Summary
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe continues to expand with new films centered around iconic characters like Venom, Morbius, and Madame Web.
Despite the critical disappointment of Venom and Morbius, the franchise has been financially successful, with Venom earning over $856 million at the box office.
Madame Web, the latest addition to the universe, follows a clairvoyant woman with latent powers but ultimately falls short in its execution, adding to the franchise’s losing streak.
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With the superhero genre remaining as popular as ever on the big screen, studios are still looking to develop their own cinematic universes, with Sony’s Spider-Man Universe serving as the newest of the bunch. Co-produced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Entertainment, the new franchise revolves around characters connected to the iconic webslinger, most notably villains and supporting heroes from Peter Parke’s filofax. Previously known by the unofficial name of the VenomVerse, the SSU originally was in development during the time of Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man movies as Sony sought to develop their own shared universe, only for the financial disappointment of the 2014 sequel to derail them.
Debut film Venom (2018) proved to be a critical disappointment, but that wasn’t enough to kill Sony’s universal aspirations, because it made an astronomical $856.1 million at the box office. Since then, a Venom sequel, the much maligned Morbius, and 2024’s Madame Web joined the ranks, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven movie to come, and a third from Tom Hardy’s Venom in 2025. Given those plans, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a critically adored franchise. Sadly, you’d be wrong, and Madame Web continues the unfortunate losing streak.
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe Movies In Order
Title
Release Date
Rotten Tomatoes Score
Venom
October 5, 2018
30%
Venom: Let There Be Carnage
October 1, 2021
57%
Morbius
April 1, 2022
15%
Madame Web
February 14, 2024
17%
Kraven The Hunter
August 30, 2024
TBC
Venom 3
November 8, 2024
TBC
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4 Madame Web (2024)
Sony’s Latest Spin-Off Is A Messy Web Of Lies And Missed Opportunities
Madame Web
Madame Web is a superhero movie based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Taking place in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, the movie revolves around a clairvoyant woman who can look into different dimensions. Dakota Johnson stars in the lead role, with Sydney Sweeney, Adam Scott, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor comprising the rest of the cast.
Release Date February 14, 2024
Director S.J. Clarkson
Runtime 114 Mins
Madame Web was always a strange choice for her own Sony movie. In Marvel Comics, she’s an elderly, blind, paralyzed clairvoyant whose stories tend to involve her directing other heroes towards their destinies. Not put off by the limits of that in cinematic terms, TV veteran SJ Clarkson took on directing duties to tell a standalone story set in 2003 about a malcontent, who fancies herself as a loner, despite her tens of friends, faced with a mysterious past and burgeoning superpowers. At the most basic level, the plot makes sense: it’s about latent powers changing the course of a new-found hero’s life. Makes sense.
Madame Web is baffling in its very conception, and disappointing in its execution
It’s when Madame Web starts to get more complex that things really start to fall apart. Were the same level of care and attention gone into making sure the story was captivating and the dialog engaging as clearly went into dropping in oh-so-2003 references, there mightn’t be such an issue. But Madame Web is a soupy disaster suffering from several concurrent identity crises, with a cast who float disinterestedly through it all. Dakota Johnson plays Cassandra “Cassie” Webb with sardonic dissatisfaction, undermined further by a script that seems uninterested in capturing real human behavior.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Madame Web’s multiversal powers from the comics might be setting the movie up for some wider purpose, but actually, everything is very surface level. There’s a vague attempt at a message – which seems to be “actually, if you stop being a dick, you might enjoy your life” – and a game attempt to show the Parker family story pre-Peter’s birth, but it’s not enough. Beyond Morbius’ tragic meme-ability, Madame Web is baffling in its very conception, and disappointing in its execution.
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3 Morbius (2022)
Jared Leto’s Vampire Is More Meme Than Memorable
Morbius
Morbius stars Jared Leto as the enigmatic antihero Michael Morbius set in the Sony Pictures Marvel universe. Afflicted with a terrible illness since his youth, Michael has struggled until he met his new surrogate brother, Lucian, nicknamed Milo (Matt Smith), who shares the same disease. The two bond over the illness, and years later, Michael discovers a potential breakthrough by using a unique gene in vampire bats. When the experiment proves to be a success, it cures Michael of his ailment – however, it also turns him into a bloodthirsty vampire. While Michael aims to curtail his bloodlust, his brother, who has also taken the cure, does not share the same empathy. As a result, Michael will have to manage his powers while trying to stop his brother’s murderous rampage.
Release Date April 1, 2022
Director Daniel Espinosa
Cast Adria Arjona , Al Madrigal , Jared Harris , Matt Smith , Jared Leto , Tyrese Gibson
Runtime 108 minutes
Prior to the film’s release, various efforts to bring Morbius to the screen have been made over the years, including a deleted scene in Wesley Snipes’ first Blade movie in which the living vampire was watching over the dhampir from a distance, while Guillermo del Toro was denied by Marvel Entertainment the rights to use him for Blade II. Unfortunately for the character, his long-awaited live-action debut ultimately could’ve used more time to bake. The script proves itself to be largely devoid of any personality, the story races through its 104-minute runtime without any semblance of character development and the direction completely fails to take advantage of the horror elements of the character.
