From Morbius to Kraven the Hunter to the Venom films, Sony’s live-action Spider-Verse franchise defines everything that’s wrong with comic book movies. A few years ago, when Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing movie ever made and Joker became the first R-rated film to cross $1 billion at the box office, the comic book movie genre seemed unstoppable. However, superhero fatigue has well and truly set in and a generic, formulaic comic book movie with a recognizable I.P. in its title just won’t do anymore. The Flash, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania have all been critical and commercial disappointments.
The biggest superhero hits of 2023, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, have proven that the solution to superhero fatigue is very simple: make good movies. If a comic book movie is truly great, tugging on the heartstrings like Guardians Vol. 3 or imbuing the visuals with real invention and creativity like Across the Spider-Verse, then audiences will show up. The absolute worst that the superhero movie genre has to offer is personified by Sony’s feeble attempts to build out its own Marvel Comics-based cinematic universe.
Venom And Venom 2 Were Underwhelming
The biggest box office hits of Sony’s live-action Spider-Verse franchise have been the Venom movies. But those movies have weak scripts and rushed pacing, and they reduce the complicated eponymous antihero into a traditional protagonist who defeats the villain for the sake of good. Tom Hardy has been carrying the entire franchise on his shoulders. His delightfully eccentric dual performance as Eddie Brock and the titular symbiote is the only reason to watch these movies. With a lesser actor in the role, the Venom movies would’ve crashed and burned. Hardy’s star power is the only thing they’ve got going for them.
There was a lot of hope for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, because it was directed by the great Andy Serkis, who knows a thing or two about bringing depth and humanity to CG characters, and promised to introduce Venom’s most iconic nemesis from the comics, Carnage. But it was still a huge let-down. Sony is currently working on Venom 3 for an October 2024 release. Hardy is once again co-writing the script with Kelly Marcel, who will make her directorial debut with the threequel, and such great actors as Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple have joined the cast in undisclosed roles. But after the disappointment of the first two films, there’s not much optimism surrounding the next one.
Morbius Was A Big Failure (Twice)
After the first two Venom movies, Sony expanded into another standalone supervillain origin story with Morbius. With its tale of a vampiric antihero, Morbius could’ve been the next Blade. But it was let down by the casting of the decidedly uncharismatic Jared Leto and a formulaic script following the same tired beats of a character acquiring superpowers, grappling with the responsibility, and becoming a hero. When Morbius was first released in theaters, just as everybody expected, it bombed at the box office. Then, a slog of ironic memes convinced Sony to re-release the movie in the hope of turning a profit, and it bombed a second time. It’s quite a feat for a movie to fail twice.
Kraven Looks Totally Generic
Sony’s latest Marvel-based offering, Kraven the Hunter, doesn’t look any better than Venom or Morbius. In fact, it might be even worse, because it was misconceived from the get-go. Kraven the Hunter highlights the problem with giving supervillains their own movie. In the comics, the thing that makes Kraven an interesting character is that he’s a big-game hunter who has determined that the greatest game is Spider-Man, and will do anything to hunt down and kill everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood webslinger. He’s only compelling in relation to Spider-Man. In Sony’s new movie, with no Spidey in sight, Kraven has been recharacterized as a generic antihero.
Sony’s Marvel movie franchise – known at different times as Sony’s Marvel Universe, Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters, the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, and Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (but, for some reason, never known simply as the Spider-Verse) – is a prime example of why comic book movies are failing. The only reason to make a Morbius movie or a Kraven the Hunter movie is because Sony owns the film rights to the property. There’s no story that needs to be told or character that viewers can identify with; the studio was looking for an easy cash grab and underestimated their audience’s taste.
It’s possible that Sony has a big surprise up its sleeve and Kraven the Hunter is secretly the greatest movie ever made. But based on the trailer, that seems highly unlikely. From what the trailer has revealed, it looks like it’ll just be a typical big-budget thriller with some animal-themed action. After that, Sony’s next Marvel movie will be Madame Web. Sydney Sweeney’s A-list status might help to sell that one, but beyond that, it doesn’t look good. No one is asking for movies about El Muerto, Nightwatch, Jackpot, or Hypno-Hustler, and the long-in-development Sinister Six project will be pointless without Spider-Man.