Sony announced its future Marvel projects will be focused solely on Spider-Man. Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.
HARRISON PRYOR | STAFF REPORTER | hrpryor@butler.edu
“Film Fanatics” explores Hollywood’s recent releases, cherished classics and everything in between. These thought-provoking reviews invite fresh perspectives and weigh whether a film deserves attention — or if it’s best left in the past. Read on to find out what our writers think of this week’s film.
Marvel fans’ favorite web-slinging superhero and his extensive rogue’s gallery are no strangers to the big screen, and today’s audiences are just as interested in those villains as they are in the hero. At least, they were until Sony released a series of critically panned movies centered around Spider-Man characters … with no Spider-Man.
Josh Matasovsky, a junior arts administration and theater double major, claims that Spider-Man is just as important to his villains as they are to him.
“Each of [Spider-Man’s villains] has their own way of reflecting great power and great responsibility and that overall theme of Spider-Man,” Matasovsky said. “I think if you want that theme to be reflected, it’s hard to not have Spider-Man.”
The six-movie Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) began with the surprisingly successful “Venom” in 2018 and slammed on the brakes after “Kraven the Hunter” bombed at the box office in Dec. 2024. The three “Venom” movies are the only ones in the SSU that were not commercial failures.
Sophomore computer science major Brandon Franczak attributed part of the franchise’s failure to the lack of overall recognizability.
“There’s no driving force to get people into these theaters,” Franczak said. “Venom is a fairly popular character, but no one has ever heard of Morbius, no one has ever heard of Kraven [and] no one has ever heard of Madame Web.”
Symbiotic success
The inaugural SSU movie “Venom” was followed with a positive reception. This is impressive given its bold choice to stray from comic book accuracy and separate Venom from his heroic rival.
Tom Hardy was praised for his performance as the titular symbiote and his host Eddie Brock — though the movie beyond these characters’ relationship was uneventful. “Venom” also popularized villain-centric movies and helped pave the way for movies like “Joker” and its sequel.
The 2021 sequel “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” was met with less enthusiasm, but succeeded nonetheless. While Carnage as a character — portrayed by Woody Harrelson — was advertised as a vicious, bloody killer, the PG-13 rating prevented him from reaching the deranged heights of his comic counterpart. “Venom: The Last Dance” improved the action but ended the trilogy with a messy, unfulfilling plot.
Flop after flop after flop
In 2022, the SSU had its first flop with “Morbius”. Nonsensical effects, a horrible script and an overconfident performance from Jared Leto led to fans only remembering the movie for the memes born of it. The film bombed twice when Sony misinterpreted the attention as positive and re-released it in theaters.
Even the people who made “Madame Web” in 2024 knew it would fail. In an interview with Bustle, Dakota Johnson — who played the clairvoyant hero Cassandra Webb — explained that artistic decisions were based on what the studio thought would make the most money and claimed she would never do another movie like “Madame Web”. Likewise, Sydney Sweeney — who played Julia Carpenter, a version of Spider-Woman, in the film — told GQ UK that she only agreed to be part of it to get “Anyone But You” greenlit.
The SSU supposedly ended its run with the R-rated “Kraven the Hunter”. Advertised as the bloody action thriller fans wanted out of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”, the finale turned Sergei Kravinoff — portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson — from a ruthless poacher into a boring, superpowered vigilante indiscernible from the rest. While critics praised the film’s action sequences, the film still bombed and was panned for being formulaic and clunky.
Adjunct professor of journalism Benton Ives believes that reworking Kraven conceptually would have worked if the movie had just been good.
“There’s a vision of Kraven out there that is totally different from the film and is excellent,” Ives said. “I think it comes down to artistic execution … I just suspect they missed and didn’t do a good job.”
How to — and how not to — omit a hero
DC’s villain-focused projects are an interesting point of comparison, as they succeeded without the presence of their most famous hero. “The Penguin” went a full season without even mentioning the pre-established version of Batman in its universe, and it managed to win a Golden Globe. Similarly, “Joker” won several awards without any version of Batman at all.
“Even though Joker is one of the most popular villains of all time, that film — even without that reputation — is still an amazing film,” Franczak said. “The cinematography, the score [and] the performances all really stand out as a film, and then these Sony movies; they just really leave you wanting more.”
Villain-led movies can succeed without a hero when they are good, but they stumble when studios try and fail to tease said hero with no payoff.
The mid-credit scene of “Morbius” featured Michael Keaton’s Vulture from “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, an unconnected MCU film. This misleading teaser was followed by Venom’s multiversal cameo at the end of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” getting immediately undone at the beginning of “Venom: The Last Dance”.
Unfortunately, confusing gaps in continuity are a feature, not a bug, of these films. Not even a sassy webslinger could save this fiasco of a franchise. Spider-Man may as well stay in the MCU, far away from his flopped foes. Sometimes, a movie — or six — just does not need to be made.