All Spider-Man Movies Could Be Part Of The MCU
By George Robbins
According to ‘Doctor Strange‘ director Scott Derrickson, all of the movies featuring Spider-Man which have been made over the years could be part of the MCU in some capacity. It is no surprise that this kind of statement would be made considering the vast openness of the MCU as a whole as well as the fact that Marvel films have been releasing before the MCU. Without any other context, movies outside the MCU were movies whose IP’s have been picked up by various studios over the years who only wanted to focus on the individual characters. This is how we ended up with the original Sam Raimi ‘Spider-Man‘ and Fox’s ‘X-Men‘ movies which have held their own fanbases over the years because of the characters. However, their portrayals were eventually considered too far outside of what the characters would be like and they didn’t adapt everything that well.
Many of the movies outside of the MCU have had countless issues over the years because they have been considered to be non-faithful to the original comics. Not only were they outside of normal character personality, but the plots of each film were just considered not good in the end. This eventually led to Sony making a deal with Marvel Studios and Disney so that they could use Spider-Man in the MCU. Eventually Disney would also acquire a sizable portion of Fox and with it, the X-Men intellectual property which may still be a ways off from being shown in the MCU, but the possibility is now there for all to see. When Spider-Man was introduced to the MCU, everything we knew about the character we had seen in previous films had changed and we got a new Spider-Man.
‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘ was the first major film for the character’s own devoted storyline in the MCU and it blew people away, especially for those hoping for a good Spider-Man story. Sony still retained the rights to the character though and they were never going too let that go, so they continued working on spin-offs. Sony being the hopeful company that it is has been trying to make spin-offs which could eventually tie into the MCU Spider-Man’s story at some point. Of course, people have been wondering for years at this point how that could even become a possibility. It turns out that this may not be as far-fetched as we originally believed it to be because there are more and more rumors swirling around as of late about the multi-verse in the MCU.
For those unaware of what this means, it means that there are multiple universes in the Marvel universe other than just the one we have been seeing in the MCU films. We saw a taste of that in ‘Endgame‘ when they traveled through time and therefore created alternate universes due to what they had done in those timelines. Sony touched upon the concept of a wider multi-verse in their own animated ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse‘ which saw multiple Spider-People being brought to one universe. This has also been mentioned to some capacity in the more recent ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home‘ and although it was a red herring, the possibility still existed somewhere out there. It is pretty much apparent at this point that the Multi-Verse in the MCU does exist though because of the title of the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel, ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.’
As people have learned by now, Doctor Strange is easily one of the most interesting characters to exist in the MCU because he possesses the capability to manipulate reality to some capacity. This makes him all the more capable of being able to move between various dimensions in the MCU and this is made all the more apparent by comments from Scott Derrickson who directed the original movie. Recently, ‘Moon‘ director Duncan Jones made a tweet that asked people to describe themselves with one gif from the MCU while using one from the ‘Into the Spider-Verse’ movie. People on twitter were quick to point out that this animated feature was not a part of the MCU to which Jones asked Derrickson for a ruling on whether this was accurate. Derrickson then responded the Jones is in the right and that, “All Spider-man iterations are defacto MCU.”
Of course this now has fans speculating as to whether this statement will actually hold over with the rest of the Studio’s films because it has been revealed earlier this year that Derrickson would not be directing the next film. He will instead be staying on as executive producer for the film while director Sam Raimi will be taking over as the director of the upcoming Doctor Strange film. Even if it just ends up being a throwaway in the upcoming movie, it wouldn’t be surprising if Raimi did something to confirm this in some way especially since he was the first person to make a live-action Spider-Man. While the movie certainly had its differences from the original comics, the first two films he did brought large crowds of people in and popularized the character. Hopefully he will be able to do right by the characters this time around as well and at least nod towards the possibility that all of those previous films are a part of the MCU in some way.