Marvel's Spider-Man: What We Know So Far

Several weeks ago, it was announced that after much deliberation and lots of negotiation, a deal has finally been reached that will allow the character of Spider-man to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since then rumors have been running wild with what the third incarnation of Spider-man in less than ten years was going to be like. Who would be playing him? How soon would he appear? How will Spider-Man factor into the already packed schedule that Marvel has lined up between now and 2020? While we don't know a lot of those answers yet, here's a quick look at the things we do have answers for sure about.

No Andrew Garfield: It was stated pretty clearly early on, that this was not going to be the same Spider-Man from the past two Amazing Spider-Man films and thus Andrew Garfield would not be playing him again. While Andrew Garfield was one of the brightest spots in an otherwise problematic film series, it makes sense that Marvel would want no connection between their new Spider-Man character and one from a franchise they had no creative control over.

Spider-verse is done for: One of the biggest problems with Amazing Spider-man 2 was that the movie seemed more concerned with setting up things for future sequels than it did for the movie that was currently playing. And it turns out all that was for naught. While Sony had previously announced their intention to create a multi-film universe that was all centered around Spider-Man featuring, but not limited to, A Sinister Six movie, a Venom spinoff, and perhaps an Aunt May prequel movie, but when the Marvel deal was announced that was all put aside. So we'll never know just what became of The Rhino, or any of the mysterious things in the lab during Spider-man 2, but really that's ok.

Spider-man will be Peter Parker: When it was announced that they would be creating the third version of Spider-man some people felt like this would be a great time to introduce Miles Morales, the version of Spider-man from the Ultimate universe comics who isn't a white man, and some rumors seemed to support this idea with ideas that Marvel was looking at casting actors who fit the physical description of Miles. But ultimately it has been confirmed that Spider-man will once again be Peter Parker. Outside the world of comics, Spider-man is still best known as Peter Parker, and Marvel probably felt like that was still their safest option.

Spider-man will be young: Both of the previous versions of Spider-man started in high school, but Toby Maguire graduated halfway through the first movie, and Andrew Garfield graduated at the beginning of the second. It turns out that in contrast to the previous two Spider-Man franchises, Marvel plans to have Spider-man stay in high school for a while and are looking for actors in the 15-16 age range. This is an idea I could get behind. The Avengers is already crammed full of full grown adults, with Black Widow in her 30s, Iron Man somewhere in his 40s, Captain America probably closing in on a hundred at this point and who knows how old Thor is supposed to be. I would love for a Marvel hero to have to contend with being a teenager the way Spider-Man did for the first very long run of his comic career and see that contrast to any other Marvel character right now.

There won't be an origin story: This might be the best thing we know at this point. Origin stories slow everything down because we have to spend the first 45 minutes of a movie getting to know the character's back story and how they first discovered their powers before we can ever actually get to the meat of the movie. And it's even worse when it's someone's back story that everyone in the audience already knows. I get it if Captain Marvel's going to need an origin when her movie comes out, but Spider-Man doesn't. Two movies have already come out in the past 14 years that both spend an hour or so on the Spider-Man origin story, not to mention that it's one of the most famous super hero origin stories to begin with. If that move starts with "Spider-Man was swinging around the city one day when out of nowhere..." I'll be just fine with that.

Spider-Man will most likely appear in the next Captain America film: This has not been confirmed but we do know that Spider-Man is supposed to appear in a Marvel movie before staring in his own film on July 28th, 2017, and the Captain America film next year seems like the best time for that to happen on the schedule. In the comics Spider-Man played a pivotal role in the Civil War storyline (on which the next Captain America film will be based) by revealing his secret identity. But secret identities are not really a thing in the current Marvel Cinematic universe. Everyone knows that Tony Stark is Iron Man. Everyone knows about Captain America and Bruce Banner. In fact the only secret identity that even comes to mind at this point is Daredevil in the new Netflix series. What's more The Civil War script was already written before Marvel and Sony came to an agreement about Spider-man so there already is a story arc that does not involve Spider-Man at all. Hopefully Spider-Man's appearance in that movie will be more or less a glorified cameo, and not Spider-Man being crammed into a plot he was never intended to fit into in the first place. That's no way to introduce the new "official" version of Spider-Man