The popularity of the spider-man movie franchise is significant since its first movie in 2002. There are a number of factors that have gone into the never-ending carousel of Spider-Man movie actors, and Tom Holland shouldn’t get too comfortable in his red spandex. To find out why that is, take a look at the real reason we’ve had three actors play in Spider-Man movie franchise in 10 years.
Given below is the legacy of spider-man movie actors:
Launching the Superhero Era
Superhero movies dominate the current Hollywood landscape, but that hasn’t always been the case. Though some may point to 2000’s X-Men, or even 1998’s Blade as the start of modern comic book movie mayhem, the superhero boom owes a lot to 2002’s Spider-Man movie. Its box office takes towered over the other Marvel movies, taking in $821 million worldwide. That’s a number that would be impressive even for a film released today, nearly two decades later, it’s more than Deadpool 2 made in 2018.
In the days before The Dark Knight and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man movies were the biggest thing going among superhero movies. Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, the 2000s trilogy of Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3 kept the genre thriving while it was still in its relative infancy, with a combined total of nearly $2.5 billion at the box office.
The movies arguably defined Maguire’s career, and the second film is still considered one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. And yet, in spite of the trilogy’s seedy success and undeniable impact on In the movie industry, the franchise was rebooted just five years after Spider-Man 3.
The Failure of Spider-Man 3
If you’re just looking at the numbers, Spider-Man 3 was a monumental success. It was 2007’s highest-grossing film domestically, and it made more money at the box office than either of its predecessors. In fact, its $890 million worldwide total remained the simplest box office performance of any Spider-Man movie until it had been finally topped in 2019 by Spider-Man: faraway from Home. So why, after making a ton of money, did Spider-Man 3 sound the death knell for Maguire and Raimi’s iteration of the character? Well, to put it simply, the movie had some problems.
Generally speaking, you’ll have to look long and hard to find a hardcore fan of Spider-Man 3. Critics were not kind to the film, and many fans didn’t like it either. The plot was overstuffed with three villains: the Sandman, Harry Osborn’s New Goblin, and Topher Grace as Eddie Brock, who only becomes Venom in the final third of the movie.
There was also a love triangle with the addition of Gwen Stacy, a retcon of Uncle Ben’s death, and Peter Parker’s own inner battle after he’s infected with the venom symbiote, which manifests as a series of infamous dance numbers. In the ensuing years since the film’s release, even the people behind Spider-Man 3 have joined fans and critics in dragging the movie, with director Sam Raimi saying the film was “awful” in a 2015 interview.
No More Spider-man 4
In spite of Spider-Man 3’s well-documented issues, the immediate plan from Sony was to continue the spider-man movie franchise with the present team intact. After all, the movie made a boatload of money, and in Hollywood, that’s what counts. Raimi began working on Spider-Man 4 shortly after he’d wrapped the third film, with both Maguire and Kirsten Dunst ready to return.
The director was looking to feature the Vulture as the film’s villain and had even secured John Malkovich for the role. He also nabbed Anne Hathaway to play antiheroine Felicia Hardy, Black Cat in the comics, but in the movie she would’ve become the Vultures. The film even had a scheduled release date of May 6, 2011. Alas, it never came to be.
The issue was that Raimi while working with various co-writers, was unable to get the script to a place that satisfied him. He was desperate not to repeat the mistakes he made in Spider-Man 3. Once the director realized there was no way he would be able to meet Sony’s deadline for the film’s release date, however, he told the studio that he no longer wanted to make the film. Rather than trying to find a new director to take over what Raimi had been working on, Sony decided to restart the franchise from scratch.
Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man
Even before Raimi quit working on Spider-Man 4, Sony already had a contingency plan in place for a reboot. On the day in 2010 when Sony announced the cancelation of Spider-Man 4, the studio also announced that a new Spider-Man movie would arrive in theaters in 2012. The decision to reboot rather than continue with a new director came from the studio’s belief that Peter Parker’s story was best told through the lens of a boy becoming a man, specifically a Spider-Man. The reboot would take Peter Parker back to high school, and for this, the studio settled on Andrew Garfield.
While eight years younger than Maguire, Garfield was still at least a decade older than the character he would be portraying and was actually two years older than Maguire was in the first Spider-Man movie. In spite of Garfield’s advanced age, director Marc Webb felt he was best for the role in The Amazing Spider-Man for a number of reasons, including his chemistry with co-star Emma Stone, who was playing Spidey’s doomed love interest, Gwen Stacy.
With the rebooted Amazing Spider-Man hitting theaters just five years after Spider-Man 3, many fans were skeptical about how well the film would be received. As it turns out, they should’ve been; the film under-performed on nearly every level. One heavy criticism was the film’s decision to retell Spider-Man’s full origin story, almost beat-for-beat as it had been in Raimi’s film, only a decade later.
By spending much of the running time on a story that the audience already knew, the movie wasted its chance to do something new and exciting. Perhaps ironically, criticism was also leveled at what the film actually did try to do differently. Rather than being an awkward nerd, Garfield’s Peter Parker was depicted as being a cool teen skateboarder who disrespects authority and has no problem standing up to and even bullying Flash Thompson.
He just didn’t feel or act like Parker to many fans. Changes to the story were also criticized. A new plotline was added that made the death of Peter’s parents part of some kind of vague conspiracy, and it helped drive Peter’s motivations. He still had the traditional driving tragedy of Uncle Ben’s death, however, raising the question of how much dead fathers figures one story really needs before it all gets too convoluted.
