You may be asking yourself or wondering why we’re not covering the four billion metric tons of clickbait Spider-Man, Marvel and Sony movie news out there right now. But I think I just answered that. Most of it is just… clickbait. Almost none of it is driven by anything factual at this point. So we’re trying not to run a lot of clickbaity stuff here at Crawlspace. You folks deserve better!
What do we know about the future of Spider-Man movies? All we know with certainty right now is that Sony got hacked, emails revealed Sony execs questioning the way they’ve handled Spidey – and lots of other anecdotal stuff. We know that Amy Pascal has said she will never let go of Spider-Man and in the wake of the hacker scandal and we know Sony’s President & CEO Kazuo Hirai has expressed his confidence in Pascal. He’ll be one of the ones to watch. Pascal may not want to give up Spider-Man but if the parent company does then away Spidey will go back to Marvel. But along those lines all we really know was what was reported back a couple of weeks back (reported here in the Wall Street Journal) about Spider-Man being allowed to be in the upcoming Captain America 3: Civil War flick (i.e. that Marvel wanted it) and that Sony is having a ‘Spider-Summit’ next month in January.
We know nothing concrete about what’s going to happen at this point. So take any and all “OMG Marvel and Sony have already struck secret deals!” news with a grain of salt. The Crawlspace staff recently looked at one of these articles which actually said part of their deal was Sony co-financing one of Disney’s hero movies. Let that nugget of “WTF?” sink in for a sec. It doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would Disney ever need another studio to help finance something? Disney has all the money on Earth; Sony’s got a stand on the corner selling fruit every other day.
So until you start seeing things reported by Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly or other major industry sites then take everything you’re hearing out there right now with a Hulk-sized grain of salt. Trust me, when I see something that passes the smell test where the films are concerned I’ll post it up here.
Spider-Man is in “interesting times” right now. Many of us want Spidey in the Marvel Cinematic universe. The quality of the films would increase dramatically; of that there is no doubt. Writing as bad as what we got in Amazing Spider-Man 2 just doesn’t exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even in the weaker films like Iron Man 3.
But on the other side of that coin? Look how wrongheaded Marvel is about Spider-Man right now. Look in his comics, look in his cartoons. Hoping for Spider-Man to go back to Marvel may end up being a case of Spider-Man going from the Sony frying pan into the Quesada fire, so we must be careful what we wish for. Sure, the writing in the last Spidey film sucked and the villains were lame – but do we want to see Carlie Cooper in a Spidey film? Or Silk? Because that could become a possibility. The writing and the overall quality would be better, sure, but we could still find ourselves with a lot of stuff that have made Spider-fans yawn for the last several years.
(On a side note, by pondering that last little tidbit I’m not engaging in clickbait myself. If I was then I’d have titled this post ‘Carlie Cooper Coming To The Spider-Movies’ and put a nice little question mark on the end of it. Heh!)
If Spidey does go home on the big screen we can just hope Marvel films guru Kevin Feige has much better ideas and a correct vision for the Wallcrawler than Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada.
Anyway, here’s some clickbait for those who may be craving it. Someone asks if Drake Bell should be the new live action Spidey. I almost did a spit take with my Coke Zero when I saw it today.
–George Berryman!
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@12 – You just did. 🙂
Just to clarify, I’m not ragging on the MCU movies by calling them dumb popcorn flicks, that’s just how I see most of them. When I’m in the mood for some action movies with good choreography, CGI, and casting I could watch most of them happily. But outside of smirking at the fan service dialogue, I haven’t been that impressed by the actual quality of the plot’s in most of the movies.
Even with all that said, I’m not against Spider-Man going back to Marvel, some of the ideas on those leaked plans caught my interest.
Loved Iron Man 3. Not sure whether it’s better than the first one, but it did a great job of getting under Stark’s skin and giving us a climax that felt like more than just a video-game SFX bit. And I laughed my head off at the scenes with Ben Kingsley post-reveal. And also the mention of Croyden, which is quite near my house.
