8 Reasons Why Spider-Man Joining The Avengers Is A Bad Idea (For Marvel)

4. Sony Have Creative Control

It's easy in the euphoria of the announcement to ignore all the legal technicalities of the deal. Because while Spider-Man will indeed be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel themselves haven't just won the character back. In their own words, Sony will still "finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films". The company who made Sam Raimi shoe-horn Venom into an already over-stuffed movie at the last minute. The legal-minded studio who forced the director of three (financially) successful previous movies to work on a ridiculously tight time-frame. The band-wagon jumpers who started out the Amazing series as a Twilight riff before trying instead to ape Nolan. The complete hacks who seem unable to remember previous mistakes and tried to make a massive universe of films before even finding out if the audience wanted it. These are the guys in control? Marvel have essentially thrown a life-line to a struggling franchise, giving Sony some fan-based kudos while gaining little for themselves. Sony will no doubt listen heavily to Kevin Feige and without the pressure of building their own universe can focus more on the character himself, meaning them in control is far from a deal-breaker, but for Marvel there's really little gain. Yeah, they get Spider-Man to pop up in The Avengers, boosting the merchandising of the character and all that, but is that really worth it?