I have loved Spider-Man my entire life. When the first Sam Raimi film came out in 2002, I was 3 years old. Since then, Spider-Man has stuck with me. I’ve read countless comics, played countless hours of web-slinging, wall-crawling games and watched the Sam Raimi trilogy probably 20 times. I can spout lore and trivia longer than anyone reading this would care to listen. It’s safe to say that if there was such a thing as a “Spider-Man Expert,” I’m one of them.
Recently, Spidey has been making headlines following the unexpected news that Spider-Man will no longer be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I, for one, was elated by this news. Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home are great movies. They’re fun, action-packed, heartfelt summer flicks — but they are terrible Spider-Man movies. I don’t think you’re a bad person for liking them; in fact, I quite enjoy them myself. But do they represent Spider-Man well? No. Do they portray an accurate version of the wall-crawler comic? Not really.
In light of the recent news of Sony taking the movie rights to Spider-Man back from Disney, I have seen people all across social media ripping Sony to shreds. I’ve also seen many people pitting Sony (the perceived antagonist) against Marvel Studios (the perceived protagonist), and I laugh at these people. Marvel Comics, Marvel Animation and Marvel Television are all run by their parent company, Marvel Entertainment. Marvel Entertainment has no say in who owns the movie rights to which character. For those who don’t know, Marvel is wholly and entirely owned by The Walt Disney Company, or Disney. So for all of the red-hot MCU fans out there, if you want to send your angry tweets or hateful fan letters to someone, send them to Disney. It’s their fault you won’t be getting your watered-down, boring and inaccurate rendition of Spider-Man back on the big screen.
Despite Disney already having a perfectly fair deal in place with Sony, they wanted more money and asked for 50% of box office sales, which is astronomical for these latest Spidey films. Sony, being one of the few major movie companies not currently owned by Disney, declined this deal, and rightfully so. Disney then decided to throw a fit and told Sony to pack their things and leave; for this reason: Spider-Man is out of the MCU.
If you are a true Spider-Man fan, you should be happy about this news. Sony has done more for the arachnid than Disney ever has. Sony has given us the three best Spider-Man films of all time: Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, followed by two flawed, but respectable Spidey films: Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man. We don’t have to talk about The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The Marvelites and MCU fan boys and girls may despair. But frankly, it’s for the best. Spider-Man is home.
