forget about a new franchise
This mindset is exactly why these movies continue to drop and flop. Focus on making one good movie before you try to plan out an entire universe.
I mean I haven’t read Spiderman consistently for just about twenty years, so I know a lot has changed, but Madame Web always seemed like a minor addition to the Spiderman universe, not super popular, she’s no Deadpool or Venom, a character capable of leading their own franchise, so maybe, just maybe Sony is desperately pulling Spiderman characters and movies out of their asses and expecting people to go along with it.
Meanwhile even hardcore comics fans like myself think these movies are bad ideas and if “Morbin’ Time” was any kind of example, and I was initially excited for a Morbius movie as he is a good character and part of Marvel’s Midnight Sons team, but the movie was garbage and I don’t know why but it just seems like Jared Leto ruins any well-established character that he touches.
I was also not a fan of the way Sony is doing Venom, whom is a strong character that can carry a franchise, but requires some Spiderman interaction to explain why he looks like Spiderman, the movie wasn’t horrible, but I’d have rathered have something that was part of the MCU instead.
So with that said, we still have Kraven coming down the pipe, another minor Spiderman villain, and I have zero enthusiasm for that movie as well.
All in all Sony f’d up this deal, they should have done profit sharing with Marvel and just added this stuff to the MCU rather than flooding us with shit movies with second tier characters that nobody asked for.
The cure is simple.
‘Alternate World’ stories based on the characters we all know.
The same way the comics had ‘The Ultimates’ redo the Universe, just announce movies outside the ‘canon.’ Nobody but the most dedicated fanboys cares about canon anyway.
Captain America : The War Years. A young Black Widow, before she decided to turn good. Young Hawkeye and Howard Stark. Thor in the Middle Ages. Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD.
Marvel already has the beginnings of that, and that’s not the issue, the issue is the lack of quality, the lack of continuity, and that Sony just seems like they’re trying to milk their ownership of the Spiderman properties while also inflicting damage to the intellectual property.
Like let’s say someone tries to remake Morbius, or it goes back to the MCU and Morbius joins the Midnight Sons, it’s going to damage the next movie, even if Blade, Ghost Rider, ans others are involved, people are going to he expecting another “Morbin’ Time!” rather than what should be a much darker toned Marvel movie centered around the occult.
My personal list of the Marvel movies I’d suggest to people who hate superhero movies. You could cut all the special effects out and still have a great movie.
Iron Man. Captain America -the Winter Soldier. The Avengers.
I think this is pretty close to par for any studio. Most movies are just not great.
Silverberg’s Law says that 90% of everything is crud.
I wouldn’t call Kraven a minor villain. Kraven’s Last Hunt was fairly important at the time, and established the character as one of the few Marvel villains to ever thoroughly and absolutely defeat a major superhero, and not in some alternate future universe or What If scenario. Kraven beat Spider-Man, then he was Spider-Man, then he made Spider-Man a better hero.
True, but my real point was that he’s just not as popular as many other super villains, especially within Spidey’s nemesises, and that he’s not popular enough to warrant what looks like a really bad movie about him.
It really looks like Sony is just churning out the Spider-Movies so they don’t lose the licensing rights.
The only hits they had were the Spider-Verse flicks and those stood on the shoulders of what was essentially slave labor…
https://www.dualshockers.com/across-the-spiderverse-artist-abuse-superhero-movies/
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/23/23771199/across-the-spider-verse-working-conditions-phil-lord
It does look like they’re churning out junk for the license.
Though I think the Venom movies were considered successful as well. And the latest live action Spider-Man trilogy was also Sony and successful, but they relied heavily on Marvel and its universe.
The last live action trilogy were Marvel movies in partnership with Sony.
The last live action Sony Spider-Man movies were ASM and ASM2.
Marvel Studios would explore opportunities to integrate MCU characters into future Spider-Man films, which Sony Pictures would continue to finance, distribute, and have final creative control over.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Homecoming
Basically Marvel became producers for the films but Sony still made them.
Like DC and the once-unstoppable Marvel, Sony is now finding itself in under the gun to reevaluate how it makes comic book movies.
“Now finding…”? Now?!
I mean, the Raimi movies are looked back on pretty fondly and made millions. Spider Man 3 may not have reviewed the best, but it still made $895M at box office, which is an enviable sum today, almost 20 years later.
Sure, and without Sony paying for the rights and making them, there would be no Iron Man.
But it’s time to recognize that Sony does not have the skill and commitment required to make a Sinister Six or Spider Women multi-movie franchise.
NASA spent millions trying to make a pen work in space
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-spent-millions-on-a-pen-able-t/
They (DC) will probably spin this as a teachable moment around “re-evaluating the corporate direction”
Why not read the linked article?
The US spent alledged millions, and when completed the Soviets bought the thing by the container.
Yeah, I’ve heard the retort that the U.S. spent millions on those pens, but the soviets just used pencils… which ignores the problem of the graphite dust that’s created using pencils which can destroy delicate circuits in a spacecraft.
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Idk what rock you’ve been living under, but the new Flash movie got absolutely trashed by critics and audiences, and everyone knows what a huge piece of shit Ezra Miller is.
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A lot of the hype for Flash had to do with Keaton’s reprisal of Batman. Comparing Miller’s lead billing versus Heard’s role in AM2 being reduced is a bit farcical, no? The only way to reduce Miller’s role in Flash would have been to cancel the film.
I really wanted to like The Flash movie and was disappointed.
You’re looking too hard for a controversy that isn’t there. This is a Sony live-action Spiderman adjacent film. All of them have been terrible. Madam Web is terrible too.
People criticized Venom, Venom 2, Morbius, and now Madame Web. People will probably criticize the solo Kraven movie whenever that comes out too. It’s not a conspiracy against women, it’s that Sony seems to fundamentally not understand how to make a good superhero flick.
