As Kraven the Hunter sneaks into movie theaters and indirectly puts an end to the saga of Sony’s attempted Spider-Man Without Spider-Man Universe, it’s a fine time to reflect on just how few successful superhero and superhero-adjacent movies Sony has managed to put out without direct appearances from Spider-Man. With Spidey, Sony can lay claim to multiple worthwhile trilogies: the original Sam Raimi version, the MCU version about to be extended into a fourth installment, and the Spider-Verse cartoons whose third part is currently in production. (Yes, there were two bad Amazing Spider-Man movies, but still: eight out of ten so far is a solid success rate!) Without him, Sony has a bunch of monster-movie antiheroes and villains who fail to make much impression beyond Tom Hardy’s admirable commitment to Venom. It’s too bad, because in theory, the idea of a monster-centric wing of the superhero industrial complex is actually
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