Spider-Man: The One Blockbuster Franchise Nobody’s Messed Up

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, in recent years, has been rather messy — to say the least.

DC movies, for whatever reason, have always been hit or miss.

Star Wars is lost in space.

The Fast and Furious veered off the road with its last two efforts.

Then there’s Spider-Man…

When was the last time you saw a bad Spider-Man movie?

Ever since we first met Tom Holland‘s Peter Parker, getting a surprise visit from Tony Stark in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, the character has lit up the screen.

Holland’s jittery, earnest, winsome take on the iconic 64-year-old comic iconic was instantly likable, radiating teen-geek charisma.

Each of Holland’s first three solo Spider-Man films has performed better than the last. In 2017, Homecoming grossed $880 million globally. Then 2019’s Far From Home racked up $1.1 billion. Then No Way Home made an incredible $1.9 billion. All scored above 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Some critics say Brand New Day, which opens this week, is the best in the franchise. It’s poised to explode at the box office, tracking to open at $465 million globally. The anticipation for the film is remarkable considering how little Brand New Day relies on the usual superhero franchise pump-up mechanics. There’s no cliffhanger storyline leading into this film, no splashy new villain in the trailers, no end-of-the-world stakes, or parade of returning legacy stars. Brand New Day is simply: Hey, Spider-Man is back. As analyst Jeff Bock put it on X: “Superhero fatigue is real, but Spider-Man fatigue is not.”

The success is all the more remarkable considering Spider-Man’s wonky joint custody corporate stewardship. Peter Parker is like a kid with divorced parents who’s been forced to split his time between mom and dad. The solo films are Columbia Pictures releases financed by Sony, with Marvel Studios acting as a creative manager, and handling MCU integration in the crossover films. Plus there’s former Sony boss Amy Pascal, who helped engineer the Marvel deal in 2015, and has continued producing the solo movies through her Pascal Pictures banner and acting as a bridge between Sony and Marvel.

It’s seemingly a “too many cooks” recipe for disaster, but it’s somehow worked. One wonders, if Disney had managed to seize full control of the character, if the franchise would enjoyed the same stellar track record (one can only imagine the mandatory Disney+ spin-off series).

All of Spider-Man’s responsible parties would presumably love to exclusively claim credit for the franchise’s success. But Marvel has had its stumbles of late, and Sony’s Spider-Man-adjacent villain movies (like Madame Web, Morbius and Kraven the Hunter) have largely flopped, so neither is otherwise flawless at franchise management. Few ever talk about the writers on superhero movies, for some reason, but clearly Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (who co-wrote Homecoming and are the sole credited writing team for the three other Holland films) deserve plenty of credit (while Holland’s appearances in Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame were scripted by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely).

But also: One suspects the way Holland has played Parker has helped inform how the character has been written and directed. A script informs an actor how to play a role. But particularly in a franchise, the actor’s delivery can teach its creative shepherds how best to use him moving forward. One can argue over which actor has been the best Spider-Man, but there’s no argument over which actor has been the most successful Spider-Man.

Notably, the two animated Spider-Verse movies were also box office and critical hits. So was nearly every Spider-Man movie since Sam Raimi launched the franchise’s modern era back in 2002. There is only one outright creative dud in the mix — 2007’s Spider-Man 3. Many likewise bash 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, though, in my book, Marc Webb’s film is very underrated. Still, even if you count Amazing Spider-Man 2 as a disappointment, that’s still a success rate of nine films out of 11 (assuming Brand New Day is a hit, which is basically a given).

So there’s perhaps another reason for the franchise’s continued success: This is a character that’s so beloved and straightforward, he’s actually tough to mess up. On the DC side, the equivalent is probably Batman. You can make a lousy Spider-Man or Batman movie … it’s just tougher to do so.

It helps that Spider-Man’s name is inaccurate. The character — in the films, if not always in the comics and multiverse guest visits — is never really a man, exactly, with all the assorted baggage a fully grown male character carries. Parker is perpetually just on the verge of manhood — youthful, optimistic, with a somewhat innocent boyish sense of romance. It’s an inherently lovable combination — not cloyingly childish, but not spoiled by the heaviness of adulthood. The films are set in modern times, but the character is stealthily nostalgic. Peter Parker is what we remember about ourselves.