La Ron S. Readus
patreon
These AREN'T the REAL Sinister Six Members! (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-08-30 20:01:00 +0000 UTCAlright, so maybe there’s some merit to those live-action Spider-Verse rumors we’ve been hearing about now that we got more official cast confirmations and an actual trailer! Are we ready to take a chill pill until December now?
(Off screen) What’s that? The Spidey discourse won’t calm down until they confirm Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are in the movie?
(Slow zoom up to They Ask You How You Are Meme audio)
_______________
Hey Readers. You wanna know why it’s been 8 months since I made an MCU Spider-Man video?
Because over the course of those 8 months, a lot of things regarding the movie AND the MCU have either been revealed and/or confirmed.
Things like the Multiverse finally being properly introduced into the MCU thanks to the season 1 finale of Loki.
Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina officially announced that they’re reprising their roles of Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus respectively.
And one of the most important bits of info, us FINALLY receiving an actual trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home...
/So that ACTUAL speculation about the film can happen without the need to fall for clickbait rumor mill confirmation./
I mean, don’t get me wrong; It’s still happening...
But I can feel a bit better about talking about the movie’s possibilities now that we have more concrete stuff to work with without having to worry about too much live-action Spider-Verse discourse ruining my day.
Once again; not saying that Spider-Verse elements aren’t being used in No Way Home, because, as we’ve seen in the trailer, they clearly are.
Now that Slyvie has killed He Who Remains and has let the multiverse branches of the sacred timeline go unpruned, the universes of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and Mark Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man movies are clearly being used as separate branches that are playing a factor into how No Way Home plays a factor into the Multiverse saga thanks to Disney’s ever expansive deal with Sony.
But it’s also using elements from the story One More Day, which is arguably one of the worst modern day canonical Spider-Man storylines.
No, seriously; if there’s two things everyone around the world can agree on, it’s that chicken is the most universally popular form of meat-based protein amongst meat eaters regardless of religion, and that One More Day fucking sucks.
Don’t worry, don’t worry; salmon comes as a close second.
However, now that we know how the Multiverse was created thanks to Loki season 1, where the events of said season take place according to the MCU timeline, and the fact that Spider-Man: No Way Home takes place damn near IMMEDIATELY after Far From Home, we can start speculating about where the villains that are going to possibly form the Sinister Six that we know are returning to the big screen are going to come from. And I don’t think a majority of them are coming DIRECTLY from the movies.
-
So what we know about No Way Home is that Peter’s reached his fucking limit.
Mysterio outed him as Spider-Man, and it’s getting to the point where the people that he loves and cares about are becoming affected. So much so that he turns to Doctor Strange -- WHO’S NOT MEPHISTO -- to try and cast a spell to make it so that everyone forgot that he’s Spider-Man.
/But because MCU Peter is a nervous wreck who translates his anxiety into talking too much and hasn’t learned to channel it into Spidey sarcasm yet/ (stop talking)
/He throws Stephen off from casting his spell and creates something akin to interdimensional tethers that link various timeline branches involving Spider-Man together, now that they exist thanks to the death of He Who Remains./ (Don’t tell me I’m a disappointment)
From there, various variants of different Spider-Man villains -- mostly those that we’ve seen from the Raimi, Webb and MCU timelines and universes -- ban together to possibly create a multiversal take on the Sinister Six...
/With Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina’s Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus respectively confirmed to be reprising their roles from the Raimiverse, Jamie Foxx confirmed to be returning as Electro from the Webbverse with a shadowclad Lizard from the first Amazing Spider-Man movie shown in the trailer as well, and either Vulture and Scorpion from the MCU proper ala Homecoming, or Raimi’s Sandman from Spider-Man 3 and an unknown villain to wrap up the team./
Now while I understand why a lot of people think that Sandman is going to be part of this version of the Sinister Six considering how much dirt is kicked up in one specific scene presented to us in the trailer, I’m...not COMPLETELY convinced that its him.
