The Glorious Trainwreck: How Sony Made a Spider-Man Universe Without Spider-Man And Why It Crashed !!

A Universe Built on Questionable Decisions

Picture this: You're Sony Pictures, sitting on the movie rights to one of the most beloved superheroes of all time, Spider-Man. You've seen Marvel Studios turn their comic book properties into a money-printing machine called the MCU. You've got dollar signs in your eyes. So naturally, you think, "Let's make a cinematic universe based on Spider-Man characters... but without Spider-Man!"

Yes, you read that right. Sony's brilliant plan was to create the Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU), a franchise that carries Spider-Man's name but features exactly zero appearances by the actual web-slinger. It's like opening a restaurant called "Best Pizza in Town" that exclusively serves salads. And somehow, they were shocked when people didn't show up.

From 2018 to 2024, Sony blessed (or cursed?) us with six films in this universe: the Venom trilogy, Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter. With the exception of the Venom movies, which somehow stumbled their way to financial success despite being critically mauled, the rest of the SSU became a masterclass in how NOT to build a cinematic universe.

So buckle up, because we're about to dive into the beautiful disaster that was Sony's Spider-Man Universe, a franchise so spectacularly misguided that it makes you wonder if anyone at Sony actually read a Spider-Man comic before greenlighting these films.

The Beginning: Venom's Accidental Success

Let's start with the only respectable member of this dysfunctional family: 2018's Venom. Starring Tom Hardy as both investigative journalist Eddie Brock and the voice of the alien symbiote Venom, this movie somehow grossed $856 million worldwide. That's not a typo. Eight. Hundred. Fifty. Six. Million. Dollars.

But here's the thing, Venom isn't actually a good movie. The writing is genuinely terrible, with Eddie having zero character arc and becoming a passive passenger in his own story once Venom shows up. The plot relies on weak exposition dumps instead of, you know, actually showing us things. And don't even get me started on the generic villain.

So why did it succeed? Two words: Tom Hardy. The man carried this entire film on his twitchy, skittish shoulders with a performance that can only be described as "unhinged in the best way possible." The dynamic between Eddie and Venom was goofy, weird, and oddly charming, like watching an old married couple bicker, except one of them is a 7-foot alien with a taste for human heads. The supporting cast, including Anne (Michelle Williams) and Dan (Reid Scott), were refreshingly not clichéd, which in superhero movies counts as revolutionary.

Sony looked at this success and thought, "Great! People want more movies about Spider-Man villains without Spider-Man!" but they did not.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage - When Stupid Works

In 2021, Sony released the sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed by Andy Serkis. And you know what? This movie is dumb as rocks, but at least it knows it's dumb. The film cranks the Eddie-Venom buddy comedy to 11, with them now acting like a dysfunctional couple on the verge of divorce. There's a scene where Venom goes to a rave. Yes, really.

The action is solid, the humor works more often than it doesn't, and Tom Hardy continues to act like he's in a completely different (and better) movie than everyone else. But oh boy, the plot conveniences. Symbiotes can now hack computers because... reasons. They have photographic memories now, apparently. And the villains, Carnage (Woody Harrelson) and Shriek (Naomie Harris), inexplicably break up right before the final battle because the script said so.

Despite being objectively stupid, Let There Be Carnage is kind of fun in a turn-your-brain-off way. It grossed $506 million, which sounds impressive until you realize that's a $350 million drop from the first film. The cracks were starting to show, but Sony was too busy counting money to notice.

Morbius: The Birth of a Meme (And a Disaster)

Oh, Morbius. Sweet, beautiful, terrible Morbius. Released in 2022 and starring Jared Leto as the living vampire Dr. Michael Morbius, this movie became internet-famous for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't just bad, it was lazy, uninspired, and insulting to anyone with functioning brain cells.

Let's talk about the writing, or lack thereof. The film is allergic to showing instead of telling. Michael Morbius is supposed to be a genius? They just say he's a genius without showing any actual genius moments. He saves a kid's life? Cool, but we never see the setup or stakes. The villain's motivation is that he was bullied as a kid. That's it. That's the entire backstory for Matt Smith's Milo character.

The movie became a meme sensation, with people joking about it being the "first movie to sell a morbillion tickets." The mockery was so intense that Sony, in what might be the most bone-headed decision in modern cinema, actually re-released the movie in theaters, thinking the memes meant people liked it.

Spoiler alert: They did not. It bombed. Twice.

Part of the mockery can also be attributed to general dislike for Jared Leto, but even if you cast someone else, this script would still be a dumpster fire. Morbius made only $167 million worldwide on a $75 million budget, losing money and becoming a cautionary tale about what happens when you greenlight a movie based on a character nobody asked for.

Madame Web: So Bad It's Hilarious

If you thought Morbius was the bottom of the barrel, 2024's Madame Web said "hold my Spider-Sense." This movie is genuinely hilarious, not because it's intentionally funny, but because it's so incompetently made that you can't help but laugh.

Dakota Johnson stars as Cassandra Webb, a paramedic who gains clairvoyant powers and must protect three young women from a villain named Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim). Johnson's performance makes Cassie seem like the most miserable, unlikable person on Earth, and based on her later interviews, that might have been intentional. She clearly knew this movie was doomed.

The dialogue thinks you're an idiot. Cassie repeatedly has to ask "Did I just see the future?" because apparently, the writers thought audiences couldn't figure out that the psychic character was having psychic visions. It's like if someone wrote a Batman movie where Bruce Wayne keeps asking "Am I Batman?" every five minutes.

