Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the latest Spider-Man movie instead.
…I mean, sure, it isn’t as straightforward, for
example, the discovery of a brand new millipede specie in RL is really
exciting, while the new JWD posters are something else: on the first, we have
Claire stuck in a swamp, driven there by a therezinosaurus; again, I’ve no idea
what a therezinosaurus would do in a swamp, plus the entire poster is too
reminiscent of the ones done for the first film in the Jumanji reboot; and now
we have the second poster, where Owen has lassoed a Parasaurolophus instead. A
Parasaurolophus was a hadrosaur (duck-billed) dinosaur that lived during the
Cretaceous around the inland sea of the prehistoric North America, in a time,
and a place, that was pretty much opposite to the boreal forest in which Chris
had lassoed it on the poster, so clearly, the world of the JWD movie has a lot
of issues to work out – by people, by dinosaurs, by both, and by anyone else.
And the latest (Tom Holland) Spider-Man movie?
…And the latest (Tom Holland) Spider-Man movie is
something else. When we talked about the ‘Ronin’ episode of ‘Hawkeye’, I said
that ‘Hawkeye’ has becoming nothing more than by the numbers Marvel TV series,
whereas ‘No Way Home’ has become a by the numbers… Sony Spider-Man movie.
No, seriously, the advantage of MCU over its’
competitors was that it had a greater picture, so to speak: every film was a
step on the path to… the ‘Endgame’. No, seriously the ‘Endgame’ film was the
endgame to the first three phases of MCU; just consider them the bigger and
more derived cousins to the three seasons of a typical Disney property, and you’ll
be set. Now, however, MCU is moving – has moved – onto Phase 4, and out of Disney’s
comfort zone, so no wonder that it is meandering all over the place – and then
it came back to Sony. Their previous collaboration with each other – the ‘Far
From Home’ film – resulted in Sony and Disney/MCU fighting, and the latter was
forced to retreat, and now…
…And now, we got another Sony & Disney/MCU
collaboration on Spider-Man, and it is something else from what I have
predicted. I predicted that it is going to launch the concept of the multiverse
in the Disney/MCU universe for real, now that the previous Disney+ Marvel TV
series have teased it – ‘Loki’ began to explore it – and so it had. By the
final scene, where we see Dr. Strange encounter Wanda Maximoff after the events
of WV, dismiss the events in Westview easily enough, and talk to her about
exploring the multiverse for real: ‘No Way Home’ was a glorified pre-run
instead.
It was also a reboot of the Sony Spider-Man universe, as
we got to see Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin stab ‘his’ Spider-Man rather than
be impaled by his glider before everyone was able to go home; Electro from the ‘second’
Spider-Man universe also got redesigned; and so on. Given that Sony is continuing its’ own Spider-Verse,
(the upcoming Morbius film, etc.) this does bring possibilities – but not to
MCU. Instead, in case of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, he lost everyone and almost
everything, and is clear to start from a clean slate. MCU is done with the
Web-Head, so the odds of him having to deal with threats from only ‘his’
universe are fairly good.
In addition, there are signs that MCU has moved onto
from Spider-Man: I am talking about ‘Hawkeye’, who has no mention of
Wall-Crawler at all: seriously, you have adventures in a Marvel-verse NYC and
no mention of the Spider-Man? That is just wrong. But that is also real life
business politics: Sony, (including Spider-Man), and Disney/MCU are done with
each on this level, and so Spider-Man got send out of MCU with a big fanfare,
Sony got to demonstrate its’ past and present Spider-Man properties in a more
tasteful way of HBO’s ‘Space Jam 2’ film, which has little in common with the
original movie, and is worse than the original ‘Space Jam’ had been, which is just
sad. Where were we?
Oh yeah, with the realization that ‘No Way Home’ was
just a side-quest, an ejection from the otherwise slim and streamlined MCU
phase 4, (no sarcasm intended). ‘What if?’ might be ‘What if?’, but it is
apocrypha for a reason; there we saw situations that could have happened in
MCU, but did not… just because. And even so, the end result of ‘What if?’ S1
was a variant of ‘Endgame’, a mix of the first and the last ‘Avengers’ films –
nothing more. Disney/MCU always returns to its’ comfort zone… Pause.
Ah yes, the Daredevil (Charlie Cox) cameo. Now that
the agreement between Disney/MCU & Netflix has ended, MCU is cautiously
(re)-introducing the ‘Defenders’ characters, starting with the Kingpin and his archenemy
Daredevil…apparently. What will come out of that we will have to see…
Therefore, for now, this is it. See you all soon!
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