Not a few months ago, I spoke my thoughts on the highly entertaining MCU addition: Spiderman Far From Home. A charming standalone movie involving our favorite webster tackling both internal life issues, an aggressive SHIELD agency, and a rather well-done villain with technical advantages over Spiderman's Spidey-Sense, Mysterio. Yet now, here I am several weeks later, typing about a far more somber subject than Thanos's Snap.
If you're not aware, the corporate entities of Marvel and Sony have split over the topic of Spiderman and his future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Due to Marvel desiring a further financial gain from the movies and seeking to alter their deal of cooperation set by Sony years ago when they first began producing the Spider-movies and using the official Spiderman character, the two companies couldn't decide on a proper, unified course of action, and thus went public with the news Spiderman has distanced from the Universe which has made him a household name for a new generation of superhero-film goers. Many are siding with Marvel or Sony in the ensuing battle of blame over who screwed over the deal, while third-party individuals have grown to dislike both of them because of this, and an even smaller minority hold out an ember of hope that Marvel and Sony can re-enter negotiations and produce a more beneficial deal.
Me? I'm just... genuinely saddened. Listen, I'm no financial analyst or stockbroker, my math skills are rather subpar so me even attempting to gauge the logistics behind the money-brokering here, would probably flop. I'm just upset at being reminded how much Corporate America controls over our entertainment. Disney alone is probably the richest commercial entertainment company in the world at the moment, and are buying out studios left and right. Every 'creative process' going on within the major domain of entertainment goes through Disney and the vassal properties they own.
My problem here, to articulate, is that based on the whims of financial forecasts, corporations can end entire franchises and continuities, and that terrifies me. Not in the genuinely scared way, but scared for how Marvel will continue, how DC's already shaky movie foundation will continue, how it will all play out. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the only major, notable example of this so far, it's the first franchise to push the boundaries of film-making and establish a unified storyline existing across dozens of movies and TV shows, and to think all that hardwork, all that production value, hours, and money spent on accruing the proper actors and creating the setpieces and writing the scripts to honor these characters, can simply not exist in the purported universe it takes place in is soul-crushing. I suppose it's the realistic truth of capitalism, that even what seems like the property of the public's nostalgia and love for a piece of media is still an IP controlled by a Board of Directors, but it is truly disheartening to see the negative aspects of corporate continue egging through to this day.
With videogames continuing down a path of microtransactions and monetizations, and movies now becoming more and more interconnected through universes, the risk for corporate consequences only skyrockets. I can only hope Sony and Marvel DO make a deal, and set a trend for co-operation for other corporate entities controlling entertainment media, instead of a greedy, negative trend. Though, if the split is officialized, hopefully Sony's Spiderverse shall make up for it.