Madame Web is now available to stream on Netflix. It’s only the latest addition to Sony’s strange, shared universe connected to Spider-Man that hasn’t really featured Spider-Man himself. With one last Venom film coming out and a solo Kraven the Hunter film expected soon after, I’ve been asking myself where is this all going?
The point of doing any kind of shared universe usually involves connecting all these threads together at some point. There’s some sort of goal they usually aim for. The MCU initially built up to The Avengers, The DCEU built up to the Justice League. Whether you think either did it successfully or not is a matter of opinion. But the point is they had some sort of plan. With Sony I just have no idea what they seem to planning with this.
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At first it seemed like the idea was to build up to The Sinister Six. We even heard reports that Sony was planning some sort of project with the group. But that doesn’t really make sense anymore because Venom, Morbius and (presumably) Kraven aren’t villains anymore. Or at least they are not the villains in their own movies. They barely feel like anti-heroes. And Madame Web has never been a villain or a member of that group, so that idea seems to be out the window. It can’t just be building up to these guys either fighting or teaming up with Tom Holland because we already got No Way Home. There he fought an actual rogues gallery comprised of previous adversaries – and he did it with other versions of himself reprised by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
If you need any further proof that Sony may not have plan, just look at the trailers for Morbius. They made it look like Michael Keaton’s Vulture from the MCU would have some sort of supporting role in it. However, in the final film, he doesn’t show up until the bizarre mid-credits scene that clearly was reshot and gives a completely different explanation for why he’s there.
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I don’t ever root for a film’s failure, unless it’s a scenario where a movie’s made by genuinely terrible people – in that case I just won’t support it. With these films though, I just feel confused. There are people who enjoy the Venom movies, and I thought the trailer for Kraven the Hunter looked fun, but overall, I think this universe just feels very disjointed and it doesn’t feel like there’s anything really connecting them at the moment.
Now, at this point it’s unclear if there even is a plan anymore. But we really don’t know what Sony is planning. While Across the Spider-Verse remedied some of the continuity issues and gave the studio an excuse to have messy side stories, it’s unclear how much further Sony will go with these films.