The villain's motivation is paper-thin, and his plan to find and kill three specific girls involves... walking onto a public train. That's his master plan. Meanwhile, Cassie makes baffling choices like flying to Peru for answers while leaving the girls completely unprotected. The writers (the same duo who wrote Morbius, by the way) clearly had contempt for their audience.

Johnson later confirmed that the movie "started out as something and turned into something else," with creative decisions being made by "people who don't have a creative bone in their body." Shots fired! And honestly? She's right.

Madame Web grossed only $100 million worldwide on an almost equal budget, making it a massive financial disaster. This movie was so bad that it likely convinced Sony to cancel other non-Spider-Man projects.

Venom: The Last Dance - A Soulless Sendoff

The Venom trilogy concluded in 2024 with Venom: The Last Dance, and it's easily the weakest of the three. This movie is the epitome of lazy filmmaking, soulless, uninspired, and going through the motions.

Eddie Brock has devolved into a degenerate with no direction, a hollow shell of the respected reporter we met in the first film. Anne, a character who had meaningful growth across the first two movies, is disappointingly absent. The movie starts with a video-game-looking villain who literally spells out his entire backstory in an exposition dump that would make George Lucas blush.

Every key plot point is told rather than shown, making the entire premise feel unimportant. There's no emotional weight, no stakes, nothing. It's just... there. The film feels like it was made by committee, checking boxes off a corporate spreadsheet rather than telling an actual story.

Sure, it made money (as Venom movies tend to do), but it was a disappointing end to the only successful franchise in the SSU.

Kraven the Hunter: The Forgettable Finale

And finally, we arrive at Kraven the Hunter, released in December 2024. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Sergei Kravinoff, this movie is the most forgettable of the bunch. It's not funny-bad like Madame Web or meme-worthy like Morbius, it's just boring.

The film had the most potential with its father-son dynamic between Kraven and his crime lord father Nikolai (Russell Crowe), but it made zero effort to do anything meaningful with it. The dialogue has no subtlety, characters just say exactly what they're thinking and feeling at all times like poorly programmed NPCs.

The plot doesn't even kick in until over halfway through the two-hour runtime, and the CGI for The Rhino looks pathetic for a movie with a $110-130 million budget. The film was also Sony's first R-rated SSU entry, which should have been exciting, but the execution was so bland that the rating felt wasted.

Kraven the Hunter grossed a disastrous $62 million worldwide, the lowest in the entire franchise. It couldn't even crack the $60 million threshold before ending its theatrical run. For context, even Madame Web managed $100 million. The film had a massive 72% drop in its second weekend, worse than both Morbius and Madame Web. It's now one of the lowest-grossing comic book movies of all time.

Director J.C. Chandor actually pleaded with fans to give the movie a chance, which is never a good sign. When a director has to beg people to watch their film, you know something went horribly wrong.

Why Did This Universe Fail So Spectacularly?

The answer is painfully obvious: You can't make a Spider-Man universe without Spider-Man. It's like making a Batman universe starring only the Riddler and Penguin, or a Superman universe with only Lex Luthor. These characters exist because of their relationship to the hero. Without that connection, they're just... people in costumes.

Sony tried to get around this in the most bizarre ways. There were rumors that Madame Web originally featured a young Peter Parker, but Spider-Man was removed in post-production. Concept art confirmed this. Every SSU film had some version of Spider-Man that got cut out, leaving awkward plot holes and motivation gaps.

The studio kept removing the one thing that could have saved these movies because they couldn't secure Tom Holland's Spider-Man (who belongs to the MCU deal with Marvel Studios). It's the cinematic equivalent of trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but refusing to use peanut butter or jelly.

Add to that the fact that most of these films had terrible scripts, lazy writing, committee-based creative decisions, and characters nobody was asking for, and you have the perfect recipe for failure.

Even Sony's own CEO Tony Vinciquerra blamed critics for the failures, saying audiences "loved" Kraven and that Madame Web did well on Netflix.

Sure, buddy. And I'm secretly Spider-Man.

The Final Ranking (From Least-Bad to Absolute Worst)

Based on rewatchability, entertainment value, and sheer audacity:

1. Venom (2018) - The only respectable one, carried entirely by Tom Hardy's chaotic energy

2. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) - Stupid but self-aware and fun

3. Kraven the Hunter (2024) - At least the action was decent, even if everything else was forgettable

4. Venom: The Last Dance (2024) - Soulless but inoffensive

5. Morbius (2022) - Lazy and meme-worthy for all the wrong reasons

6. Madame Web (2024) - The worst of the worst. Hilariously incompetent.

Conclusion: The End of an Error

In December 2024, reports confirmed that Kraven the Hunter would be the final film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe. The franchise is officially over, and honestly? Good riddance.

Sony is now pivoting to projects that actually feature Spider-Man, like Tom Holland's Spider-Man 4, the animated Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, and the Spider-Man Noir series with Nicolas Cage. You know, projects people actually want to see.

The SSU was a cautionary tale about corporate greed, creative bankruptcy, and the hubris of thinking you can build a universe without its cornerstone character. It gave us one decent film (Venom), two guilty pleasures (the Venom sequels), and three absolute disasters that will live on as internet memes forever.

So here's to you, Sony Spider-Man Universe. You tried to swing without a web, and you face-planted spectacularly. At least you were entertaining in your failure.

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