There has been a central discussion around Sony utilizing the Spider-Verse in their movies. Some movies were pretty decent, others were questionable choices. However, the main question rolls back around every time this discussion opens up: was Sony always destined to fail without Peter Parker?
Cutting straight to the point. I believe so. Not because these characters can’t exist without Spider-Man, but because they lose their purpose when he’s removed. Venom was able to be a success on its own due to the direction of the character and the fact that Tom Hardy played an incredible Eddie Brock. The issue for Venom is that the majority of the solid stories for the Venom character involve Peter Parker. There was only ever so far they could’ve gone with Venom.
Venom did well enough, and the movies were enjoyable for the most part. That’s where it ends for me personally. Without Spider-Man, Venom stops being a reflection of Peter Parker and becomes a character with no meaningful escalation.
Spider-Man is the pinnacle of the Spider-Verse. It doesn’t get much bigger than Peter Parker himself. Narratively, he is the moral anchor of this universe. A lot of the characters and comics the Spider-Verse revolved around are Peter Parker. A lot of them were written around him, alongside him, or as a villain. When you remove Spider-Man, you don’t just remove a hero; you remove the reason these villains exist in the first place.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Sony to believe they could make it work without him. What’s even more baffling is that Sony still owns the rights to Spider-Man. They had access to the centrepiece and chose to build everything around the edges instead. They even had access to a live-action Miles Morales and never pulled the trigger. Make it make sense.
That’s the question that now lingers. Does Sony just pack up and attempt to sell the rights back to Disney? Does Disney attempt to buy them back now? I believe the character should fall back under Disney’s umbrella full-time. Creatively, Disney has shown a far clearer understanding of Spider-Man’s role within a shared universe. Disney has made the perfect choice in casting Tom Holland. We’ve had 3 exceptional standalone Spider-Man movies with a 4th on the horizon.
Let Disney have the reins. Let them introduce Miles Morales so the franchise can thrive even further. Spider-Man works best when he is the foundation, not as an optional extra. Sony has shown in 8 movies that their success rate is very low. Let’s discuss the success rate briefly in commercial terms (the box office). I’m not going to count the animated Spider-Verse movies because they’re different from the live-action expectations, so the numbers below will consist of the 6 live-action movies Sony made:
- Venom – $856,085,161
- Venom: Let There Be Carnage – $506,813,864
- Venom: The Last Dance – $478,937,618
- Morbius – $167,460,961
- Madame Web – $100,498,764
- Kraven the Hunter – $62,076,533
All of the numbers were taken from Box Office Mojo. It shows a theme. Venom managed relatively well at the box office, but the numbers dropped between each movie. The other three were box office failures as well.
Understandably, the films themselves were weak in the grand schemes of things, but you’d like to believe that having Peter Parker involved in some ways would work. Kraven is a villain who isn’t even in the top 5 of villains for Peter Parker, yet Sony greenlit a standalone movie. That decision highlights the larger issue: Sony prioritised IP usage over narrative logic.
The other major issue is trying to create a movie that’s based on a villain, yet they made him into an anti-villain. This happens because, without Spider-Man, Sony seemed unwilling to let villains actually be villains. It doesn’t work and sways too far away from the source material. It’s one of the things Insomniac understood with their Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 video game.
We then have Madame Web. A film that lacked action so much it felt flat. Would Spider-Man have helped it? If I’m to be honest, this entire movie needed to be rewritten. It was a snoozefest.
Then there’s Morbius. The meme itself. How was this ever greenlit? A standalone Morbius movie was catastrophic in itself. This film was always destined for failure.
