It might be time to reassess Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. The universe, as you will be aware, exists thanks to the deal that Sony made with Marvel to get Spider-Man back into the MCU. Basically, the deal means that Marvel can make Spider-Man movies for Sony, and Sony can make Spider-Man movies for Sony, but none of Sony’s Spider-Man films can have Spider-Man in them. Makes sense, right?
When it was first announced, it may have seemed like Sony had caught the raw end of the bargain. Constructing an entire cinematic universe around bit parts and cameos, while being contractually forbidden from using the gravitational force that helped keep them interesting, sounded like a fool’s errand. Watching something like Venom (in which a key Spider-Man villain just sort of wandered around wondering what to do without Spider-Man) felt like the logical end point of capitalism. Watching Morbius (in which a Spider-Man villain that nobody had heard of tried to justify his own existence for an hour and a half), meanwhile, felt like watching capitalism drive itself off a cliff in a burning truck. No good could ever come of the whole sorry project.
