Finally, in February 2015, Sony gave up the ghost and did what people wanted for half a decade: they let Spider-Man play in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The people cheered, and all that. Spidey was saved. There are many reasons why Spider-Man joined the MCU, and a lot of them were to do with how The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a mess. Audiences didn’t like it. Critics hated it. Suddenly, Sony’s whole Spider-Verse project seemed shakier than one of those power plate machines they have at the gym (I haven’t been to the gym for three years, so please do not see this as a brag - it is not).
But if you’re looking for one specific guy - one dynamic actor - to credit for Spidey joining the MCU, you don’t have to look further than North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.
No. I do not mean to say that Kim Jong-un is a secret Marvel stan. I think it’s very unlikely he sat there watching the Andrew Garfield movies, and cursed Avi Arad for refusing to let Spider-Man meet Iron Man.
(Kim’s relationship with Western pop culture is complicated. He has expressed a hatred of K-pop, describing it as a “vicious cancer”, which is, like, so fucking rude to BLACKPINK’s hard work. However, he apparently loves basketball, and is famously best mates with Dennis Rodman, most famous for winning an NBA three-peat with the Chicago Bulls in the late 90s. If you’re asking “did Dennis Rodman convince Kim to return Spider-Man to Marvel?”, the answer might not be no.)
Anyway. Kim’s motivations are a mystery, but his actions are clear. In late 2014, in response to the film The Interview (starring enemy of the newsletter, James Franco), the North Korean regime hacked the servers of Sony Pictures. The fallout was stunning, and I swear to God that I would write a book on all the wild shit that was revealed in the huge cache of leaked emails that came out of the hack.
Okay, okay. Just one thing. In response to the box office success of the opening weekend of 22 Jump Street, Channing Tatum wrote this truly legendary email, which I will shorten for brevity.
F YOU TED !!!! SECOND OF ALLLL TIMMMMME BEEEOTCH!!!! COME ON JUMPSTREETERS WE GOT CATE BLANCHETT WIT DIS BOX OFFICE BITCHES!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
Glorious. No, I don’t know what “Cate Blanchett wit dis box office” means.
(Edit: Friend of the newsletter Jonnie has informed me that “Cate Blanchett wit dis” is a reference to the joke in 22 Jump Street where Channing Tatum’s character says “Cate Blanchett” instead of “carte blanche”. This is my bad, and I apologise to Channing Tatum)
Sticking to Spider-Man, though, the fallout of the Sony hack was disastrous. The leaked emails revealed a studio absolutely melting in panic over the underperformance of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Every proposal under the sun was considered, if it could possibly jumpstart the IP. The return of Sam Raimi, an Aunt May spy origin story, the MCU crossover they’d later do anyway - you name it, they tried it.
It also reflected somewhat poorly on the studio’s attitudes towards the character. A leaked list of mandated character traits for Peter Parker unearthed this fucking goldmine.
The agreement spells out that mandatory Spider-Man traits must always strictly conform to the following list: male; does not torture; does not kill in defense of self or others; does not use foul language beyond PG-13; does not smoke tobacco; does not sell/distribute illegal drugs; does not abuse alcohol; does not have sex before the age of 16; does not have sex with anyone below the age of 16; and is not a homosexual (unless Marvel has portrayed that alter ego as a homosexual). The Peter Parker character traits include: his full name is Peter Benjamin Parker; he is Caucasian and heterosexual; his parents become absent from his life during his childhood; from the time his parents become absent he is raised by Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City; he gains his powers while attending either middle school or college; he gains his powers from being bitten by a spider; he designs his first red and blue costume; the black costume is a symbiote and not designed by him; he is raised in a middle class household in Queens, New York; he attends or attended high school in Queens, New York; and he attends or attended college in New York City.
Distressingly, I too am Caucasian and heterosexual. I don’t like the commonalities this gives me.
Oh, and remember that lengthy rant about how Spider-Man had become an instrument of dead-eyed capitalism from last newsletter? Cast your peepers over this frankly astonishing email addressed to Amy Pascal, a Sony exec responsible for managing the character.
Spidey thought
Hey Amy - just a couple of rando thoughts from 35,000 LAX-JFK:
- A rising trend we see with Millennials are the really extreme forms of experiential exercise like Tough Mudder (a sort of filthy triathalon), the Color Run and even things like Hot Power Yoga, veganism etc. Millennials will often post “N.B.D.” on their social media after doing it , as in No Big Deal, also known as the “humble brag”…..wondering if Spidey could get into that in some way….he’s super athletic, bendy, strong, intense….and it’s all NBD to him, of course.
