Why Spider-man might still fail at Marvel

Spider-man is one of the most iconic superheroes in world of Marvel and just superheroes in general...

Or at least he used to be.

There was a time when Spider-man was the biggest name when it came to Superhero films because in essence, it started what I think Marvel perfected with Iron Man and everything that followed. But back in 2002, all we had were a couple good superhero films and a long list of films that were just bad. Tobey McGuire's Spider-man really created a fun journey for us to go down and it was something totally new that we had never seen before. To see Spider-man swing around was unprecedented. No wonder the films have made less and less money as the franchise went on, got rebooted, and then died again.

But nonetheless, people still saw Spider-man as the household name. One of the best superheroes there were. He's probably the best known of the Marvel universe and he is the best right?

That would have been the case had Iron Man and all the other Marvel movies not come out. Now people are debating on who is the best of the Avengers, Captain America or Iron Man. Never in a million years would we have thought that a Norse God like Thor would have been as popular as he is, nor would we ever expect a property like Guardians of the Galaxy to gross more money in the Box Office than a Spider-man film.

The fact of the matter is, Marvel did their superheroes right and gave them interesting stories and gave us more of a variety than what we had ever expected. And yet Sony continued to hash out the same story over two franchises.

I am in no way saying that Spider-man is no longer popular. I think that he is an you can see that in his box office performance, and the very fact that Marvel fought for such a long time to get Spider-man over the MCU.

What I'm saying is, I think Spider-man still might fail in the MCU.

As I said before, every Spider-man film has had less and less of a box office turnout than the one before it. I'm willing to stake it on the fact that people are just getting sick of the Spider-man story. Especially with more superheroes coming out every year with interesting stories and backgrounds, I have no reason to believe that that trend is going to stop.

Now you may be saying. Connor, all of those movies are with Sony, put the property back in the hands of Marvel and you'll see the property get popular again.

To that I said, it doesn't matter.

Here's my prediction.

Civil War, is going to be great. It still hasn't been confirmed that Spider-man is going to be in it but I'm 90% sure that it is. For the sake of argument, let's say Spider-man is going to appear and be an intricate part of Civil War. Its going to do well. Spider-man is returning to Marvel. Its a Captain America movie, its got Iron Man in it. Its going to be set up really nicely in Age of Ultron, its going to do well.

Having Spider-man in the film is going to help the film, but this movie was going to do well regardless so I am not counting it as a "Spider-man" movie. Its going to be about Captain America with Spider-man and Iron Man tagging along. Or its going to be a Civil War movie with a focus on Captain America and Iron Man's struggle. In short, this movie is not going to focus on Spider-man.

So then what happens?

Sony and Marvel made statements saying that there would be a Spider-man standalone film that would take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Spider-man's first appearance. Its happening in 2017 and is really pushing back all the Marvel movies coming out in in Phase 3.

My prediction is, Spider-man is still going to under perform.

I'm not saying Marvel is going to do a bad job with Spider-man, I'm not saying it won't be a good movie, all I'm saying is, its going to under perform, it is not going to be the movie Sony or Marvel (more Sony) wants it to be.

I'm willing to say that it probably will do better than Amazing Spider-man 2 just because the direction Marvel will go with it will make it better, but the movie will never reach the levels Sony hopes for and that is the levels that it was at prior to 2008 during the Sam Raimi Spider-man films.

The fact of the matter is, Spider-man is no longer the only superhero out there. He's competing against Iron Men, and Gods, and Mutants, and Guardians, and a whole pluthera of superheroes that we haven't even gotten to.

And you may be saying that it could possibly reach those levels now that its under the helm of Marvel and people will get excited about that. The funny thing is, most movie going audiences still don't know that Spider-man is a separate entity and has been in a different studio. They still see the Marvel insignia in front of all the Spider-man films, for all they know, Spider-man's just getting another reboot. Its just a franchise that is so saturated that I doubt this "standalone" film won't be without at least one supporting role from Hawkeye or someone from the Avengers because Sony has milked so much out of Spider-man that he needs a crutch to carry his movie.

And the worst part of it is, Marvel doesn't need to give two shits if Spider-man succeeds or fails. Technically, the character still belongs to Sony. Sony is the one in financial trouble. As much as they want to keep their pride by "allowing Marvel characters to enter the world of Spider-man" they have more riding on this standalone than Marvel does. Marvel has Spider-man in Civil War, they have him for future Avenger team up films. And if this standalone film doesn't pan out for Marvel, they'll shrug and move onto Captain Marvel. Sony on the other hand will suffer.

