8 Films That Were Made Solely To Hold Onto Rights
Want to know why the not so Amazing Spider-Man had to happen?
The film business has always been about making money, even if it does occasionally allow talented directors to produce great movies. The steady corporatization of it has become a little overwhelming in recent years, though, and we now have fans pitting Marvel against DC like it’s some kind of football match.
This has been the case for some time, and while great work can still be made in this environment – Mad Max: Fury Road is a damned miracle – it often results in shoddy movies. This is compounded further when a studio remembers they hold the rights to a valuable property, but those rights are about to expire if they don’t make something.
So they’ll quickly slap a movie together and throw it out into the world, and often it doesn’t matter to them if it’s any good; so long as they keep the rights, they’re happy.
A number of high-profile movies have suffered this fate in recent years, and nearly all of them suffered poor reviews and box-office as a result. That’s what happens when you knowingly make a bad movie and expect audiences to lap it up.
8. The Amazing Spider-Man
Despite being a huge hit Spider-Man 3 was reviled by fans, and despite Sam Raimi working hard on redeeming the series with a planned Spider-Man 4, Sony eventually pulled the plug. It was stated in the agreement between Sony and Marvel they need to make a movie every few years, and they were hardly going to let a cash cow like Spider-Man slink away to a rival studio.
So they decided to reboot, telling yet another origin story of how Peter Parker learned about great responsibly. While hardly terrible there’s a troubling lack of innovation with The Amazing Spider-Man; it covers story beats that were already worn out in the Raimi movies, and the villain’s evil scheme is so generic it’s almost a parody.
Still, the movie was a hit and Sony galloped forwards with the sequel. Unfortunately, they stuffed it with villains and pointless subplots, and it was met with a collective “meh.” Thankfully Sony decided after this they wanted to share their toys after all, and let Marvel use Spidey for the MCU.