- EDM (electronic dance music) is the defining music for Millennials. Wondering if there’s an EDM angle somewhere with Spidey? His movements are beautiful, would be awesome with a killer DJ behind it
- Snapchat just launched a “story” functionality, which is sort of “day in the life of me” told in a series of snapchats that expire after 24 hours. It has a very VIP quality about it, since invitation only. Getting invited into Spidey’s Snapchat circle would be huge, and very buzzworthy and cool.
When I say that “huge, and very buzzworthy and cool” is a phrase I think about every day, I mean that very literally. This email is a work of art. I am mesmerised by it. But, like, it does also speak to a rotting core at Sony Pictures and its handling of Spider-Man, as well as being lethally embarrassing for all involved.
The embarrassment was probably more effective.
It’s difficult to calculate the precise impact of the hack on Sony’s decision-making. Perhaps they would have given Spider-Man to the MCU anyway. But considering they had already made some big changes after TASM 2’s improvement, slowing down the Spider-Verse by delaying TASM 3 by two years and putting the Sinister Six spinoff in its place, my feeling is that this was the anvil that broke the camel’s back. Sony were trying to play salvage, but there was no way back from “an EDM angle” and “is not a homosexual (unless Marvel has portrayed that alter ego as a homosexual)”. They had to cut bait, and so they did.
The agreement they came up with, though, was extremely clever. Those shrewd little fucks salvaged victory from defeat. See, when Spider-Man joined the MCU, Sony didn’t actually give the rights back to Marvel. They simply agreed to let Marvel have the character and some creative control, meaning they kept control of the IP while benefiting from all the things Spidey in the MCU would give people.
When it comes to squeezing cash out of Spider-Man, never count Sony out.
Honestly, it’s evil genius at work. The idea of yet another Spider-Man reboot after just three years was utterly ridiculous on paper, but they sold it. By creating a version of the character and mythology that few people liked, they made audiences actively happy to see it get jettisoned. Then, by linking up with Marvel, they came up with the one unique selling point that would convince people to show up for another version of Spider-Man. Then they made sure this new Spidey would debut first in a big MCU team-up - Captain America: Civil War - just so they could give audiences the instant gratification of seeing Spider-Man team up with MCU characters before selling them yet another solo movie.
Oh, and they again sold this total reboot as “the next chapter of Spider-Man”, omitting any mention of a recast, just to haze over the question of whether Sony was jumping ship from the project it had put so much work into - again, it really bears repeating - three years before.
And so we come to Spider-Man: Homecoming, the movie that this newsletter is allegedly about.
What about Spider-Man: Homecoming? Is she safe? Is she okay?
Well… there’s almost less to say about it than I’d like. It’s complicated, and thorny. I’d struggle to unpick my thoughts about it, except that, conveniently, I have written about this very movie before, at its time of release, on this here Internet.
Yeah, you’re goddamn right I’m about to quote my own blog from 2017.
The Spider-Man movies have always been kind of all over the place, the product of a ferocious tug of war between creative and commercial interests. Homecoming was the first that felt… normal. It felt confident, sure of itself, striking a precise balance between close-ended storytelling and world-building. The jokes were reliably funny, and the action was basically fine, with one standout sequence. There were lots of characters who weren’t very developed, but were played by overqualified actors who made them interesting anyway. It crafted a moderately compelling but entirely unsurprising hero’s journey with a nice moment of catharsis at the end. There wasn’t much individuality to it, but it had its own sheen of difference anyway. It felt… like other Marvel movies. It’s the first Spider-Man ever to feel like it was made completely painlessly. The character had been a weird, volatile experimental adjunct to the Marvel universe for over a decade; a microcosm of the highs and lows the genre could strike. And now, the character is in safe hands, starring in a fun but safe movie that’s making a lot of money.
It’s difficult to overstate how uncomfortable it is that four and a half years ago, I was doing this newsletter’s job better than I am doing now, at aged 22. I’m supposed to be a journalist, man!
Still, though I loathe to admit how much 18-year-old me got it, he got it. After a truly unpredictable series of Spider-Man movies borne out of mighty corporate-vs.-creative struggles and grandiose reboot plans, Homecoming is remarkable for the way in which it completely levels the ship. That sounds like a compliment, and it’s not not a compliment, but it’s not a compliment either.
You can see why I called the assist from past me in. Shit’s complex.
Functionally, Homecoming is a spin-off from Captain America: Civil War, in that it takes a character with a supporting role in that movie and gives him his own story. This is an absolute first for a Spider-Man film, which is usually built from the monolithic cultural importance of Spider-Man. But more importantly, it’s a narrative function shared with Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, other MCU works which use Civil War as a launching pad. In the grand scheme of the MCU, Homecoming is no different from any of those.
In other words, it very much seemed as if Spider-Man, which occupied its own peculiar bubble in the superhero movie genre for over a decade, had gone native. Absorption into the big Marvel machine, just like everyone wanted, the winning formula applied with the necessary incremental changes.
