BulletPoints: Wall Crawling Menace Co-op'ed by Marvel

A recent news report announced that Spiderman would be joining the ranks of the Marvel characters in a recent deal construed by Sony and Marvel. While Fox has yet to weigh in on the issue in regards to X-Men and the Fantastic Four, we can spend the time speculating on whether this news is good or not by skimming over some of the relevant facts, of which, we actually know very little.

First of all, Marvel now assumes creative control over Spiderman, I think. It’s not really clear. According to various sources, Spiderman will be set to appear in an upcoming Marvel film (not confirmed which one, but most likely Civil War). After this appearance, the date which Thor Ragnarok was to be released will be where the next solo Spider-Man film will take place. This also pushes back the dates of several Marvel movies (more on that in a moment). But whether this is a return to Amazing Spider-Man (god I hope not) or a continuation of the supposed soft-reboot for Spider-Man is a little unclear. This also leaves plans for the originally lined-up Sinister Six and Venom movies (neither of which we really needed with Sony at the helm).

There are other things that haven’t been fully explained just yet, but will likely come to light soon. For example, will Andrew Garfield return as Spiderman / Peter Parker or will we get a better candidate who actually fits the role of Peter Parker better? Other sources seem to indicate that Marvel is only really working on part of it and all rights revert back to Sony shortly after these few crossover events are complete. There are a lot of grey areas on this deal that make it really difficult to sort out exactly what the end result will be. So ignoring that for just a second, what are the few items we do know?

#1 – Spiderman will be in a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film. #2 – A Marvel character will appear in a Spiderman film. #3 – This delays several Marvel films unnecessarily. And #4 – This will take place supposedly while Spiderman is still attending High School (oh, boy). Now that we have aired the facts, let me get out my long list of grievances.

Spiderman has had a total of five motherfucking films under his belt with a sixth one on the way. And as of the third movie, the franchise pissed away its good will with the fans and has continued to do so (at least by my observation) with each film thereafter. So why are we delay the world premiers of Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, or the Inhumans to make room for someone we’ve already seen about a dozen or so times? We’ve seen Spiderman. We know Spiderman. We could probably all write our own Spiderman story for a film and they’d turn out better than the crap we’ve gotten the past two films. But few people are familiar with Captain Marvel. Most people don’t think of comics when they hear Black Panther. And people are going to respond to Dr. Strange by saying, “Dr. Who?” If anything, Spiderman should be delayed or not need a stand-alone film and let the other heroes get their moment they’ve been working for.

Also please don’t bring back Andrew Garfield. Much like Ryan Reynolds, they have no business being in these films. Andrew is not Spiderman. He is not Peter Parker. He is a discount Edward Cullen, and that should be insulting since Edward Cullen is the bottom of the barrel of discount vampires. But you know what, fans of Andrew? Let’s compromise! I won’t insist on Tobey if you shut up for five minutes about Andrew. Let’s find someone new who could bring the role to its proper place and still give it a fresh new feel to it. I’m personally going to back Stan Lee’s original idea back when the Amazing Spiderman reboot was underway and suggest Donald Glover to play a black Spiderman. Yes, I’m saying this option is better than Andrew Garfield and I don’t even mean that as a joke.

Now to an important question: Why are we sending Peter back to high school? Did anyone actually like high school? I get people say it was the best years of your life. But for me they were some of the most depressing, boring, wasted years I can think of outside that extra year I had to spend in college because they fucked up counting my college-credit. And all this does is leave the door open for more angsty teenage romance like we had in the Amazing Spiderman films, which was one of the worst aspects of said film (even if it was Emma Stone, it was still poorly written teenage drama I left behind years ago and never want to revisit). I can only imagine Sony insisted on that still being a part of the equation. Assuming they still had a chance to steal from the Twilight / Divergent / Hunger Games crowd.

The problem here is that, in the comics, Peter was actually a well-adjusted adult during the Civil War storyline with a job working alongside Tony Stark at Stark Industries. That’s how that connection is formed and that’s why Spiderman is important to how the Civil War plays out. It’s because of his actions that lead to his life being torn apart. His marriage is ruined. His wife has a miscarriage. His aunt is shot. And all his enemies from the YEARS of being Spiderman are out for revenge. You can’t have that if he’s still in high school because he won’t have all of that to lose. And if that’s the case, why bother getting him in this arrangement for Civil War in the first place?

Let me clarify. I love Spiderman. I grew up thinking Spiderman was the only hero worth watching. It took three shit Spiderman films for me to become this jaded on the concept of the character in a live action film. I’m not dumping on this new arrangement because I hate Spiderman or because I think being negative is edgy and gets views. I’m just saying we should air on the side of caution with this one more than anything else as fans. We shouldn’t get all excited because we don’t know enough about the arrangement or how it will affect the MCU as a whole to really have a concrete idea of what to expect. For all we know, the results could be as phenomenal. But I won’t want to jump on that bandwagon and assume everything will be great only to end up being disappointed in 2017 when the new film hits and I’ve invested myself in the Spider-Man-Craze.

The more important thing I’m trying to instill upon my readers, however, is that we should be demanding more of our Spiderman. Why were we (by which I mean you) so accepting of the Amazing Spiderman films when they were such utter rubbish? All the villains looked like vomit. The writing for dialogue, especially romance scenes, was reminiscent of the Prequel-era George Lucas. The plot involving Peter’s dead parents was meaningless and irrelevant and made everything feel so small and connected that the story felt claustrophobic. Everything being connected to Oscorp was both convenient and stupid. The lack of a character arc for Peter Parker made him the least interesting character in a film of really uninteresting iterations of usually interesting characters. And give us our Mysterio! Raise your damn standards people.

I’m done on my rant about Spiderman. What’s needed to be said has been said. I have faith Marvel and fix the broken mess Sony left behind, but I fear Sony still being around will make that harder than it needs to be. Until more news that actually clarifies information comes out, I’m done discussing it. See ya next time. If you enjoyed my bashing Spiderman, please like, share, comment, and subscribe and maybe I’ll post a video of me bashing spiders with a newspaper or something.