Spider-Man’s had something of a crazy run when it comes to movies, almost of all which has been some combination of frustrating, confusing and pyrrhic. Marvel’s favorite son truly began of the age of superhero blockbuster dominance (and no, X-Men doesn’t count).
In his first set of solo movies (way back in the early 2000s, before we even knew that we wanted the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the rest of Marvel’s eclectic cast of superheroic regulars regularly crossing over into his New York adventures), he was basically perfect: a modern Venus arriving fully formed in front of our very eyes. Yes, Toby Maguire was a hopeless dork who looked waaaaaay too old for the part, but in a way, so was Peter Parker: vastly more intelligent than his classmates, hopelessly inept at fitting in, standing out at every turn despite his best efforts. Yes, the CG wasn’t quite there yet (and the all-in-camera Green Gobin suit looks incredibly dated next to the hybrid practical-CG costumes Marvel started employing starting with the first Iron Man), but it gives it kind of a retro charm looking back on it (like firing up an old 8- or 16-bit game in this era of computer generated polygons and hyper-realistic game animation). And, yes, Raimi’s bizarre, b-movie aesthetic was often his own worst enemy, although there’s simply no getting around that what the man got right, he got really right, with the origin sequences, the Doc Oc creation scene, the train fight, the Spider-Man No More bit and nearly any individual sequence in the third movie (with a special shout-out to Sandman’s “birth” sequence) are some of the most engaging pieces of action ever filmed in the medium.
Overall, the first three movies were pretty hit and miss, but the third movie was pretty well and truly undone by the inclusion of Venom in it (he simply over-stuffs the movie and distracts from the more interesting Green Goblin / Sandman scenes). That, plus we never got any real closure with the series after Spider-Man 4 was bumped from production to make room for a Venom solo movie (which was supposed to spin off from Spider-Man 3) that never happened (the Tom Hardy affair that came years later was, ultimately, a separate attempt at the same basic premise). And owing to the technicalities of copywrite law, despite the failure of Spider-Man 3 (2007), the non-start of the Venom movies and the irreparable dissolution of Sony’s partnership with Sam Raimi, they had to crank out another Spider-Man movie before too much time had passed or they’d forfeit their Spider-Man license back to Marvel (who, by now, was doing pretty well for themselves with their first phase of MCU movies).
So that’s how we got the Amazing Spider-Man movies, which disappointingly drew more from the character’s Ultimate incarnation from the comics and lacked anything even close to resembling Raimi’s trademark flair behind the camera. The movies were… fine. They were fine (just fine). They were hated more than they were owed because of the Raimi and reboot angles, and because by now people were starting to realize that they wanted Spider-Man in the MCU along with their other favorite Avengers, but these movies were perfectly serviceable in their own right. They chose some interesting and generally underrated villains, they cast the parts reasonably well and they went with Gwen Stacey over Mary Jane (which will always be a plus in my mind). But those tanked at the box office and were too expensive to shovel out every couple of years and so Sony had to go back to the drawing board.
While not exactly ideal, their new arrangement with Marvel parent Disney was about as close as anybody was going to get under the circumstances. The two companies would share custody of the character and his related IP, meaning that Marvel could use him in the MCU, Sony could cash in on the MCU-connected solo movies (that Marvel themselves would make sure were on the level) and Sony could still pursue their got-awful Venom spinoffs (which arrived to theaters with a wet thud a few years later “like a turd in the wind”). We got the excellent Spider-Man Homecoming (2016) and Far from Home (2019) out of it, as well as his appearances in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Endgame (2019). And, in the meantime, we also got the shockingly great Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) from Sony, which I don’t think anybody believed would be nearly that good (even me, and Spider-Verse is my favorite Spidey comic).
But the arrangement was only ever a rush-job patch that neither party wanted to be saddled with forever. Marvel wanted full custody of their most popular character again. Disney didn’t want to share profits of their highly marketable IP with a rival company. Sony didn’t want the cinematic training wheels that they were saddled with (especially after the financial success of Venom and critical accolades of Into the Spider-Verse). When it came time to renegotiate their deal, things fell through hard. Disney wanted more money than had previously been agreed upon, Sony thought that they could make it on their own, and once again Peter Parker was a lost kid in the middle of a corporate custody battle.
The weird thing was, though, that Spider-Man actor Tom Holland and Spider-Man director Jon Watts were still under contract for the franchise… but for Sony. Meanwhile, it wasn’t clear exactly how much of Spider-Man Marvel still owned, opening up the possibility for something akin to Ultimate Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Spider-Gwen (Gwen Stacey) or Spider-Girl (Mayday Parker) in the MCU. Meanwhile, fans were left with another letdown: a killer cliffhanger ending for Spider-Man: Far from Home that simply could not be resolved for weird, abstract, technical, legal reasons that had nothing to do with the movies themselves.
But now, thankfully, things seem to be resolved (or at least “resolved enough,” meaning that the current shifting status quo should be resolved somewhat before the next board room meeting to decide MCU Spider-Man’s fate). Tom Holland & Co. are back in the MCU, Sony and Marvel are still sharing custody of everybody involved, and a third Spidey movie is set to come out in 2021. How long this new arrangement is bound to hold is anybody’s guess, and it’s certainly a problem for both franchise fans and general movie consumers regardless of who wins, but for now, we can all breath a sigh of relief knowing that Spider-Man is back home where he belongs.
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