cinematic Universe. This logic is pretty sound, considering the set parameters of the MCU and the extreme limitations on that version of Spider-Man (I’ve complained about this in many articles before). Thisdoesn’tfollow why they wouldn’t just use theirownestablished Spider-Man, picking up the phone and calling up Andrew Garfield for a feature.

Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man could have been easily referenced or evenshownin any of the Sony films, and it wouldn’t have raised eyebrows. Dancing around who these characters are outside of their relationship with Spider-Man has beenwayweirder and more disorienting than a quick reference to Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man would have been. And now, finding out that there was nothing actually legally stopping them from doing that? The mind boggles.

Sony has defended their decision, holding up the success of theVenomfilms as if to say, “See? The people don’twantSpider-Man in their Spider-Man villain movies.” But doing so completely misses the point of what made theirVenommovies successful. I’ve said it before:TheVenomtrilogy is a romcom!Audiences didn’t go into the movies expecting exciting, comic-accurate alien antihero shenanigans—theVenomfilms could be divorced from Spider-Man because they had something totally different and interesting going on. But what was compelling forVenom and Eddiecan’t really be replicated for the likes of Morbius or Madame Web or ESPECIALLY Kraven the Hunter.Venomwas successful because it was 2 hours of Tom Hardy being insane with a goopy CGI version of himself as they fell in love.Morbius,Madame Web,andKravenwerenotas successful because you took Spider-Man villains and put them in a situation without Spider-Man. For no reason.

There isn’t a lack of interest in these villains, and thereisan audience who would appreciate these projects if they were presented in the context they were meant. A context of Spider-Man.

Bring back our boy: we miss him.

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