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.
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