Let’s play whatever the opposite of devil’s advocate for a moment. People didn’t want Marvel Studios to take over the Spidey ship just for the sugar rush of seeing Spider Man hang out with Iron Man, though of course that was a pretty big part of it. People also, y’know, wanted better Spider-Man movies, and they noticed Marvel were good at them. In 2021, of course, the MCU isn’t doing quite so hot, with the Disney+ shows contributing to a sense of total saturation and the movies becoming noticeably wobbly in quality (yes, sorry to you, Black Widow and Eternals). But that wasn’t quite the case a few years back.
The third phase of the MCU - the films they put out between 2016 and 2019 - was, and probably will remain, the peak of the whole thing. The build-up to Infinity Endgame was in full flow, and the studio was putting out hit after hit which worked with critics and audiences alike. Phase two had been successful, but this was another step entirely. And, look, I’ve been working hard on my grumpy sceptic brand over here, but there were some straight bangers in this run. Guardians Vol. 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther - all while DC floundered about and the X-Men series was reaching its terminal decline phase. People had a lot of faith in the MCU then, and it’s hard to blame them for that. Especially considering the utter mismanagement of all things Spidey by Sony for years, it made a lot of sense that people were rooting for Homecoming. I am a ridiculous Spider-Man fan, and I have to admit that there was something comforting about not having to worry too much about whether the new film would be good.
And Homecoming is - well, quite good. It benefits significantly from genuinely trying to take the character somewhere new. This conception of Peter Parker - and Tom Holland’s performance - is very different to either Maguire or Garfield, and the whole low-rise, suburban aesthetic is a really fun change from the big Times Square energy of the previous movies. It benefits significantly from dispensing with the origin story and feels immeasurably more relaxed as a result of that decreased load. There are a few moments of real verve and thoughtfulness in there, most obviously in how it uses Michael Keaton as Vulture. He’s a mostly generic villain, and his motivations speak to a wider problem we’ll get to in a moment, but the sequence where Peter discovers he’s his crush’s dad and has to sit in a car while Toomes figures everything out is as close to old-fashioned suspense filmmaking as Marvel had gotten in quite some time.
It’s an entertaining and energetic piece of work. A completely reasonable reaction would to breathe a sigh of relief and chill out.
Ha. That was a joke.
See, when I watched Homecoming this time, I was bored. Part of that comes from having watched it too many times and remembering every beat, but shit, I’ve watched the first two Raimi films innumerable times, and I was glued to the screen still this time around. I was bored, I think, because the film - for all its genuine strengthens - feels smooth and shiny and dispiritingly bland. It’s a well-made product, but it’s a product nevertheless.
That’s the flipside of the MCU thing, and the general bargain many audiences have made - reliability in place of unpredictability. It makes sense. Sometimes it very much works. But for Spider-Man, the Marvel-brand reliability is an odd fit. The character occupies so much cultural importance and mythology, enough to have kept it as a separate franchise for a decade and a half, that slotting it into the machine in the same way as, say, Ant-Man or Doctor Strange, brings about certain difficulties.
So changes are made, nips and tucks to let the character belong in the MCU, and it’s these changes where the genuine problems come up. The Raimi and Webb films had little in common, especially strengths, but they both communicated well the idea that Spider-Man is an independent character who can have a love interest and can have a friends, but ultimately has to rely on himself. Peter Parker is a distressingly unlucky hero who is constantly put through the worst shit by the world. And yes, class is a big aspect of that. The Raimi films did it better (who can forget one of cinema’s only realistically shit city apartments?), but again, both previous iterations of Spider-Man clearly situated Peter and his family as working class, struggling to make ends meet in one form or another. It’s that underdog status that feeds so easily into Spider-Man’s heroism. He fights for the little guy because he is the little guy.
That wouldn’t fit in the MCU, though. There’s no crossover potential there, no big franchise change to sell this second reboot. Honestly, the idea of class as an important aspect of character is one mostly foreign to the MCU, a world filled with billionaire heroes and androids.
(I can hear you at the back there saying, “What about Ant-Man? Scott Lang is working class!” Yes, this is true. Scott Lang is working class. He’s also sponsored by a reclusive millionaire who gives him shit. There’s a reason Baskin’ Robbins is a quick joke in the first movie and not a significant part of the franchise.)
In comes the Tony Stark angle, which is really the main selling point for this new MCU version of the character. I get the narrative logic here. It links Spider-Man to the MCU’s most popular hero, it’s a new character dynamic for these films, and it’s a good way to keep Robert Downey Jr. around whilst giving him a moderate dramatic arc to play with. The idea of Spider-Man as a wannabe Avenger also makes a good amount of sense, because it’s relatable that a teenager would want to hang out with celebrities. These ideas basically work, on paper.
