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Two things you should know about me: I love Spider-Man, and I love Adam Scott. No Way Home made me cry in public no fewer than three times. And my love for Adam Scott is the disgusting, “a collage of his face has been my phone wallpaper for a decade,” “I have merch based on his podcast” kind.
What I do not love, however, is that Sony is trying to force my hand by casting Scott in one of its upcoming Spider-Man movies. For reasons long, boring, and legal, Sony’s Spider-Man movies don’t really qualify as the type I fawn over these days—the true Spider-Man movies now live inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (That said, the studio’s animated Into the Spider-Verse is a perfect film.)
Instead, Sony is making Spidey movies primarily about Spider-Man’s villains, most of whom are unfamiliar to the general audience. Most of these movies are only good in an ironic way: Morbius became a meme-ius, and Venom was hilariously marketed as a romantic comedy in China. But there’s no reason to get excited about niche villains in a cinematic universe that can no longer actually show the hero who ostensibly inspired their villainy.