Iron Man 3 is pretty strong in my opinion. Sure, we were all throw for a loop over the Mandarin, but there was great characterization with the pre-suit flashback emphasizing how much Tony has grown as a human being culminating with his declaring yet again at the end of the film that he is Iron Man.
@11 – I … I don’t know how to respond to that.
@Gary – Aside from Cap 2, all of the MCU movies have been dumb popcorn flicks, what do you expect?
Smart move.
Sony doesn’t know what to do with Spider-Man and neither does current Marvel (see current comics and cartoons). Still, the reboot didn’t work so he should either go back to Marvel or Sony should work with Marvel to incorporate him into the MCU.
Either way please get Avi Arad far away from Spider-Man.
“The quality of the films would improve under the Marvel Cinematic Universe? That’s a laugh. Under the Marvel Studios banner, we’ll have villains being watered down to 2-dimensional…”
Yeah, that Loki… not complex and interesting at all. Totally two-dimensional. Nowhere nearly as fleshed out or given as much depth as Jamie Foxx’s Electro or Dean Dehaan’s Harry Goblin. Not at all. 😎
Having a character appear to die but then it’s revealed that they didn’t actually die is not something the Marvel Studio created. Movies have been doing that since the dawn of cinema.
In response to the questions my previous comment will receive, the “character dies but is revealed to be alive” really did happen.
Bucky died in Captain America, but was later to be revealed to be alive (which gets a pass because that happened in the comics), Loki fell to his death in Thor but was revealed to be alive at the end, Tony died in Avengers (but turns out he was only asleep and needed to be scared awake because COMEDY), Pepper fell to her death in Iron Man 3 (just for her to pop up alive and well and beat the bad guy while using Iron Man’s arm without training), Loki died in Thor 2 (but was revealed to be alive at the end AGAIN), Nick Fury died in Winter Soldier (but was revealed later to actually be alive), Groot died in Guardians of the Galaxy, just for it to be revealed that he could be regrown.
I take it back, there are 3 (out of 11 released) Marvel Cinematic Universe movies where they don’t do the character dies but it was just a fake out cliche.
The quality of the films would improve under the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
That’s a laugh.
Under the Marvel Studios banner, we’ll have villains being watered down to 2-dimensional, while Spider-man will be a bit player in his own movie as his love interest, whether it’s MJ or Gwen, defeat the bad guy single handedly, maybe with distraction from Spidey. You know, how Jane beat the 1-dimensional Thor 2 villain while Pepper beat Killian in Iron Man 3.
They’ll get a popular actor to play Peter, who won’t actually put any effort into his acting, and will come off as wooden (see everyone in Avengers except RDJ). But since it’s Marvel Studios the acting will be called amazing even though the actor can’t care less even if they tried.
They’ll get some actress who is only famous for being hot to play the love interest, but their sub-par acting will be praised because it’s Marvel Studios.
The plot will be simplistic with a lame “this character dies but it’s revealed at the end that they’re still alive”, just like EVERY SINGLE OTHER MARVEL STUDIOS MOVIE.”
I think that’s the real reason people didn’t like Gwen’s death in Amazing Spider-man 2. She actually died, and it wasn’t revealed at the end that she actually survived.
This is why I don’t believe anything until an official announcement.
holy crap…I just noticed the part about Drake Bell as live action Spidey. please say thats a joke. the dudes voice makes me want to throat punch him.
Right. This is why the guy to watch is her boss, the head of Sony. Publicly, at least early on, he’s said she has his confidence. Behind the scenes though they may already be moving to replace her and allow her a graceful exit. Or – they may actually be willing to keep her. She may say “We keep Spidey” but if her boss says “Well no we don’t” then that’s that.
at one point I heard Amy Pascal was in danger of being fired because of some of these hacked e-mails that contained supposedly racist comments by her and other employees and her termination could endanger the Spidey franchise and that God-awful sounding Ghostbusters reboot Sony is planning to vomit out. as you point out there is so much click bait BS out there its hard to know if theres a shred of truth to it or not, but I wonder if Amy Pascal were to loose her job if that would remove one huge road block to Spidey returning to Marvel.