So Marvel and Sony have reached an agreement: Spider-Man is back in the MCU. The details of the agreement are as of yet unknown, and will probably never be revealed if we're all being honest with ourselves. Regardless I do have some thoughts so I thought I'd do a followup on my previous editorial on the subject.
People are of course celebrating Spider-Man's return to the MCU. I'm a little fed up with Marvel movies (still might see James Gunn and Taika Waititi movies though) so I really don't care. However, I get the feeling many fans will feel a sense of accomplishment that they managed to demonstrate enough interest that Marvel and Sony were willing to reopen discussions. These hypothetical fans would be deluding themselves. Marvel and Sony were well aware of exactly how this would all go down. Both companies, but I'm sure especially Marvel, wanted to use the backlash of this decision to do something many professional industry commentators refer to as "negotiating in the press". Basically both companies weren't just negotiating in board rooms around tables but also negotiating with fan tweets and opinion pieces. It worked wonderfully (after all even I joined in being fully aware that this was what was happening) as the ensuing press discussion provided statistically significant ammo for both sides of the negotiation (though I think Disney probably came out the better).
the rapidity of the resolution also struck me as significant. I don't think Sony or Disney had any intention of keeping Spider-Man out of the MCU. From the start this was a matter of who got a few million extra dollars. I'd say we were all played for saps, but not really, we were just involved as bargaining chips, walking wallets to be exploited. Despite what the hired creatives might say in the coming weeks, neither Sony nor Disney actually give a shit about the characters or the universe they've constructed from them. Such is the system we operate under. Everyone from the boots on the ground workers to the consumers to even abstract ideas are all reduced to chips and resources in a game we're not even playing with rules rigged in favor of just a few players.
Edit: https://www.instagram.com/p/B264Zf5FoR6/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet Funny how Tom Holland chose a character who unashamedly exploits others for personal financial gain to equate himself to in this instagram post. I don't think he thought this deep into it but in this scene Jordan Belfort is also making a self-destructive decision to stay with the company that he started that he had been exploiting for illegal profits. Either this was just a poorly thought through meme or a bit of social commentary that will go over most people's heads.
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