Worst Spidey Ever!
The Amazing Spider-Man might have underperformed at the box office and failed to excite fans, but it wasn’t a bomb by any means. Sure, it made less than any other Spider-man movie to date, but that’s still plenty of money, and work quickly began on a sequel. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 brought in Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx as new villain Electro, but the filmmakers didn’t stop there.
Seemingly determined to ignore the lessons learned by the overstuffed Spider-Man 3, the film also added a new Green Goblin, along with a tattooed Paul Giamatti as the Rhino, performing cinema history’s least convincing Russian accent. Perhaps the most important mistake made by the film was the choice to kill Gwen Stacy.
While the 1973 comic book story of her death is considered a classic, the plot point of a woman dying to motivate a male character was considered tired, offensive, and damaged by the time the film was released in 2014. There was also a strong sense that Gwen’s death was not earned in the film and that it was done simply because death is what fans associate with the character. Combine all of that with some subpar performances, and it led to both the worst critical reception and the lowest box office take of any Spider-Man movie up to that point.
Collaboration with Marvel
While the Spider-Man movie franchise was floundering, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was flourishing. After Iron Man began the MCU in 2008 and particularly following the monumental success of 2012’s The Avengers, the franchise redefined what audiences wanted out of superhero movies. To put it bluntly, fans expected superhero movies to be good, and movie studios expected them to make the kind of money that few other franchises ever had. With films starring B-list heroes like Guardians of the Galaxy earning more money at the box office than Amazing Spider-Man 2, the MCU was becoming too big for Sony to ignore.
On the opposite side of the coin, Marvel also wanted to bring Spider-Man movie franchise into the fold. Their films were undeniably successful, but that success was built on the backs of traditionally lesser-loved characters like Iron Man. Spider-Man, on the other hand, has been the face of Marvel Comics since 1963.
The belief was that Spider-Man belonged in the MCU with the rest of his Marvel brethren, where the character could lead the next generation of Marvel films to an even higher level of success. And when major studios are motivated to make a deal, sometimes the impossible becomes possible. After the poor performance of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony decided to pursue another reboot and got Marvel Studios to produce the third iteration of Spider-Man in a decade.
In February 2015, Disney and Sony reached a practically unheard-of deal to effectively share a franchise. Marvel Studios would produce new Spider-Man movies alongside Sony and also include MCU characters in Spider-Man movies, but Sony would get full distribution rights for the films, including all of their box office earnings.
In exchange, Disney got permission to use Spider-Man in their own films, such as the Avengers movies, and all of the merchandising rights to the character. Now, with both studios wanting what’s best for Spider-man movie franchise, it was time for a third Peter Parker to suit up.
Spider-Man The Third
With Marvel Studios on board, it was decided that Spider-Man would debut not in his own reboot film, but rather as part of the huge ensemble in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. That would remove the pressure of carrying a solo film from the new Spidey and ease him into the larger MCU without having to cover the origin story again. Marvel also decided that the new Peter Parker would once again be a high schooler.
This time, unlike Maguire and Garfield, who were both pushing 30 when they were cast in the role, the studio cast an actual teenager for the part: 19-year-old British actor Tom Holland. Holland’s version of the character debuted in Civil War to rave reviews. While there’s a subtle mention of a tragedy in his past, viewers met a Peter Parker who was already fighting crime as Spider-Man. Fans and critics alike loved Holland’s personality in the role, while also finding it refreshing that he was actually, for the first time in Spidey history, close in age to the character he was playing.
Success with The Third
Two years after his pitch-perfect MCU intro in Civil War, Holland starred in his first solo film for Sony, Spider-Man: Homecoming. The movie was the first Spider-Man movie to be produced by Marvel Studios, and it proved to be a massive critical and financial success. Holland followed up that goodwill by appearing in the two largest Marvel movies to date, 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.
Both movies have already become cultural touchstones, and they rank as the fifth and first highest-grossing films of all time, respectively. Furthermore, Spider-Man’s contributions to each film helped raise the character’s profile not only in the MCU but to the movie-going public as well. When subsequent Spider-Man movie debuted but ten weeks after Endgame’s premiere, it did so on a wave of MCU-driven excitement and anticipation. The movie obliterated the previous box office record for a Spider-Man movie by becoming the first film in the franchise to gross $1 billion at the worldwide box office.
Spidey 4?
Despite the runaway success Holland has enjoyed as Spider-Man, there have been rumors that Sony is looking to regain full control over the spider-man movie franchise. After all, they have their own budding universe made up of other Spider-man movie characters in which Spider-Man himself is not legally allowed to appear.
Sony had tremendous success with 2018’s Venom, as the movie earned nearly as much at the box office as Spider-Man: Homecoming. The studio has already greenlit a sequel, as well as Morbius, based on the “Living Vampire” who first appeared in Spider-Man comics, with Jared Leto in the starring role.
Eventually, Sony’s getting to want Spider-Man to seem in these films to spice up their profile, and if Marvel isn’t willing to let Holland do so, then Sony may plow ahead with a fourth reboot. For further information about the spider-man movie franchise, refer to the given link – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man
Tags: Popularity, Spider-Man, Franchise, Movie, Marvel, Sony, Superhero Movies, Spider-Man Movie, Marvel Studios
Leave a Reply