When Sony Pictures announced back in August its own Spider-Man-themed cinematic universe, internally referred to as Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters, fans of the Marvel heroes and villains the studio owns the cinematic rights to were understandably skeptical. Part of that skepticism likely came from the slate of films the studio announced around the same time, which promised to follow the exploits of Spider-Man villains like Morbius the Living Vampire, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, Silver Sable and Black Cat, among others. Complicating all of this was one, singular, grim assurance: Spider-Man likely would not make an appearance in any of these films.

The reason for the Web-Slinger's absence is simple, really. While Sony has the big screen rights to the character, the studio opted to lease those rights out to Marvel Studios, allowing Tom Holland's incarnation of the character to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That agreement seemingly only flows one way, though. For while Spider-Man has appeared in three MCU films so far (there's also a fourth Spidey solo movie in the works and he's almost guaranteed to appear in Avengers 4), we've seen neither hide nor hair of him in a SUMC movie. Granted, the only Sony Marvel movie that has been released thus far is Venom, but if the studio isn't going to put Peter Parker in a Venom movie then he's surely not going to pop up for a cameo in Morbius.

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That hasn't kept fans from decrying the situation, though. After all, every character on Sony's slate is irrefutably a Spider-Man villain. While the characters might have tangled with other heroes throughout the years, there's no denying that their most pivotal arcs come back to Peter Parker. On paper, it sounds like madness to claim that any of these villains could hold down their own solo movie. Who is Kraven the Hunter or Mysterio without Spider-Man, after all? They're charismatic villains, sure, but can they carry a whole movie alone? Surely not, most fans assumed. Spider-Man must appear in at least some of these movies, right?

Let's all collectively hope that's not the case.

Admittedly, it's a comforting lie to think that the addition of Spider-Man would make any of these films instantly better, but that's denying the giant, gaping reality at the core of this conundrum, which is that the modern big screen incarnation of Spider-Man is the product of laborious marketing and a deft, long-term branding strategy. Spider-Man is a brand, after all -- a Marvel Cinematic Universe brand. And, of course, people love it.

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Now, the natural inclination in 2018 when someone mentions "marketing" or "brands" is to recoil so hard your entire body flips inside-out and only your skeleton is left to look revolted, which it does quite well naturally. But that minimizes that amount of work that Marvel Studios has put in to salvage the image of Spider-Man, which Sony spent a good long time grinding into dust. Basically, Marvel spent a considerable amount of time thinking about exactly how to introduce MCU fans to a brand-new Spider-Man. Even his introduction was meticulously designed to appeal to both long-time comic book fans and people who had only ever experienced Marvel heroes through the lens of the MCU.

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In Captain America: Civil War, audiences got to know Peter Parker on an intimate level, despite the character's intro effectively being a big, giant tease for his solo film, Spider-Man: Homecoming. He was injected into the fight between the Avengers, heroically snapping up Captain America's shield and quipping along the way has he tangled with the Winter Soldier and Falcon. But we also got to see a domestic Peter Parker, who was worried about school, his science career and just getting a few good grades.

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All of this was happening against the backdrop of one of the most radical stories the MCU had told up to that point, and Spider-Man only appeared in the brightest and lightest parts of that story, terms that could also be used to describe Spider-Man: Homecoming. All of this culminated in the character's demise in Avengers: Infinity War, which might have been the most heartbreaking death of the whole film. Not because Tom Holland delivered his lines so well (though he did), but because, over the course of two other films, audiences had grown to love and respect Holland's Peter, a performance that had to impress within the bubble of the already impressive MCU and overcome years of big screen baggage.

All those tears you won't admit you shed when Spider-Man got dusted, that's all the grim machinations of board room meetings and long, impassioned discussions about character arcs and how best to define the new Spider-Man brand. Someone in that meeting was also probably talking about a toy line, too. Which is fine, because that's how movies get made. It's how they always have. Marvel Studios is just very, very good at it.

So, the Spider-Man we love right now is a product of MCU branding, tucked inside an ongoing MCU story and with an actor who was hired and groomed by Disney. The idea that he can be plopped wholesale into another franchise entirely and perform just as well, hitting all the same notes and eliciting the same audience reactions, is farcical at best, like if you were to perform open heart surgery but all you had was a liver -- the pieces just wouldn't fit. That's a position that's further validated by Venom.

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Whether you think Venom is a bad movie or not is a separate discussion, but what's undeniable is that the film is not going for an MCU vibe. If anything, Venom hearkens back to the superhero era before the MCU, when the biggest Marvel movies on the block were Sam Raimi's Spider-Man franchise. Now, there are plenty of iconic moments in Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 (and one unfortunately iconic moment from the experience that was Spider-Man 3), but they're not a good marker for what kind of Spider-Man Sony is capable of putting on the screen in this day and age. That responsibility falls to their most recent effort, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, a film so forgettable it has basically been scrubbed from the minds of all but the most ardent apologists.

But, really, think about it for a minute. Do you really want Tom Holland's Spider-Man in a film with a three-way make-out sesh involving some living black goo, or Woody Harrelson in a Carrot Top wig? Maybe Spider-Man could zip in and punch Eddie a couple of times or something, but that's a profoundly lackluster use of a character that has been endeared to the hearts of millions at this point. Additionally, while Sony has proven with Venom that they can make a lot of money with a superhero movie, they've yet to prove they can make a truly great one. And that's what Spider-Man deserves. We shouldn't be rallying to pair Spider-Man up with his nemeses for the sake of it. We should be rallying to put the character in quality films where it feels right, and Sony as a long way to go before it can prove it's up to the task.