By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Foes for Sony’s superhero films featuring Spider-Man villains received mixed news last week. In the middle of Kraven the HunterAfter the box office failure, Sony reportedly abandoned plans to create an interconnected universe of Spidey’s rivals. However, Variety reports that the studio will continue to work in this genre with upcoming releases like Beyond the Spider-Verse and live action Spider-Man Black series with Nicolas Cage. While no one can deny the ambitious quality of the Spider-Verse films, the news that Sony will continue to make superhero films depresses me because they exemplify everything that is wrong with the genre.
Sony superhero films taste success
As Exhibitor Relations Analyst Jeff Bock pointed out, Sony’s fatal flaw is that “they had a taste of success with Venom“, and that led them to think they could just create “superhero” films built around Spidey’s colorful rogues gallery. He pointed out that the studio didn’t realize “that Venom could carry a franchise, whereas these other characters could not. Keeping Spider-Man out of his own villains’ films “was the fatal flaw” because most of these villains are uncompelling on their own, and the disastrous Madame Web has proven that Sony is just as incompetent when it comes to focusing on a superhero rather than a supervillain for its undercooked films.
Who are these heroes?
This brings us to the first obvious example of Sony’s hubris: they inexplicably assumed that audiences didn’t want any sort of brand recognition for these cinematic protagonists. Wonder has worked hard to establish Venom as a comic book character since the ’90s, and as a result, there was plenty of material to draw on when creating his solo films. But characters like MorbiusMadame Web and Kraven aren’t as popular or developed, and focusing on them was just as crazy as if the MCU had released Vulture or Mysterio films without Spider-Man.
Speaking of MCUcomparing them to Sony reveals the extent to which the latter studio has put the cart before the horse with its superhero films. Although Marvel has already cast some big names, many fan-favorite characters are played by relatively unknown people, including Tom Holland. Marvel took the time to cast good actors that would appeal to audiences, but with films like Kraven and Madame Webthey seemed to be hoping for a familiar stunt cast (hey, look, the guy from Kick ass is an anti-hero now!) would be enough to pique public interest.
No web connection
Worse yet, Sony has never really figured out how to properly connect its superhero movies. We get gestures towards a shared universe like the MCU’s Vulture in Morbiusand a No way home Marvel’s post-credits confirmation that Sony’s films were in their own multiverse. But the films never seemed to build anything or take advantage of their shared universe. This wouldn’t matter if the individual heroes and villains were incredibly compelling, but that’s simply not the case.
The whole point of all this is that Sony is committed to making more superhero movies, and there’s no sign that they’ve learned any lessons from the critical and commercial failures of Morbius, Madame WebAnd Kraven the Hunter. The studio seems intent on spending millions and millions of dollars on products that look like the crap you’ll find on Tubi’s virtual bottom shelf. We can only hope that they’ll have internalized at least one lesson going forward: that audiences might actually want Spider-Man in a Spider-Man universe movie.
Or, you know, they might just hope that things like these ironic “it’s Morbin time” memes can give these awful films the cultural imprint they would never have enjoyed on their own dismal merits.
Source: Variety
