So why then have we not seen a follow-up to No Way Home yet? Holland’s answer isn’t quite so simple. “We have the best in the business working toward whatever the story might be. But until we’ve cracked it, we have a legacy to protect,” he explained. “The third movie was so special in so many ways that we need to make sure we do the right thing.”
According to Holland, part of the stall comes from worries about repeating past plot points. That might sound ridiculous after the nostalgia-fest that was No Way Home, but he has a point. Not only does his Spider-Man tenure come after decades of comic books, but Spider-Man has also starred in several television series, video games, and in seven non-MCU feature movies. In short, the character has crawled across a lot of walls.
The Sinister Sinking of Spider-Man’s Foes
Perhaps the biggest problem stems from No Way Home itself. The first two MCU Spider-Man movies did a great job reimagining classic villains and fitting them into the new universe. Adrian Toomes (along with the Shocker and the Tinkerer) made sense as a guy who got screwed out of a contract and got his powers from patching together abandoned tech. And FX artist Quentin Beck was a natural to work under the egotistical Stark. Sure, these characters did fit into the MCU’s awful class politics by pitting the usually working-class Peter Parker against people who dared to resist the rich Stark, but the charismatic performances by Michael Keaton and Jake Gyllenhaal overcame the bad politics.
But then No Way Home decided to recycle old, classic adversaries from previous film incarnations. Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus are two of Spider-Man’s best baddies, and Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina turned in defining performances. There’s plenty of room to go in other directions with these characters, as seen in the Sony Spider-Man video games, for example, but by putting Dafoe and Molina back into those roles, the MCU set a standard that will now be hard to break. Those two actors now cast even longer shadows over these characters going forward, even if producer Kevin Feige were to take potential recastings in a strikingly different direction—say, for example, by choosing Matthew McConaughey, who was long-rumored to be the MCU’s choice for Norman Osborn, as the Green Goblin. After reminding audiences that they love Dafoe and Molina in those parts, Spidey’s two greatest enemies have essentially been taken out of the MCU’s playbook.
Meanwhile Sony’s off-brand Spidey-less Spidey villain universe only further complicates things. Morbius and Kraven the Hunter (not you, Ezekiel Sims) have stood the test of time as Spider-Man antagonists, but most moviegoers associate the former as an internet joke and will probably do the same with the latter. Only Venom has stood out, but the Far From Home and Venom: Let There Be Carnage post-credit scenes only accentuated how poorly Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock fits in the MCU’s world.
In short, if Spider-Man 4 wants to keep consistent with the MCU version of the character without traveling over familiar ground, they’ll have to get creative and dig a bit deeper into the rogue’s gallery.
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