Movies | Spider-man and his complicated relationship with the MCU.
Among all the popular comic book characters, Spider-man is one of the main representatives. As most of his masked friends of Marvel Comics he had to wait a long time to be on the big screen, unlike the giants of DC, Batman and Superman, who were already veterans at the time of the premiere of his first feature film. It was 2002 when the first movie of this character arrived and the delay, according to its creator Stan Lee, was due to the special effects limitations to do justice to the New York hero.
The intention of this article isn't to explore in detail each film version of Spider-man (that would be a good topic for another post) but to review the most recent chapter of his filmic history: his inclusion in the MCU (Marvel Cinematographic Universe). Ok, it isn't that recent, he already appeared for the first time in this shared universe two years ago in Captain America: Civil War (2016), had his own stand alone movie (2017) within this continuity and shared screen with the Avengers in Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
But achieving this wasn't easy. In a recent post where I talked about superheroes and shared universes, I wrote about the difficulties of gathering multiple comic book characters within a film or cinematographic universe, especially from a legal point of view. Specifically, I discussed the case of Marvel Comics the publisher, which was on the verge of bankruptcy in the nineties, and was forced to sale movie rights of some superheroes to different studios to be able to survive financially. For this reason we saw X-men movies, Fantastic Four and Daredevil films made by Fox, two Spider-man sagas by Columbia Pictures (Sony) and other projects made by other studios. To gather different characters (they are different registered trademarks) a studio have to own the cinematographic rights of all or at least make agreements with those who own them.
With the rights of Spider-man Sony launched the trilogy starring Tobey Maguire and directed by Sam Raimi and later the version starring Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-man 1 and 2). An interesting aspect I have heard about the legal agreements between Marvel and the different studios is the existence of a clause in the contract that specifies that if a studio don't produce a film of a specific character for a specified number of years, the rights return to Marvel. This is the cause of some rushed productions.
Did you ever hear about Sony's plans to make a fourth installment of Tobey Maguire's Spider-man? Yes, there were plans to make Spider-man 4, but the studio and the director could not reach an agreement since Sony needed to release a new movie of the hero before a certain date so that the rights did not return to Marvel, and Raimi wanted to take the time to make a quality film to please critics and fans alike after the terrible criticism he received for the third installment. In addition to this, Maguire also assured that he would only work with Raimi as director.
Due to these differences, the plan for Spider-man 4 was completely discarded and the production of the reboot (restart of the franchise) starring Garfield began, which did not have the same success, because the previous version was still in the memory of many who only saw Maguire as the true Spiderman and especially because the second installment of The Amazing Spider-man was a disaster despite having some good moments. Back then the studio wanted to launch their own shared universe formed by characters associated with Spider-man and it planted seeds as enigmatic characters, undisclosed mysteries (the death of Peter Parker's parents) and a scene where the future appearance of the Sinister 6 (group of villains) is insinuated.
But all the immediate plans the studio had with this saga fell before the failure of the film. Because of that, and possibly due to the effect of public opinion and the pressure of the fans who in some way wanted to see this franchise collapse in the hands of Sony to see its return to Marvel and share the stage with other characters, the studio finally made an agreement with Marvel Studios, not to return the cinematographic rights because they represent one of its most profitable assets but to work as a team with the studio responsible for the Avengers phenomenon and the MCU in a new version of the arachnid superhero.
In making Spider-man movies co-produced with Marvel Studios, they would continue to comply with the clause of periodically releasing the character's feature films in order to not lose the rights and at the same time within a filmic machinery that despite not being perfect seems to be failure proof. The agreement was made just in time to include the hero in the latest reshoots of Captain America: Civil War, which multiplied the expectation for that film and made more tolerable the fact that it was another reboot of the character.
Personally I believe that if it had been just another reboot without any connection with the MCU the public would have considered it more of the same and rejected it, considering the character had been already reimagined recently. That's why I think the Sony and Marvel deal was the best thing to do given the circumstances and so far it has proven to be a successful version. The sources indicate that the contract of this cooperation agreement expires after the second installment of this new version and it is still unknown if Sony will renew the deal or pull the character from the MCU to exploit him on their own without the participation of Marvel Studios.
At the same time Sony does not abandon its plans to have its own shared universe and while it has Spider-man "borrowed" in the MCU is currently developing films with characters associated with the hero but without his presence. Yes, Sony is developing a cinematic universe of Spider-man but without Spider-man, Venom being the first sample of this.
All rights to the images of Spider-man and Venom belong to Sony/Columbia Pictures.
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Awesome post! I'm a great Spidey fan but never knew the true reasons behind the cancellation of Sam Raimi's run. Sony better not be stupid enough to try 'taking back' solo control of the character... Since Marvel Studios grew strong, most Marvel fans only want their characters in the MCU. Yeah, exceptions can be (grudgingly!) made for Venom and maybe others, but we want to see them all together, regardless the cost such an undertaking would attract.
I'm glad you liked the post @petermarie. Yes, we would like to see them all together.
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Thanks for the support!!!