The Web-Head is out of the Marvel Universe

Ah, Spiderman. He first became a hit in the public eye in the 2002 movie Spider-Man, starring Toby Maguire, and the movie was so popular it got two sequels, in 2004 and 2007 respectively.

Last month, Sony Pictures, the studio that has the film rights to the Spider-Man movie franchise, declared that they were no longer allowing Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since 2016, Sony had let the Tom Holland Spider-Man appear in five movies of the MCU, appearing alongside other characters owned by Disney, such as Iron Man and Captain America. But now that he’s gone, how will the MCU go on without him, and what does Sony plan to do with the Tom Holland character?

In my opinion, this is a good time for this to happen, if there ever is a good time for a beloved character to leave a film franchise. Sony Pictures has proved themselves more than capable of creating a wonderful Spider-Man movie, with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse being the perfect example.

One of the problems that people often bring up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that the focus of a broader world makes the audience more interested in how the story will play out in the long run rather than how good the film actually was. For an example of this, Black Panther, another MCU film, had almost no other characters from the MCU except in the end credits scene. Black Panther was an insanely popular movie, making $1.3 Billion dollars and currently has a 92% liked it score on Metacritic.