Surprise! Superhero Films Have To Be Good Or No One Will Care
This weekend, Sony’s latest film starring a Spider-Man villain, Kraven The Hunter, tanked. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film made just $11 million domestically (and $26 million worldwide). That may sound pretty good for those of us who work for a living. But the film cost $110 million to make, and with terrible reviews, it isn’t likely to improve its performance in the coming weeks.
There’s conflicting information about the future of Sony’s Spider-films (not including the animated Into The Spider-Verse films) but Forbes published a story saying “Sony Reportedly Cancels Spider-Man Spinoff Films After Multiple Flops.”
Kraven is one of Spider-Man’s enemies in the comic books, but the film didn’t feature Spider-Man; this was also the case for box office bombs Morbius (2022) and Madame Web (2024). To be fair, it was also the case for the Venom trilogy of films, all of which were financially successful. But it’s also important to note that Venom is one of the most popular supervillains, whereas Kraven, Madame Web, and Morbius are not nearly as well-known. In a report about the film’s failure, Variety quoted “one knowledgeable insider at Sony” attributing their recent Spider-flops to “an industry-wide ‘irrational exuberance about superheroes.'”
As a huge fan of comic books and of most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’d agree with this “knowledgeable insider.” If you just look at the genre as a goldmine, and you look at the fans as idiots who will cough up money anytime a superhero or villain is featured, well, you’re going to lose. As Screencrush‘s Ryan Arey noted in his video essay, “Kraven The Hunter Is So Bad It Feels Like a Prank,” the film wasn’t just bad, it was offensively bad. “I felt bullied by people who don’t care about superheroes or comic books,” he said. “The people who made this movie – sorry, the executives who made this movie — fundamentally do not care about us.” He added that the film has a solid cast, naming Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Russell Crowe (and he opined that someone on Ariana DeBose’s team should get fired for allowing her to be in the movie).
The aforementioned Variety article quotes another “veteran producer,” who says of Sony’s films, “You can feel the cynicism a mile away. They’re grinding out product and it feels like it. There’s no quality control.” And that’s the problem. The best superhero films always feel like they have been made with love, from Roger Corman’s 1978 Superman to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman to Patty Jenkins’ 2017 Wonder Woman to Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther to anything that the Russo Brothers have directed for Marvel.
Part of the problem with Sony’s films, of course, were that they were Spider-Man movies that didn’t feature Spider-Man. That conceit of a movie about a villain without the hero has occasionally worked: the 2019 Joker movie lacked Batman but was a critical and commercial success (although the sequel was a big disappointment). That’s also true of the recent Max series The Penguin. But it’s difficult to do.
While there’s a belief that Sony wasn’t allowed to use Spider-Man because they “lent” him to Disney, that apparently is not the case. Per Variety, the deal with Disney never precluded Sony from using Spider-Man in its movies that didn’t bear his name. However, there was a feeling within the studio that audiences would not accept Tom Holland’s Spidey suddenly popping up in a live-action film that wasn’t a part of the MCU. First of all, that probably isn’t true. Second of all, it shows a lack of creativity and faith in the audience. They could have used, say, Andrew Garfield to play that universe’s Spider-Man, or gone with another actor to play different version of Spidey. DC is doing that: Robert Pattinson’s Batman exists in his own universe, which will be known as “Elseworlds.” And that Batman doesn’t exist in the same universe as the Joker films. A new actor will be cast to play Batman in the DC Universe that will launch with the new Superman film this summer.
It’s possible, but not easy, to do a successful big-budget superhero film with a character (or characters) who are not well known: we saw that with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. Of course, Gunn wrote and directed those films with love, which came off in every scene, every casting choice, and every song selection. While Gunn has a sharp sense of humor, there isn’t cynicism or jadedness to his films (and this bodes well for the future of DC, as I've mentioned before).
It would seem obvious that you need someone who knows about superheroes and the culture of comic book fans running franchises that cater to that fanbase. Not that they need to be beholden to them; obviously big budget movies have to appeal to a wider audience. But if the core fans are going to hate the films, it’s unlikely that anyone else will like them. That’s something that DC has figured out; it’s too bad that Sony has not.
