A Mental Dump Post on Spiderman Stuff
My head starts spinning whenever I try to really parse out exactly what it could mean for the next Spiderman movie to not be a joint with Marvel, just because I don't think there's any way of knowing for sure without seeing contracts or talking to someone who's seen them, so I mostly just sit here and think, "Well, I guess we've just got to be patient, because the next Spidey film wasn't even on the schedule for the next two years, so chances are negotiations are going to go on for a while, and things could change entirely from this incomprehensible mess it seems to be now."
But my brain still wants to try to do damage control by tempering expectations, so I can't help but wonder how bad this could actually be (a task not made easier by the fact that I haven't seen Far From Home yet, because chronic diseases suck). Disney/Marvel has rights to all the other MCU characters, but Sony has rights to all the Spiderman characters. So:
Peter Parker and Aunt May and all his friends should still be available
Spiderman has an insanely huge rogues gallery, so he doesn't need a villain from elsewhere
Tony is dead, so his absence doesn't have to be weird...
... Because we managed to skip over Spiderman's origin story completely, and never mentioned Uncle Ben by name, but we can still safely assume both were things just by clever implication
Happy being absent - could be a continuity problem? I don't know, I haven't seen FFH
Steve is...well, we don't talk about what happened to Steve, but needless to say that no more cameos from Captain PSA don't have to be a huge deal, even if they were funny
A Spiderman movie without any cameos from Avengers could be sad, or it could just be a perfectly good Spiderman movie
Kevin Feige didn't singlehandedly make the first two movies, so presumably the third one won't fall apart without him
Spidey could still be an Avenger by the time they make another Avengers movie, if Disney & Sony can figure out their shit by then. Nothing wrong with having a solo adventure before duty calls again in Phase 6 (or whenever - it's not even announced yet)
... Is all that right? As far as anyone can tell? It sounds like Spidey could be fine, right?
The thing I have more trouble figuring out is how much the MCU needs Spiderman. They didn't have him for all ten years, but an article pointed out that he was in five of the six best films (can't remember if that was in terms of money or critical acclaim, but the money is the only part that matters in business dealings), and he's the only character people cheered for when he came back in Endgame in my theater. It's hard to picture the MCU without him: he's like the only member of their next generation that we know right now. There's something wistful and sweet about having a little baby superhero learning the ropes and gaining his feet among this roster of older, tired, battle-weary heroes. He's adorable and snarky and fun. But...we don't know what shape the MCU roster is doing to take in the next few years anyways, so who can say that he'd be the only such character? That's more my personal concern, honestly, after Infinity War and Endgame - that it took a dark & gritty turn and it won't be able to shift back out of that level of darkness. I doubt Marvel movies are suddenly going to pull less money in for them on average after Endgame made a record-breaking amount of money for them. Which means they're going to keep coming. They aren't going anywhere.
So I guess that's really what it comes down to: I'm worried about the MCU bringing me less joy now that Steve is gone, Nat's down to her last outing, and Peter Parker might be gone, too, off in his own separate universe. Infinity War and Endgame broke my trust, ended my faves, I don't trust them with the faves I have left, and now stupid business dealings have separated another favorite - the one I was least worried about losing! - from the universe that gave him to us, and put him solely in the hands of a studio that hasn't been trustworthy in the past with his character. Potentially. And honestly those other movies were ages ago, so they probably aren't even the same people anymore. It feels like the (MC)Universe is ending, but it's just Endgame grief being aggravated.
