In a world with countless cinematic universe franchises, most of which are about comic book superheroes, it can be a bit sad to watch one fail time and time again. Some have the courtesy to disappear after only one entry, but others just drag themselves back up the mountain to try again every time.
Venomwas not box office poison.Morbius, the living vampire managed to die twice. Kraven is apparently not going to be a hunter anymore.Who even isEl Muerto? One crushing blow after another dealt to Sony’s efforts to make Spider-Man content without letting the hero make an appearance. Yet, the SSU will not stop, no matter who asks them to.
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As long as Sony has the legal rights to makeSpider-Man-related films, they will continue to do so and everyone knows why. Spidey is consistently the most popular character in the Marvel catalog, he’s typically competing with Batman for the most popular superhero in general. Almost anything with Spider-Man in it is guaranteed a massive box office return, but, as Sony has proven, movies adjacent to the character have a much less impressive success rate. Sony fought very hard to keep the MCU from taking sole rights to the character, and they have to keep using the pieces they have, or they risk a competitor dominating even more content. With that in mind, it doesn’t ultimately matter howill-advised, poorly executed, or even financially unsuccessfuleach entry is. They’re going to keep coming.
The best movie in the SSU is Ruben Fleischer’s 2018Venom. It’s also the first official entry in the franchise, after the unfulfilledending ofThe Amazing Spider-Manmovies.Venomdoesn’t work all the way through, but it does have an intense contingent of fans and a unique charm to it. Tom Hardy’s unhinged performance as both Eddie Brock and Venom made him a weirdly hidden gem superhero movie performance. The action scenes are well-handled. Venom’s unique powers are handled with a sense of creativity. It’s full of flaws, butVenomis ultimately inoffensive.Venomwas rewarded for its mild competence with a massive box office return, a lesser sequel, and anupcoming end to the trilogy. What did the first salvo of the franchise do better than its ongoing efforts?
The big obvious takeaway would be to only base films around characters with an enormous fanbase. Venom is one of the most popular Spider-Man villains of all time, regardless of the quality of the stories he appears in. Every Spider-Man movie or game has to contend with the onslaught of fans asking when Venom will enter the adaptation. Starting the SSU with Venom was an obviously excellent choice, but he was possibly the only heavy-hitter Sony had in the stable. Due to the nature of the deal between Sony and Marvel, fans can’t know which characters Sony could drop into these films, but they can know which ones they passed on.
In 2018, the same year they put outVenom, Sony canceledSilver & Black. It would’ve been the big-screen debut of mercenary Silver Sable andanti-hero thief Black Cat, both popular characters in their own right.The Old Guarddirector Gina Prince-Blythewood was attached to the project, and it appears to be shut down. At best, it’s been converted to a TV series, but there’s been no news on that since 2020. Instead, Sony seems to be plowing ahead with unknowns likeEl Muerto. It’s entirely possible to take an unknown character and turn them into an icon, ask James Gunn how he keeps pulling it off. But, the continued problems come back to a much larger issue with the franchise.
Someone who watched the ending ofVenom: Let there be Carnageorany part ofMorbiuswould be aware of the problem with the SSU. The franchise is starting from a place of loosely tying its worlds together and making something overwhelmingly bland. The naked corporate desire to blindly ape the profitable aspects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has completely cratered any actual interest one could have in the individual films. The first entries of the MCU could’ve been completely unrelated to their peers and still played out excellently. If the connected universe aspect of the MCU had flopped, they’d still have several good films. Sony is putting the cart before the horse, claiming this impossible franchise model by birthright, and forgetting the only thing fans actually want. Fans don’t want an interconnected continuity between films they don’t like and characters they don’t care about.
If Sony wants its SSU projects to start gaining some of the public cache of Marvel or DC’s efforts, they have to focus on making good standalone superhero movies.Venomworks, at least in parts, because it captures a percentage of what people like about the character. Sony’s other efforts fail because they don’t see these fixtures as characters who can lead stories, they see tent poles in their desperate attempt to take someone else’s gimmick without the talent.
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