Am I saying that Spider-man can never be cool again? Of Course I'm not. There's still a lot of potential for Spider-man property to come and make appearances in the future. In fact bringing Spider-man to the Marvel universe is exciting enough for me because it almost guarantees a Sinister Six movie. Maybe not as soon as we thought, but Marvel just bought another threat for the Avengers to go up against. They just bought another world to their world and they could almost make their entire Phase Four about facing all the Spider-man villains. Like I wrote in my rants on Thanos, this opens up a lot more interesting opportunities that weren't available before and ran the risk of hitting the brakes on the Marvel Cinematic Universe once Infinity Wars is over.

And down the road after this standalone film, there will come a time when we look back at the Raimi films and even the Garfield era and we'll wonder why Spider-man hasn't gotten his own standalone film in a while and they'll break out Spider-man to duke it out alone.

But my prediction is, Marvel will have no interest in creating another standalone Spider-man film after this next one. I'm not saying there won't be, but I'm guessing again that the standalone Spider-man film in the MCU is going to underperform. Its a long ways away and there is a very good chance that I am going to be wrong. But unless they do something incredibly revolutionary with this new Marvel Spider-man, which right now, it doesn't sound like they're going to, its going to be the same old tired storyline that we've seen before in two franchises and people are getting sick of. Unless Marvel and Sony whip something together that is going to blow the minds of every people ever, and puts Spider-man as the best of the best once again, (Imagine Captain America: The Winter Soldier x10), its just not going to be the same.

But what do you think? What do you think the future holds for Spider-man in the MCU? Is it a bright future? Or a dark one? I've written a lot on Spider-man and the road he took to becoming apart of the MCU, those thoughts are mostly in this review of ASM 1. Comment and Discuss below! Or shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 and follow me on Twitter to get movie reviews and news updates and my thoughts on them in general.

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I saw a video to today that made me want to come back to this post and just get ideas and thoughts if you have any.

In the video, they were talking about Spider-man, how he's going to fit into the MCU, all the same BS I've been writing about a week now. And then someone on the video brought up an interesting idea regarding Miles Morales.

I'm actually surprised at myself for not talking about Miles Morales previously in this post.

For those who do not know, Miles Morales is a different teenager taking up the mantle of Spider-man. He is also black. Everyone is speculating whether or not they're going to do the Peter Parker storyline AGAIN, or change things up and go with Miles Morales.

Personally, I've always just thought they were going to go with Peter Parker. He's the brand name, he's well known, and he IS Spider-man. I'm sure the Morales storyline is good, but if you're bringing Spider-man to the MCU, it has to be Peter Parker.

Now I wouldn't be sad if they brought in Miles Morales. I'm jumping on the bandwagon and saying I want Donald Glover to play Miles Morales is they do it, something that has been called for by the internet for years.

Troy Barnes for Spider-man, all day everyday!

However, I just think its unlikely... unless they do this idea that I heard in this video.

What if they do exactly what I think they're going to do. Cast some young actor to Peter Parker. I'm hearing rumors of Taron Egerton, or Logan Lerman (I personally really don't want Lerman) (I'm still pulling for Shia). But he swings in, joins the Avengers and then come the standalone film, we see Spidey swinging around. He lands on top of the Rockefeller building (or Stark Tower?!?), pulls of his mask and there's Donald Glover. 

Maybe it focuses just on Miles alone and his story. Maybe its Peter and Miles teaming up. TWO SPIDER-MANS!!!!

Is it going to happen? Probably not. In fact, I'm almost 105% percent sure that its not happening. I hate it when people theorize on this shit and say that its going to happen. Its not going to happen... but it would be fun.

Personally though, that could be interesting. That could be something that could save the Spider-man standalone film and actually make it something that won't follow the trends that have been set by the last five franchise films.

I'm probably gonna come back to this post when all is said and done and think this was an incredibly stupid idea, (hell I might do that in 10 minutes) but give me your thoughts on this? Is there any way to save this Spider-man standalone film from being a disaster?

ANOTHER UPDATE - I ended up writing a little bit more into this on another site. A lot of it is repeated but I got into my own theories on how they could do it. Check it out if you like. Here!