Morbius’ script proves itself to be largely devoid of any personality.
One of the biggest flaws with Morbius is its struggle to understand what comic book cinematic universe it exists in and convincing audiences it does. Between a lazy connecting of the bridges with the MCU by utilizing Spider-Man: No Way Home’s multiverse spell to drop Michael Keaton’s MCU Vulture into a post-credits scene to references to both Venom and an unspecified Spider-Man, most will find themselves in the dark on whether a new webslinger is set to be introduced soon or if there are plans for Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield to return. This universe confusion also speaks to Sony’s long-gestating Sinister Six crossover that they continue to try and race toward, an issue the DC Extended Universe experienced in its earlier efforts to rush to its Justice League movie before taking a step back and developing character-focused stories over interconnected ones.
2 Venom (2018)
Tom Hardy’s Performance As Venom Is Sublime, But The Movie Lacks Magic
Venom
Venom is an action sci-fi movie that stars Tom Hardy as the titular Marvel anti-hero. When the Life Foundation begins experimenting on alien lifeforms they find on a comet that landed nearby, Investigative Journalist Eddie Brock begins to investigate them. When an infiltration goes wrong, Eddie finds that one of the aliens has bonded to him, forcing him to learn to live with his new uninvited host. Giving him superhuman powers, the two begin to work together to stop the rest of the symbiote’s invasive species.
Release Date October 5, 2018
Director Ruben Fleischer
Cast Woody Harrelson , Jenny Slate , Michelle Williams , Scott Haze , Tom Hardy , Riz Ahmed
Runtime 112 Minutes
Given the character’s popularity in the comics, Venom was another property Sony has been attempting to push on the screen for a long time, with producer Avi Arad infamously forcing Sam Raimi to include Venom as a key villain in Spider-Man 3 despite the director’s distaste for the character. After seeing a solo project set in The Amazing Spider-Man universe scrapped, Venom would finally get his time in the night with the eponymous 2018 film. It kickstarted the SSU, but had it not been a financial success, it likely would’ve been the end of the road for the character on the big screen.
Venom’s nighttime action sequences prove difficult to see its symbiote characters and its script shows signs of laziness and inconsistencies with its tone.
Venom has a number of positives going for it, namely Tom Hardy’s committed Eddie Brock performance as a man being driven insane and undergoing his own form of body horror. The first half of the film does very well to develop Eddie Brock as his own character with goals and conflict and even the unique nature of his relationship with Venom after becoming host to the symbiote. Unfortunately, the second half of the film is where its true problems begin to shine. The nighttime action sequences prove difficult to see its symbiote characters and its script shows signs of laziness and inconsistencies with its tone. Unlike Morbius, however, the first Venom had a better understanding of existing in its own universe and leaving more subtle clues of branching out its universe rather than rushed cameos or exposition dumps to tie threads together.
1 Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Bigger, Bolder & Better Than The Original, Let There Be Carnage Still Lacks Finesse
Venom: Let There Be Carnage
In this follow up to 2018’s Venom, Tom Hardy returns as the lethal protector Venom, an alien symbiote bonded to Eddie Brock. When Eddie gets a chance to interview one of the most dangerous serial killers on Earth, Cletus Kasady, an altercation between Kasady and Brock. This leads to the former getting his own parasite, and his twisted perception of the world gives life to Carnage, a deadly symbiote hellbent on chaos and death. Brock and Venom will have to work together to stop Kasady and Carnage’s murderous rampage.
Release Date October 1, 2021
Cast Woody Harrelson , Peggy Lu , Michelle Williams , Reid Scott , Laurence Spellman , Stephen Graham , Tom Hardy , Amber Sienna , Naomie Harris , Sean Delaney
Runtime 97 minutes
If one were to look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores of its movies, it would seem like the easy choice for Venom: Let There Be Carnage to reign victorious amongst the SSU, but the reality is that it’s truly the best of the three. Though not a perfect film by any means, it showed some signs of learning its lessons from the poor reception to its predecessor and working toward its strengths, leaning into the zany appeal of the first movie. As they developed the story for the sequel, Hardy and the creative team clearly understood the best approach was to further explore the odd-couple dynamic between Eddie and Venom for the film.
Despite its flaws, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is able to outshine its fellow Sony’s Spider-Man Universe installments.
The biggest point of division for Venom: Let There Be Carnage is its handling of the titular villain and his partner, Shriek, and it really is a questionable one. Much like Hardy, Woody Harrelson truly goes all in with his turn as serial killer Cletus Kasady as he goes on a murderous rampage with his newly acquired symbiote Carnage, tapping back into the unhinged nature of his Natural Born Killers performance. Unfortunately for both Carnage and Shriek, they lack any major development or interesting character arcs, being solely driven by a desire to be with each other and kill Eddie, both rather dull motivations during a time in which comic book villains are being written with a more empathetic approach than much of their source material.
Despite its flaws, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is able to outshine its fellow Sony’s Spider-Man Universe installments. By remaining more consistent in its tone than both its predecessor and Morbius and delivering some of the best-looking direction and performances the SSU has to offer, it should’ve marked the turning of the tide to fix the stumbling franchise. Sadly, Madame Web and Morbius suggest otherwise.
Key Release Dates