Spider-Man: Homecoming' anticipation thread

Not if Sony are making the creative decisions they shouldn't.

 

The official suite for Homecoming got posted by Sony:

 

The only way Marvel is going to let Sony set their movies within the MCU is if they have some level of involvement in their creation from start to finish. I don't see Sony letting that happen, so it sounds like Pascal is just saying what she thinks the fans want to hear and hoping the headline gets more press than the inevitable retraction.

 

Well, I think it may be something like the Australian K9 series based on the Doctor Who character. In British TV, freelance writers keep ownership of the characters they create, so Bob Baker was able to do a K9 series without the participation of the BBC, so long as it avoided any direct references to anything from Doctor Who. So it was implicitly set in the DW universe, but the links were never made explicit -- K9 conveniently lost his memory when he first showed up, so he didn't remember his time with the Doctor. And there were a couple of passing allusions to DW aliens, but in ways that were kept ambiguous. So it was a non-canonical show that pretended to be part of the same universe, but one that never overtly crossed over with any aspect of that universe aside from the one character, and of course was never acknowledged by the actual canon. I expect the Sony Spider-universe films to have a similar relationship to the MCU.

The thing is, fans get very invested in defining clear lines of separation between fictional universes, but often works of fiction deliberately make those lines as vague as possible, so they can create the impression of being connected to something else even if they aren't, or so that it's ambiguous enough to let the audience decide for themselves whether to see it as connected. Like how Toho's Frankenstein Conquers the World implicitly presented itself as a loose sequel to the Universal Frankenstein movies, explaining that "Frankenstein" ('s Monster) had regenerative abilities that made him immortal, explaining how he kept coming back from the dead. The connection wasn't explicit, but they were able to hint at it.

 

Sure, but Marvel/Disney has their brand to protect. If Sony puts out a bunch of subpar flicks banking on the Marvel name and some tenuous links to the MCU via Spider-Man they could irreparably damage the brand that Feige, et al have built over the last decade.

 

But Marvel and Sony are already cooperating creatively on the Spidey solo films. What makes you think they wouldn't do the same on these, at least in a consulting capacity?

Anyway, as I said, I doubt the solo films would have any ties to anything except Spidey himself. From a legal standpoint, they couldn't have any such ties without Marvel Studios' cooperation. As with the K9 spinoff I mentioned, the creators only have the rights to one character and have to tiptoe around the rest -- although in this case they have the rights to that one character and all the supporting cast and villains associated with him. So if you Venn-diagram it, the MCU's characters and concepts are in one circle, the Sony Spideyverse characters and concepts are in the other, and the Tom Holland solo films are the only zone where they will overlap.

If the solo films aren't well-received, I imagine most MCU fans will just dismiss them as non-canonical, like many Doctor Who fans do (or at least like I do) with the K9 show. The MCU has enough credibility and momentum by this point that I don't think a couple of sidebar films could irreparably damage it. On the other hand, it would damage Sony, and their reputation for Spidey films is already damaged, so they have a strong incentive to make sure these spinoff films don't disappoint.

 

Au contraire. The MCU is tenuous at best in the eyes of the general audience. You can order a Big Mac a hundred times and appreciate the consistency, but one bad pickle and suddenly you think twice about coming back for the next one. If "Silver and Black" is a cinematic dumpster fire, the average film-goer isn't going to think about the nuances of decades-old licensing agreements. Spider-Man and Iron-Man hang out, so if Spider-Man is fighting Mysterio and Mysterio is fighting Silver Sable then it is a difference that makes no difference. That would be like Coca-cola giving k-mart the rights to market derivative soft drinks without approval. It is just bad business.

 

The one generalization that can validly be stated about the audience as a whole is that it's impossible to generalize about the audience as a whole. The audience consists of individuals, so naturally those individuals will react in a wide range of different ways.

And I don't think the evidence we have supports this premise. Both The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 were considered disappointments, and I think Thor: The Dark World was to an extent as well. And Doctor Strange got mixed reviews and was considered mediocre by many. Yet the MCU has remained popular, since it's proven that one weak entry does not damn the whole line. That's its strength. It's not your typical single series about a single set of characters with one entry every 2-3 years, but a number of different series that happen to share a background, with at least 2 entries per year. So if one entry happens to disappoint, you know there's a parallel production coming along before much longer, from a different creative team and focusing on different characters. So the occasional disappointment hasn't been fatal for the line as a whole. They've always been able to redeem themselves with their subsequent successes within a matter of months.

