The most recent failure in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) is Kraven the Hunter. The movie tells the origin story of Kraven the Hunter, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who makes his live-action debut. Fans, however, have vehemently opposed the film, pointing out that Sony changed the character’s traits, such as turning him into an animal lover rather than a hunter. One thing is certain: Kraven the Hunter is a critical and financial failure for Sony, even though it is hard to attribute its failure to a single fault. Sony is forced to reevaluate the state of its world and the viability of Spider-Man films in the wake of its most recent failure.
It’s nice to hear that Sony is ending the Spider-Man movie franchise, but I don’t think this will change the studio’s bad reputation for producing subpar superhero movies. With Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, Sony got off to a great start in the early 2000s, but things soon went south, and the studio is now more renowned for its run of unsuccessful films. Sony’s image has suffered too much, even with the animated Spider-Verse franchise, for fans to ever trust the company with the film rights to one of the most well-known superheroes ever. Therefore, I think it’s time for Sony to do the unimaginable and return the film rights to Marvel for Spider-Man.
Long before the SSU started, Sony was having problems with Spider-Man. Although there were some good aspects to the Amazing Spider-Man franchise, which starred Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man, it was severely hindered by Sony’s intense desire to create its own superhero movie universe. The film itself is obscured by the incessant franchise bait, which suffocated The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with incessant setups for spinoffs and future plots. At least two more sequels were originally planned to be released between several movies centered on Spider-Man villains, such as Venom and the Black Cat. In the end, Sony intended to release a Sinister Six movie, which would be the first time the supervillain squad appeared together in a live-action production. These plans, however, fell apart due to the negative reception of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which ultimately resulted in the collaboration between Sony and Marvel for a relaunched Spider-Man trilogy starring Tom Holland.
The original ideas for a Spider-Man movie universe, however, were not completely abandoned. The much criticized Sony Spider-Man Universe as it exists now was born in 2018 when the company revived its intentions with Venom. Despite not having Spider-Man at its core, this movie universe made use of some of the leftover blueprints for Andrew Garfield’s franchise. But after just six films, this franchise has completely collapsed, making it a complete disaster. Sony has made two unsuccessful attempts to create a Spider-Man movie universe, but they have never been able to get their property to the point where it can be considered a valid shared universe. Not a single movie ever transitioned into another, and no recurring plots developed over a number of years. Instead, Sony tried the artistic equivalent of flinging objects at a wall to see what would stick, but nothing stuck. Even their widely adored Spider-Verse franchise is seeing difficulties as the eagerly awaited third movie fails to advance past the production stage. In the many years that Sony has held the cinematic rights to Spider-Man, one thing has become evident: the studio is unable to create a strong franchise around the character.
Sadly for Sony, companies attempting to create a superhero movie universe will only face greater challenges. Due to recent events, Marvel and DC are dealing with “superhero fatigue,” a phenomenon in which many people say they are just sick of the genre, which has recently become oversaturated due to the growth of the MCU and DCEU. Although it is debatable if superhero fatigue is a real phenomenon or merely a response to a number of subpar films in the genre (I lean toward the latter), it is certain that people will no longer shell out a lot of money to see a film simply because it features superheroes. Sony had planned to capitalize on this idea with their Spider-Man universe, but the consecutive box office busts of Madame Web, Morbius, Venom: The Last Dance, and Kraven the Hunter show that just having the film rights to superheroes and supervillains is insufficient. Superhero moviegoers have higher expectations, and Sony has failed to meet those expectations.
Sony is far from figuring out how to create a successful superhero franchise in the current film industry, despite the claims of filmmakers like James Gunn and Kevin Feige that they have a solution to superhero weariness. I used to think that Sony would never transfer the rights to Spider-Man’s films back to Marvel, but given the recent decline in the box office success of superhero films, it might be the smartest course of action for the studio going forward. In the MCU, Sony has lost too many superhero box office battles, even though Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films are still quite popular. Sony may decide to jump ship from the superhero genre in anticipation of its further decline in popularity after suffering significant losses.
It is obvious that Marvel is far more capable of handling Spider-Man than Sony from a creative perspective. Marvel Studios would be a far better fit for Spider-Man and his supporting cast than Sony, given the studio is run by fans of the original comics. This is demonstrated by Tom Holland’s MCU Spider-Man trilogy, which masterfully tells the adored superhero’s lengthy origin narrative and leaves viewers eager for Spider-Man 4 to continue his adventures. With its numerous Marvel characters, who have continuously been destroyed by the companies’ poor creative process, Sony has failed to do this. In order to stay closer to the comic book characters that serve as their inspiration, Marvel would treat the characters far better than they do.
Additionally, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and his movie franchise would greatly benefit if Sony sold its Marvel properties back to their home studio. Sony had previously blocked Marvel from using some Spider-Man characters because they intended to utilize them in their own SSU. For example, Kraven the Hunter was originally slated to feature in several MCU Spider-Man films before Sony scrapped the concept in favor of his recently released spinoff movie. The characters and plotlines that Marvel may explore in upcoming projects would no longer be limited if they owned the film rights to all of Spider-Man’s characters. Future directors would have complete freedom to explore anything they desire in Spider-Man spinoffs and sequels. Obtaining the Spider-Man movie rights would be extremely beneficial to the MCU, and fans everywhere would be ecstatic when all of Marvel’s characters made their comebacks.
It didn’t look like Sony would ever sell Spider-Man’s movie rights back to Marvel before Kraven the Hunter came out. However, given how quickly the superhero film industry is evolving, it now appears quite likely that Marvel will regain the rights to its most well-known character. It’s time to let go of Spider-Man, Sony.