Once upon a time, Sony’s Spider-Man Universe used to be the laughing stock of superhero cinema, and with good reason.
The studio that abandoned Sam Raimi’s fourth installment deep into pre-production in favor of a rebooted universe that was itself ditched only two movies in when there were already several sequels and spinoffs in the works has once more tried to build itself a shared mythology that can rival that of Kevin Feige’s monolithic franchise, and the hype has been tepid at best.
Questions are being asked as to why anybody thinks that Morbius, an environmentally-conscious Kraven the Hunter, Bad Bunny’s El Muerto, a multiversal Madame Web, and whatever the hell Donald Glover’s Hypno-Hustler turns out to be would be capable of going toe-to-toe with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or at least they were until Phase Five came along.
With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania being torn to shreds at the same time Tom Hardy confirmed Venom 3 was in pre-production, we’ve now reached the unthinkable scenario where a Sony-backed comic book blockbuster is generating more hype than the entirety of Phase Five.
Sony – the outfit with a well-earned reputation for either butchering established franchises or creating ones that nobody asked for – has inconceivably overtaken the MCU in terms of buzzworthy projects in development, if only for today. This was not on our bingo card mere days after the 31st entry in the market-leading series hit theaters, but we’ve given up trying to predict what’s on the horizon when Phases Four and Five have proven to be so shaky.