And as far as an absolutely awful film goes, we've never had one of those in the MCU, so there aren't any actual data on which to base a conclusion. We can only speculate.

You seem to be arguing that Sony can't use Spidey in their films without Marvel's permission, but it's actually the other way around -- Marvel couldn't use Spidey until they got Sony's permission. Marvel sold Sony those rights decades ago, so now they no longer control the character, they can only borrow him with Sony's blessing. Otherwise Spidey would've been part of the MCU from the start instead of just showing up now. From what I gather, the Marvel-Sony deal gives Sony the ultimate decision-making power over what's done with Spidey, because he's their property as far as movie rights are concerned. So they can do whatever they want with Spidey in their own films, and Marvel can't stop it, any more than they could stop Fox from making Fant4stic.

Although the Sony-Marvel relationship is clearly more amiable than the Fox-Marvel relationship, so that means Sony would probably be more willing to cooperate with Marvel and work with them to make the spinoff films work well -- maybe consult with Marvel Studios' creative people on the storylines. After all, they made the deal in the first place because they knew they could benefit from drawing on Marvel's creative cachet. It's not an adversarial relationship, it's a partnership. Or so it appears to me.

 

This seems like kind of a weird situation, but from what I read it sounds like they will be using the Tom Holland version of Spider-Man, but won't have any other direct connection to MCU, so I don't see them having much of an effect on it. Honestly, I doubt most of the non-fan public will give it much thought in relation to the MCU movies if it's bad. We fans pay a lot more attention to how all of these things connect then the vast majority of the public, so I can't really see them letting their opinions of Silver & Black effect their thoughts on the next Iron Man or Thor movies. Hell, most people don't even realize that Spider-Man and Batman are in seperate universes. It took me years to get my mother, who has watched most of the movies and has either played or watched me play a lot of the games, to understand the difference between Marvel and DC.

 

The Sony Spider-movies can be set in the MCU without effecting the Marvel movies in the same way that Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil, ect do.

At any rate, there are some interesting fan theories floating around that postulate that Spider-Man might be bringing the Venom symbiote home from Infinity Wars in some form or another, which would be a natural connection to make and evidence that Marvel and Sony are on the same page.

 

That makes a lot of sense as oppose to other options like John Jameson again.

 

It could just as easily have already hitched a ride with the Chitauri or even during the Convergence and going by the trailers, there's already a direct connection there with The Vulture's salvage operation.

 

No wonder I don't bother to pay attention to critics and other filmgoers.

 

I started a new thread to discuss the various Spider-Man spin-offs that Sony has in the pipeline.

 

Tony Stark will not appear in the Homecoming sequel, However, there will still be as yet unannounced appearances to connect it to the MCU.

 

My choices would be Captain America or Hawkeye.

 

Black Widow seems suiting.

 

I've been wondering if maybe the movies are going to play out a longer version of Spidey's arc in the original Civil War, where he started out on Iron Man's pro-registration side but then defected to Captain America's resistance. We saw him become Stark's protege in the movie version of Civil War, but we also saw him briefly connect with Cap. We've seen in the Homecoming trailers that Cap appears on school videos and Peter boasts to Ned about meeting him, and it looks like Spidey's relationship to Stark is going to get strained over the course of the movie. I'm wondering if the Cap video cameos are meant to set up a post-credits scene in Homecoming where the fugitive Cap shows up and recruits Spidey to his renegade team, or something, to set up the second Spidey film.

 

I've wondered something similar. I think it could be an interesting way to handle the progressing interaction of the characters.

I don't think it can really be a set-up for the next SM movie, though. I assume the 'renegade' team setup will be resolved in the Infinity War movies, so there probably won't be a divide to play out in Peter's second film. I mean, they could set it pre-IW, but even though Marvel doesn't necessarily mind the timeline being occassionally out of sync, I think IW will be such a big event that it would be problematic.

 

All 3 of the Tom Holland solo Spider-Man films are going to feature the character during his high school years; this was confirmed months ago.

This means that the second and third solo Spidey films will unequivocally break the MCU cycle of each film being set in the year in which it's released since they're going to have to be set in 2018 and 2019, respectively, in spite of the fact that they'll be released in 2019 and, presumably, 2021. It also means that, for Marvel Studios' part, the second Infinity War movie, if it includes Spider-Man, may end up referencing events that we as an audience haven't yet seen.