Image: Marvel
A hero is nothing without the villains they face, and few rogues’ galleries are more compelling than Spider-Man’s. The pantheon of baddies who’ve gone toe-to-toe with the friendly neighborhood webhead is so extensive and memorable that many of them have gone on to star in their own solo comic-book series. Thanks to Sony Pictures, some of those foes have even had enough juice to become leads in their own movies. Following the success of Venom, Sony’s pumped out solo flicks for Morbius and now Kraven the Hunter, which arrives on December 13 after being delayed.
As iconic as Kraven is, however, there are still a bunch of Spider-villains that are better suited to having their own solo movies. How did we end up with a full-length film about a hunter with daddy issues before Doctor Octopus, who has been terrorizing Spider-Man on film for 20 years, got a starring role? Why waste Donald Glover on a glorified Easter egg version of Prowler? Why are we acting like Kingpin doesn’t do more than fight the blind lawyer dressed up as a demon? We need answers, but we’ll take feature films instead.
To make our case, we’ve rounded up the nine best candidates for their own time in the spotlight, along with some ideas about what kind of genre movie they should star in. If you’re familiar with Spider-Man’s foes, you’ll know a lot of these—and likely agree with us. Our picks, below.
Image: Sony/Photofest
It would be a little difficult to do a version of Doctor Octopus that’s not directly tied to Spider-Man, but Otto Octavius is such a compelling character that there’s gotta be some way to crack it. An approach that leans into what Sam Raimi brought to the character in Spider-Man 2 would work, which is to say, making him an aspirational scientist whose ambition goes past his reach, resulting in a flawed yet deeply human character.
Image: Sony Pictures
Dr. Curt Connors’ story could come across a bit like the plot of Morbius—a tortured scientist is looking to science to fix a tragedy, only to have another tragedy befall him. There’s a way to play the story as a “creature feature” genre piece that mixes horror and pathos by having Connors be both Frankenstein and his misunderstood monster. Either way, it can’t be any worse than Morbius.
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Not dissimilar to Lizard’s, Mister Negative’s story is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation that would naturally lend itself to a riff on that narrative format. Have Martin Li do good by day as the head of charity org Food, Emergency Aid, Shelter and Training (F.E.A.S.T.), and try to take over New York’s criminal underworld by night. That tension is a tried and true recipe that always works, allowing for a compellingly rich story.
Image: Marvel
Look, if Catwoman can get a movie, so can Black Cat. As one of the few female anti-heroes in the Spider-Man rogues’ gallery, this one feels like low-hanging fruit. Think of it now: a charming, roguish young Felicia Hardy is hired to pull off a heist that no one else is capable of doing. It’s Ocean’s Eleven meets cape stuff. Cast a charismatic lead, and it’ll print money.
Image: Sony Pictures Animation
After the character’s prime appearance in Into the Spider-Verse, a Prowler movie would do numbers. Hell, cast Mahershala Ali in it to bring the character into live-action and have him be a Robin Hood-like figure who steals from the 1% to give back to his loved ones. Or, if they’re still holding out hope for Ali’s Blade, then whip out the blank checkbook for Donald Glover and let him be the creative master of a little Prowler pocket of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Image: Marvel Comics
This one’s a bit of a cheat since, well, it’d be six villains in one movie. While we kind of already saw this in No Way Home, having a massive team-up might be tough to do out of the gate. But it’s certainly a premise that Sony’s considered for a while now, dating back to threads in The Amazing Spider-Man. There’s also a non-zero chance that Sony is still working on this, albeit with characters like Kraven and Venom teaming up to face down a big threat—so this one may happen sooner rather than later.
Image: Marvel
While Kingpin’s certainly getting a lot of airtime as a villain thanks to the Daredevil show, he’s also a huge foe for Spider-Man. In fact, the current Ultimate Spider-Man comic series is seeing the titular webhead go up against him. Nevertheless, the Daredevil series established quite a path for Wilson Fisk. A solo project could dig into Fisk’s troubled origins while doubling as a modern-day crime epic that sees him come to control New York. Think Godfather II or American Gangster.
Image: Sony Pictures
Cletus Kasady aka Carnage was already a horrific, sadistic monster before he got hold of a symbiote that supercharged his murderous tendencies. With audiences’ unsettling affinity for serial killer shows like Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a deep character study delving into Kasady’s history as well as his bonding with the symbiote could be a darkly delicious project in the vein of something like Longlegs—and a far cry from the campy (yet fun) portrayal of the character that audiences saw from Woody Harrelson in Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Image: Marvel Comics
Audiences who saw Venom: The Last Dance learned a little bit about Knull. But the character is so much more interesting than the film made him seem. An ancient primordial deity, he’s one of Marvel’s most powerful villains, a being of pure evil. Last Dance saw him send some of his monsters after Venom, but what if his solo film focused on the Symbiotes and how they trapped him in the first place? Or an old cosmo society coming across him for the first time and having a horrific, Alien-like experience? Just make it scary as hell, and we’ll be in a good spot.
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