Badass Digest said that there have been three different rumors flying around in the last couple of weeks regarding what’s next for Peter Parker. The first is that Sony is considering a soft reboot of Spider-Man with The Sinister Six, which would include a new actor playing Spider-Man. The second is that Sony is planning on shelving the Spider-Man story for the next four to five years to see if any of the side characters can be further developed into their own franchises. Finally, the most recent rumor is that there are talking about doing a crossover storyline between The Avengers and Spider-Man. As Badass Digest explains, it seems that “Sony has no clue what to do with the Wall-crawler.”
With an unclear plan on what to do next, that best action, from a fan’s perspective, would be to do nothing. No good can come from a half-hearted attempt to continue the franchise with little thought behind it—I’m looking at you Spider-Man 3!
The best of the options seems to be to shelf any film projects for awhile. Almost every franchise has done so, including the previous string of Spider-Man films that came five years after Sam Raimi’s Spidey films in 2002, 2004, and 2007.
In theory, Sony might be better off exploring options for the Spider-Man name beyond films. Of course, because they’re so lucrative, the most obvious choice is a new video game. The last Spider-Man game for consoles, The Amazing Spider-Man, was released in 2012. Created with an open world/free-roaming concept, the game received generally positive reviews, with a 7.6/10 rating given from users on GameSpot.
Outside of console games, the Betfair Casino has a Spidey-themed slot/arcade game that allows players the opportunity to make a little money off their fandom. But the look of the two games is vastly different. While the 2012 console game incorporates all the latest graphics and technology that allow today’s video games to be as realistic as possible, Betfair’s title offers a welcomed, nostalgic reminder of how far the franchise has come. Images used for the slot game are very similar to the comic books, with illustrations that look as if they were created by Stan Lee himself.
If the franchise is looking to stay alive by making a new game, it might be a good idea to follow the example that Betfair has set by bringing back the nostalgic look and feel of the comic books. It’s a method that’s proven to be successful in the past. In fact, this approach was recently taken by The Walking Dead, a franchise with similar origins in comics/graphic novels. After a spike in popularity from the series, developers created a game for consoles with similar characters to those in the television show (the likes of which varied from the graphic novels). The video game based on the series, titled The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, received mixed reviews when it was released in 2013, however. It’s obtained a score of only 32/100 according to Metacritic.
What’s interesting is that around the same time, another video game came out that more closely resembled the look of the original graphic novels. Telltale Games‘ The Walking Dead: The Game was highly praised by critics and players alike. It was crowned “Game of the Year” in 2012 by Yahoo! Games, the Spike Video Game Awards, and the Game Developer’s Choice Awards. It received a similar title by Destructoid and Digital Trends, too.
If those with the rights to the franchise really feel they need to do something, the best choice of action for Spider-Man’s future is to take a look to the past. Making the comic book pages come alive again with a new game that revives our nostalgia would be a welcomed change to the high-intensity, motion sickness-inducing games that are popular today. If they can pull it off with flesh-eating zombies, they can certainly do the same with a beloved character like Spidey.