But, and you knew there would be a but, they don’t really feel like Spider-Man. This is particularly true of the Tony Stark angle, which absolutely suffuses every aspect of this movie. One of the pleasures even of the Webb films was seeing Peter experiment with his abilities and tech, which again shows how his form of heroism is independent and scrappy. Homecoming has a version of it, but instead of Peter trying and failing to make his own stuff, it’s Peter trying and failing to figure out features that Tony Stark made for him. Stuffing the character full of multimillion-dollar technology feels odd, but it’s an oddness the film barely acknowledges. Indeed, Peter has oversight for the entire film, with Tony and Happy Hogan. There’s an ongoing joke where an excuse for Peter’s work as Spider-Man is “the Stark internship”, but it gets a bit too close to the bone because throughout, Peter is basically a very ineffective employee of Stark Industries.
It’s true as well of the villain, whose motivations come from hating Tony Stark for the actions of The Avengers (the fact that the series goes back to this well in the next movie - discussions!), rather than having anything to do with Peter. It sets up an incredibly odd dynamic where Peter is defending the interests of a billionaire against a working-class dad, and again, the tension is never really touched upon. I fully understand that nobody in the general audience cares about this, but still - did any one of this movie’s six credited screenwriters stop to think “hey, should the final fight here be about Spider-Man defending a Stark Industries weapons convoy?”.
There are attempts to give Peter an independent character arc within all of this, but it’s not enough - the lasting impression is of a fundamentally strange conception of the character, full of unconfronted narrative tension. This version of Peter Parker is genuinely, significantly different to anything that has come before, but I don’t know if the movie quite understands that. This, again, is the MCU problem. You can stuff a movie to the seams with conflict and difficult questions, but it always has to be defused by the end, to leave the audience reassured. It’s true even of Black Panther, which goes substantially further than this movie in taking on social issues. There was room for jagged edges in the Sam Raimi movies, for even Spider-Man 3 to leave things on a hesitant note with the Peter and MJ conflict, or for Spider-Man 2 to show Peter’s struggle to basically feed himself. There isn’t here. You can’t fit class conflict in a post-credits scene.
It’s not all “Louis tries to do Marxism and fails” either. It’s just that making this notoriously independent character and tying him so tightly to an existing MCU figure makes Spider-Man feel lesser, just one of many B-tier heroes who sell slightly less well than Robert Downey Jr. does. The character isn’t allowed to make his own proper space within the MCU because the franchise mothership is parked right on top of it and refuses to leave. Again, there are gestures against this, most obviously with the ending where Peter refuses Tony’s offer to be an Avenger, but that’s a particular moment which the franchise machine can’t let breathe. Great, Spider-Man is a friendly neighbourhood hero, but he’s still good mates with Iron Man. Less than a year later, because a big crisis crossover needs Spider-Man, he goes to actual outer space and fights the biggest villain in the whole universe. Maybe it’s unfair to ding one movie for what happens in the next, but come on. Tony Stark literally proclaims him an Avenger in Infinity War. In the sequel, we’d have another big Marvel character and a bucketload of Stark legacy plotlines. There’s no actual separation here. This moment of independence, in its proper context, is absolutely meaningless, bordering on genuine misdirection.
God, I’m a grump. This movie is fun, or it’s supposed to be. I genuinely like Tom Holland’s performance, and I think his Spider-Man is the most cohesive version of the character the films have offered up. I think that Zendaya’s casting in these movies is perfect (even if she has about fifteen lines here), and that’s not just because I’ll defedn anything Zendaya does. This is a considerably better Spider-Man movies than either of the quote-unquote Amazing ones. Do you think I like being a grouch, reader?
(Don’t answer that.)
This was Spider-Man’s future - straight down-the-line Marvel formula films. It’s a bit of a relief and a lot of a bummer. Much of that relief, really, comes from the fact that the live-action Spidey films would no longer be the only Spider-game in town, as it went. We’ll get to Far From Home in a couple of weeks, but the brand was about to diversify! So should we, right?
I’d like to write a short newsletter, too. I have a sense you might appreciate that, reader.
Next time: Journey deep into the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters - wait, shit, sorry, Sony’s Spider-Man Universe - with Venom, the long-gestating spinoff that that was no longer connected to much at all. It’s a journey of gloopy CGI boys, fresh lobster dinners and a performance from Tom Hardy that is the best fucking thing of all time. And, like I said, I promise the newsletter will be shorter.
the historical narrative behind the mcu reboot is so… amazingly perplexing, it feels like something out of a movie. it SHOULD be a movie. jotting that one down in my list of "screenplay ideas" i'll probably never fulfill.