I'm Still Annoyed By The ‘Snake-Bitten’ Spider-Man Comments, Because I Think They Totally Miss The Problems Facing The Marvel Franchise

I’m going to look back at 2024 and think of it as a strange year for superhero movies. The two big dogs – Marvel Studios and DC Films – largely circled their wagons and prepared for a rebirth, which looks to begin in 2025 with the arrival of Superman for James Gunn and The Fantastic Four: First Steps for Kevin Feige and his team. The lack of overall comic-book competition helps explain why last summer’s Deadpool and Wolverine outperformed recent Marvel releases. At the same time, Sony Pictures stayed very busy in 2024 adding to its unusual universe of Spider-Man adjacent films, though the final entry might have concluded that experiment with a whimper, instead of a bang.

As Sony Pictures Chief Executive Officer Tony Vinciquerra prepared to step down from his post on January 2, he spoke with the L.A. Times about his tenure, and opened up about the performances of and reception for the Sony movies Madame Web, Venom, and December’s release Kraven the Hunter. But the more I thought about the comments made by Vinciquerra – who I’ve always thought to be an intelligent studio executive with plenty of hits under his belt – the more it bothered me because it seems to have missed the point of the failed Sony Spider-Man universe, and dooms the future of a franchise that I still feel has so much potential, if handled correctly.

Here’s what was said about the Spider-Man spinoff movies.

Unfortunately for Tony Vinciquerra, the final movie released under his tenure – Kraven the Hunter – will forever be remembered as what he called “probably the worst launch” of his nearly eight year run. Kraven, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular hero (Villain? Hero? Does anyone really know?) opened to a very soft $11 million on December 13, then failed to compete against the likes of Wicked, Mufasa, Nosferatu and other well-reviewed movies. It quickly tumbled down the box office Top 10 list.

When asked about the underwhelming performance of Kraven the Hunter, especially in relation to the previous Sony Spider-Man spinoffs, Vinciquerra seemed to get defensive as he argued:

Almost everything Tony Vinciquerra said to the L.A. Times checks out. He’s correct in surmising that Madame Web underperformed because of bad reviews. The film boasts an 11% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. But bad reviews largely affect an opening weekend. If a movie is good, word of mouth will pique people’s interests. As Vinciquerra said, it happened with the Venom movies. So I don’t buy his summation that Madame Web, Morbius, and Kraven failed because critics “destroyed” them.

If Vinciquerra accepted some blame for the creative decisions behind these Spider-Man blunders, then I’d start to believe that someone at Sony understood the larger reason why these films faltered. However, the outgoing CEO concluded this portion of the interview by discussing what he thinks the long-term strategy of the Sony Spider-Man spinoffs needs to be. And it shows a complete misunderstanding of the biggest fan complaint regarding these stories.

Here’s Vinciquerra:

Wrong. Dead wrong. Spider-Man fans are practically begging Sony to make a good live-action spinoff. Is the animated Spider-Verse series snake-bitten? Quite the contrary. Have we already written off the Spider-Man: Noir series starring Nicholas Cage? I think most of us die-hards want that show to work, and are certainly going in with an open mind.

There’s an obvious reason why these spinoffs are failing – to me, anyway – as well as one not-so-blatant but still important factor. Let’s break it down.

There’s no Spider-Man in these movies.

I mean, duh, right? Spider-Man fans want Spider-Man in their movies. I’m not even talking about Peter Parker, as the Spider-Verse films have proven that fans easily can invest in the stories of Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Jessica Drew, Hobie Brown or Miguel O’Hara. Find a way to include a Spider-Man in the Kraven the Hunter movie, and I guarantee you, more Spider-Man fans will show up.

Instead, somehow, Sony made three full Venom movies, and didn’t include Spider-Man in any of them. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand that decision.

Here’s the problem: Sony went out of its way to tease the possible involvement of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man every chance it got. And the longer Sony kept going without ever delivering on that promise, the more goodwill it lost from the dedicated audience. Let’s go back over a few recent examples. At the end of Jared Leto’s Morbius, Sony – for some bizarre reason – had Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes “beam” over from the MCU and stage a meeting with the vampire. The transition was linked to Doctor Strange’s sorcery in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Toomes (aka The Vulture) told Morbius that he blamed the shift on Spider-Man.

Here, watch:

It’s a cool scene, watching The Vulture swoop out of the sky and interact with Morbius, the Living Vampire. But what did it amount to?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

When Michael Keaton was asked point blank by Josh Horowitz if he knew what was happening in that scene, the Vulture actor told him he had “no idea.” Then added:

Double yikes.

Then we had the Venom teases. Comic readers know that Venom basically doesn’t exist unless the alien symbiote forms a bond with Peter Parker, then gets rejected. Tom Hardy’s Venom trilogy ignored that origin story – which is fine – but then dangled the possibility of a Spider-Man and Venom crossover, even going so far as to have the symbiote recognize Holland’s hero on a TV screen. Remember this tantalizing scene from Venom: Let There Be Carnage?

VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE (2021) Post Credits Scene [HD] Tom Holland - YouTube

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Do you know what that scene led to? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The longer Sony kept up this ruse, the more frustrated fans became. If Sony truly wanted these Spider-Man villain spinoff movies to stand on their own, then these unfulfilled promises of Spider-Man action should never have been included. The frustration I personally felt at these Sony movies had little to do with the lack of quality. I’d go so far as to say that Morbius and the Venom movies are perfectly fine – albeit dated – comic book adaptations, and only Madame Web seemed to be a misguided stinker that didn’t justify its own existence. No one involved with Madame Web seemed to understand why they were making the movie, including the film’s star, Dakota Johnson.

Unfortunately, Sony didn’t seem interested in ever including Spider-Man – be it Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, or a live-action Miles Morales – in any of these spinoff movies. They’d happily include a shot of Jared Leto walking in front of a Spider-Man mural in a Morbius trailer. Just, don’t look for that shot in the finished movie.

The endless bait-and-switch is what turned me off on these movies, and I’m willing to bet the same goes for countless rabid Spider-Man fans who likely would have traded a body part to see the wallcrawler fighting with Venom, Kraven the Hunter, the Rhino, the Chameleon, or other characters introduced into this world. Not Madame Web. No one cared about that character. Or some of the weird names floated for other movies. That was the other part I never understood. What the hell is El Muerto? Or the Hypno-Hustler, rumored to have been played by Donald Glover? No one knows. Not at Sony. And not in the fandom.

Tony Vinciquerra is correct. Sony needs to completely rethink its approach to Spider-Man movies. But it has nothing to do with the franchise being “snake bitten.” It has everything to do with the bizarre creative decisions made behind the scenes on these movies since Venom started the saga in 2018, and the studio’s inability to balance Tom Holland in the MCU, and the access they have to Spider-Man characters.

Until they figure that out, I fear that true Spider-Man fans will choose to stay home.