Is “Spiderman No Way Home” Destined To Disappoint?
You can’t give a fanbase a year to anticipate without imaginations going haywire
We have been here before. In my experience, it was BBC’s Sherlock [spoiler alert]. This was a show that 12 million people on average tuned in to, with a loyalty that was unparalleled. This status of loyalty wasn't earned from watching a regressing drama, it was the wait between seasons.
Season 2 was so good, it was like a producer had brought in some scripture from the very home of storytelling, and absolutely dominated television. The cliffhanger you were left on was so huge that suddenly you had an entire army of fans, all that had been romanticizing obsessive detective work that were now trying to predict your screenwriting. The same happened upon the climax of season 3, and the same two-year wait occurred.
Both highly anticipated premiere episodes of these waits were loved to bits, but not to the same heights as the hype itself, or even the other episodes. The lesson (perhaps) learned is…
Can you possibly produce something worthy of a two-year wait?
Now, the Spiderman task is far larger. Marvel films aren’t consistently the best films in the industry, but they definitely, definitely have the biggest viewership. To be precise, a mathematician on Quora surmised that dividing the gross revenue for Avengers: Endgame by the average ticket price would get us a decent prediction. The number was about 183 million. Just the cinema figures.
I’ll bet at least 50% of those are solid Marvel fans, 10% are huge Marvel fanatics, we don’t think 1% is a figure too high for bordering-on-ridiculous-theorizers? There’s about a million number-crunching, evidence-scouring superman’s out there really making Chris Mckenna quake in his boots.
The worry for me is that it will be too much of a predictable fan service film. I’m sure for others the concern is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Dozens of vivid dreams about all the Spidey actors returning, months of secrets shattering in that one cinematic moment that you know has a hot reservation in your memory FOREVER. The horror of the moment not being perfect has crossed my mind, I don’t want something as cliché as an outstretched hand that pans to reveal ‘you know who’, but I think something undramatic would be even worse. The pressure of getting this moment right is gargantuan, and people generally overuse such adjectives.
What also makes this so important is the pandemic. Near enough two years of dragging your feet across the cold, hard reality of how the world can be. On the 15th of December (UK) you’ll be buying your ticket off that rough ground and back to escapism and fantasy.
My hope is that they tease Tobey Maguire using the classic opening music with strings and the drum in the background. Like so ↓
Watch the crowd as people start to realize like a Mexican wave. Perfection 👌