It’s not limited to non-Spiderman either. ASM and ASM2 were trash as well.
Sony hasn’t had a good Spider-Man movie since Spider-Man 2 in 2004.
Into the Spiderverse was pretty stellar though, and Across the Spiderverse was a good sequel. I’d say both are on par with the original Sam Reimi trilogy, with the caveat that they are fully animated productions instead of live-action.
caveat
You misspelled bonus.
I’d say the spiderverse movies are significantly better than the original trilogy.
I just watched The Marvels, and I liked it quite a bit, if I stopped short of loving it (but honestly, who LOVES marvel movies? The entire point is high floor/low ceiling entertainment). The plot meanders and it has a typical Marvel “understandable but underdeveloped” villain, but the leads had good chemistry, the switching dynamic was fun, the entire cast from Ms. Marvel is delightful, and Brie Larson is (finally) getting comfortable in the role. I was kinda surprised at how poorly it did, but also kinda not, because fanboys are proving that they really need to see themselves represented or they suddenly develop extremely high standards and demand only groundbreaking entertainment with perfect execution.
The Marvels is a good example of why people are starting to hate Marvel. Unless you’d already watched WandaVision, Cpt. Marvel, and Ms. Marvel you had no idea what was going on. It was like starting in the middle of Avengers Endgame.
I dislike marvel because there is no consequence to their plots and it has gone on so long.
Having to have watched previous movies isn’t a negative, just that the content in question was boring and not consequential in it’s own right.
The stories are not self contained but other than a couple of very major cross overs there is nothing happening in the movies that impacts the rest of the universe unless it is something important for the plot of the next piece.
I hear you but this one is another in a line of very misguided Sony movies, and the errors made in its production completely undermined both the plot and how it was going to tie into the failing multiverse.
In regards to DC movies, nobody is expecting them to be good for a while yet while they reboot everything. Then Marvel is flagging with several issues but Sony surprises everyone by releasing yet another non-Spiderman Spiderman movie.
Now on top of all that you’re right, sexism is playing into this too, especially from the toxic male fanboy culture, but to me this one was already on extremely shaky ground before it was released.
Say what you want about Miller as a human being, as an actor they did a very good job portraying the same character from 3 different angles.
I thought it was like an alternate spidermanverse thing.
TBH Spider-Man 3 ruined Spider-Man for me, it really killed the moment with him and the snap for me, probably, I have no way to judge.
I really wanted She Hulk to work. It was terrible. Moon Knight wasn’t perfect, but it had some good action and actual dread.
It’s true that female lead movies are judged more harshly, but just because a female lead movie flops isn’t always about the female and is about the movie.
Marvel should use Deadpool 3 as an opportunity to build toward the X-Men movie the franchise deserves. They could use solo movies to hype up the X-Men collaborative movie, just like they did with Avengers.
They could do a Wolverine film, a Rogue & Gambit one, …
Sounds like exactly what happened with the Tom Cruise ‘The Mummy’ movie. We were going to get a Dark Universe, but the flagpole broke.
The Dark Universe failed on it’s first try (2nd if you count the clearly shoeforned Dracula movie). And what did we learn?
The guy chosen to lead the DU was then given the reigns of the entire Star Trek universe going forward. Talk about failing upward
My personal take.
Completely reboot Star Trek. Trash the entire canon. No humanoid aliens at all. Go back to square one
Lol everyone wanted a Cinematic Universe back then.
Now it’s the “Multiverse”.Wonder what the next bandwagon will be
I made another commnet in this thread, so I’m repeating myself [rebooting? lol]
Make new movies with the favorite characters. Call them ‘Alternate Universe’ or whatever. Fans had no problem with a dozen different Batmen, so why not do ‘Captain America : The War Years?’ You could bring in oldies like The Blackhawks, the original Submariner, Union Jack and Agent Axis. Same with Thor in the Middle Ages and Hawkeye/Black Widow/Nick Fury as their younger selves.
Time to sell the rights back to Disney, or make some sort of permanent sharing deal for the entire character library with a box office component
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Then last week, the critic reviews for Madame Web were posted, and they stung deepest of all — Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff received the lowest average Rotten Tomatoes score (13 percent) of any major superhero film in nearly a decade.
“On Wednesday night, you could actually watch advance purchase sales declining in real time as buyers were refunding their tickets,” marvels a major theatrical chain insider.
Sony’s previous Spider-Man universe movie — 2022’s Morbius — was a critical bust and much-maligned by fanboys online, but at least it managed to earn $170 million worldwide.
Plus, the feature’s collapse doesn’t just impact this film, but a new potential franchise led by star Dakota Johnson that Sony had hoped to spin out (spoiler alert: her character is connected to Peter Parker, whose birth is documented in the movie).
The film introduced a trio of supporting characters (played by Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor and Sydney Sweeney — now one of the top stars her age).
Clarkson and starring Johnson as a New York paramedic who develops psychic powers — seemingly took a wise approach: When there are capes and cowls on every metropolis corner, doesn’t it make sense to avoid the usual tropes and try for a more grounded-feeling suspense thriller with low-key charm?
The original article contains 798 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The film introduced a trio of supporting characters (played by Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor and Sydney Sweeney — now one of the top stars her age).
This is why I hate film journalism. It says supporting characters, but then it lists a bunch of actors. These words are meaningless to me and meaningless to the internal context of the movie. I have received no information.
Imo sony took fans take it as granted, its not the first time, they are ruining it, Morbius and venom 2 were critically panned before. The only thing i liked from them at present is Spider-verse animated movies. Such a great movies.
I’ve never heard of Madame Web and it has nothing to do with Spider-Man.
There’s only Spider-Man, and that’s it.
Nothing against female leads.
