In reply to Chuck.

Oh yeah, I agree I absolutely don’t trust Spider-man with Sony alone. I’m in almost the same place that they wasted Raimi’s talents by forcing him to add Venom to Spider-man 3 (and he did the best he could but you could tell top to bottom Venom was not one of his villains). I think it is a shame they wasted Raimi’s two movies of build up of The Lizard who seemed clearly set up for a trilogy build. It would have had much more impact in Spider-Man 3 than the way Amazing Spider-man 1 used that storyline for scraps without the build up of multiple years of Dr. Conners as a trusted advisor to Maquire’s Spider-man. Between watching Tick, Tick Boom and Far From Home in the same week I almost wanted to cry how much Garfield’s talent was wasted on two not very good scripts and I was so glad he got some great moments in Far From Home for some bit of closure/relevance. Relatedly, you likely couldn’t pay me to care, much less watch, anything about Hardy’s Venom movies. (But I don’t like Venom as a character and don’t like Hardy as an actor.)

My optimism comes from the evidence that Spider-man is remaining in the MCU and that Sony seems to have made a closed door deal to make their Spider-man adjacent properties more MCU with rumors that Venom and Morbius (and even Across the Spider-verse, though those rumors right now are extremely wild and poorly sourced) may finally cross over into the MCU rather than Sony keeping them unattached to avoid Marvel Studios/Kevin Feige oversight. I would be very worried if the reboot was just turning all the toys back over to Sony, but the message right now is “Spider-man Will Return to the MCU” and that’s the biggest source of optimism for me that this reboot isn’t Sony being stupid with the character but Feige et al maybe doing something weird/crazy/wild and are planning to have fun with it. Though we don’t know the details yet.

The message from Sony of attaching an entire Doctor Strange trailer as the end credits after-roll seemed pretty clear “Spider-man Will Return to the MCU” and that they’ve made enough money in the Marvel Studios game that they are happy enough with the partnership that they are rolling with it beyond the initial contract requirements (which presumably expired with Far From Home). Because cash was involved (Sony has the box office receipts), I feel like it is an easy optimism because it can come from such a cynical place.