Now that Spider-Man: No Way Home has made a mind-blowing $594 million at the worldwide box office with a monstrous $260 million from the US!! (US numbers via Fandago’s Erik Davis) What makes these numbers so terrific is we’re still within a pandemic.
It’s clear with only 11 days to go in 2021 this film will be the first billion movie since Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker was released in December 2019. I won’t be surprised if it’s announced on Monday (20th December) or this week that Tom Holland has officially signed on for a three-film deal.
This will help continue the excitement and reach that billion-dollar total quicker, or Sony could wait until the New Year to announce something.
BEFORE I CONTINUE, THIS HAS HEAVY SPOILERS FOR SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, SO IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT, GO!! HERE ARE SOME GIFS TO REMEMBER WHERE YOU WERE.
ONE MORE GIF
Having been heavily critical of Peter Parker’s appearance in the past five films (two solo and three Avengers). No Way Home has set a path for Holland to create a sub-universe within the MCU now that everyone has forgotten the man behind New York’s friendly neighbourhood superhero.
My favourite section was everything post the big battle. While it was so awesome to see Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire appear, and in the case of Garfield, it felt that his Peter Parker had closure having saved MJ. While the film makes it a happy ending for him, I don’t see it being the end, more on that in a moment.
It was seeing Holland’s Parker living life post High School and entering the real world with the need of him paying rent. We can watch him and Zendaya’s Michelle Jones-Watson have a do-over of building a relationship. I hope we see Marvel Studios go into the rom-com genre for one of the films in the College Years trilogy.
We also got to see the new non-Stark tech suit and it could be my favourite suit we’ve seen ahead of the white logo PS4 game suit and the first Amazing Spider-Man suit.
For some fun, let’s look into the future and speculate what could happen and I’ve attached some names to characters that could show up.
Venom
As you’d seen in the post-credits, Tom Hardy appears getting drunk in a bar somewhere in South America and as he returns to his universe, a drop of the Venom symbiote is left behind and is alive.
I don’t expect anything to happen with this until the final film of the new trilogy, and it’d be the right move to play the long game.
Peter Gets A Job
I know it’s not the most exciting thing, but I look forward to seeing Parker having to get a job to pay monthly rent whilst balancing studying and web-slinging.
One of those will be a freelance photographer selling pictures of Spider-Man to The Daily Bugle. Meanwhile, his daytime job could be as a researcher or intern for the Baxter Building.
This would be a massive reveal as the Baxter Building is the headquarters for the Fantastic Four, which is entering the MCU and will be directed by Jon Watts (who has directed all of Spidey’s MCU solo adventures). It’s also likely it’ll be filmed and released before the next solo Spider-Man movie, which means a post-credit scene could be Parker having a job interview.
The College Years & New Characters
With MJ and Jacob Batalon going to MIT and not knowing who Parker is, it’s the perfect time to introduce new friends to Peter’s life.
He could attend a community college under the name Empire State University, where he’d meet and become friends with Gwen Stacy (Thomasin McKenzie), Brian Braddock (Ben Hardy), Hector Ayala (Diego Tinoco) and Candace Nelson (Yara Shahidi).
I’m sure people will ask about Harry Osborn (Chance Perdomo), but I don’t know if you can introduce characters connected to the multiverse characters in No Way Home.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love and want to see it, but Holland’s Peter would untrust anyone with the name Osborn, Connors and Octavius. One way they can get around it is, for example, with Doc Ock is looking at Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse having Olivia Octavius (having a similar reveal with the character only known as Liv for the majority of the film).
However, if they were to introduce Harry, I’d make him MJ’s friend from MIT before he and Peter become friends working together in the Baxter building.
Another new character whose role could grow as the trilogy progress is New York detective Yuriko Watanabe (Constance Wu/Sonoya Mizuno). She works with Spider-Man to solve crimes could be very similar to a Batman/Jim Gordon partnership.
Additionally, if we see Peter becoming a freelance photographer for the Bugle, we’ll probably see brief scenes with the paper’s editor-in-chief Robbie Robinson (Marlon Wayans/Tyler Perry).
Villains
As mentioned above, Venom will be the long game and impact the third film. I’d like to see Harry Osborn be the host and be known as the black suit Spider-Man.
It wouldn’t be an overreaction if Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin would become the “Thanos” of these subsequent three films. I would love it if they looked at the game and had Fisk as the Kingpin of New York that if he’s gone, New York will fall apart.
If Kingpin is the “Thanos” of this next trilogy, then we’d need other villains to take centre stage.
One that would be great is Mister Negative. As someone who didn’t know of this character until the PS4 game, I found the character of Martin Li (Steven Yeun) fascinating. This time around, instead of the founder of FEAST, make him Mayor who does great things for the city whilst running the criminal organisation, Inner Demons.
When that is exposed and he has to leave office with the ability to harness negative energy, he becomes the villain to terrorise the city he helped raise.
One character that I would be interested in bringing in is Felicia Hardy aka Black Cat (Eiza Gonzalez/Lily James).
Because it’d be a down-to-earth antihero/villain in a world and city that’s had many alien invasions, it would be interesting to see how a cat burglar survive in that sort of world.
Then you have the flirtations of the character as she’s the only character to leave Spider-Man speechless, and now that Peter is of college-age, it wouldn’t feel too weird for a slightly older woman to tease an 18-year-old.
Meanwhile, it would be nice to finally have a payoff of Michael Mando playing Scorpion having appeared in the post-credits scene of Homecoming.
If you wanted another antagonist to team up with Scorpion and focus on film on lower level villains, Rhino (Stefan Kapicic) would be a decent addition.
Even though The Rhino was portrayed by the wonderful Paul Giamatti in Amazing Spider-Man 2 as the Russian gangster Aleksei Sytsevich and be the greatest physical battle Holland’s Spidey has ever taken on.
Finally, in more of a bodyguard role for Kingpin, yes I did rewatch Into The Spider-Verse, would be Tombstone (Common).
If Kevin Feige and the folks at Sony wanted to play the really long game with the symbiote, then the final movie of the College years could be Spider-Man vs The Sinister Six.
The Amazing Spider-Man 3
It was truly wonderful to see Andrew Garfield back in the suit and with it being unlikely Holland being the Spider-Man for the Sonyverse. Why not bring back Garfield for one more film to complete his trilogy because so far, he’s the Timothy Dalton of the Spider-Men.
His tone would fit perfectly with Hardy’s Venom, and ultimately this could be a way of introducing a live-action Mile Morales (Caleb McLaughlin) and be great to see how Shailene Woodley would play MJ.
Even more so now, Garfield has found closure with Gwen Stacy’s death.
Garfield would also have Morbius played by Jared Leto and Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven to take on.
Directors
Besides possibly Batman and Superman, no bigger character would have a long queue of filmmakers wanting to bring their flavour to a Spider-Man movie.
With Watts stepping aside to focus on Fantastic Four for Marvel Studios, here are some names that I’d have on a shortlist.
Those that would fit the pop colour and humour would be Jon M. Chu (In The Heights/Crazy Rich Asians), Chris McKay (The LEGO Batman/ The Tomorrow War), Edgar Wright (Last Night In Soho/Baby Driver/ The Cornetto Trilogy), Olivia Wilde (Booksmart), Karen Maine (Yes, God, Yes).
These would be people on the top of the shortlist. They’d be so many more directors from the world of Indies the studio could find to mould in their shape.
So those are my thoughts on what the future could be like for Spider-Man post No Way Home. I’m glad to be in the place again, and I ultimately can’t wait for what the college years have for us.
The Bear Cave 