I honestly think that it’s just some dirt that one of Electro’s electric attacks kicked up while fighting Spider-Man in what I’m deeming as his “Black Magic” suit.
/Not only does it react as if it were being impacted by said attacks/
But Thomas Haden Church’s name is nowhere on the cast list right now, and that John Cena rumor is associated with We Got This Covered. And you KNOW how I FEEL about We Got This Covered
But, yes; there’s a good chance that the Sinister Six in this movie are gonna consist of 2 villains from every era of Spider-Man on film; 2 from Raimi, 2 from Webb and 2 from Watts.
Whether or not this means we’ll see MCU Spidey team up with Raimi and Webb Spidey in order to do so is a rumor and will stay a rumor until otherwise confirmed, because I am TIRED.
However, if we look at the Raimiverse and the Webbverse as two separate branches of the sacred timeline that only focus on Spider-Man like No Way Home wants to imply we should look at them -- now that we know what we know about how the Multiverse works...
That means there’s something we need to acknowledge about the currently revealed members of the Sinister Six and where they come from.
Yes, with the exception of either Vulture or Scorpion considering they originated in the MCU timeline, the Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Electro and possibly Lizard we’re going to get are technically considered variants when compared to the eventual MCU equivalents that will show up later on in MCU Spidey’s career when all this is fixed.
But what if I told you that those aren’t the variants of the villains we’re going to see in No Way Home? That they aren’t just going to be plucked from the timelines of their respective movies and placed in this new one.
Because according to the trailer for No Way Home, they AREN’T the same variants according to how the multiverse works in the MCU. They’re variants of that villain’s variant; alternate takes of the villains portrayed in the Raimiverse and the Webbverse if certain things were done differently.
-
Now in order to understand how this works, let’s go over how the sacred timeline works in the MCU and how the 5 Sony Spidey movies play a role in it.
When He Who Remains was murdered by Sylvie, that allowed the sacred timeline to branch out into smaller alternate timelines in order to create the Multiverse. And thanks to the Disney Plus show “What If...?” we’ve seen a few examples of these alternate timelines and the stories they tell.
Thanks to the plot of Spider-Man: No Way Home, we now know that two of these timelines that have branched this way involve timelines that are solely focused on Spider-Man and Spider-Man only; those timelines are the Raimiverse -- consisting of Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3 -- and the Webbverse -- consisting of The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
It’s in those two separate branches that the versions of Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Lizard and Electro respectively reside in. However, there is no evidence in how the MCU multiverse works that just because one timeline branched away from the sacred one that it can’t form its OWN branches and make alternate takes of THAT timeline.
/We even see that play out in the season finale of Loki; one timeline spawned from the sacred one creates two or more variant timelines within it./
And I think that’s what happened to the Raimi and Webb timelines that branched from the sacred one; new timelines branched within the Raimiverse and the Webbverse that resulted in creating new variants of already established variants of the villains we know and love from the previous Spider-Man franchises.
And the most accurate visual proof the No Way Home trailer supplies us with this theory, is Jamie Foxx’s Electro.
-
If you recall when it was originally announced that Jamie Foxx was coming back to reprise his role of Electro in No Way Home, he did so on Instagram that Hollywood Reporter was able to get the description of before he was forced to take it down.
/In the post he revealed he was back as the character to portray him in Marvel Studios’ take on Spider-Man, and that he -- and I quote -- won’t be blue in this one./
Now as I’ve stated in the video I made on the topic 8 months ago, I assumed that what he meant by this was that he was playing a new take on the character in order to represent the MCU version, much like JK Simmons’ MCU take on J Jonah Jameson at the end of Far From Home.
Then the multiverse and the concept of character variants was introduced into the MCU thanks to Disney Plus’s Loki since that news first dropped, and how certain things can change about a character or a timeline by making just one choice.
So by the time the photo leaks for No Way Home came about, and with the trailer for it dropping soon after, knowledge of the multiverse and how there can be multiple diverse and likened variants of the same character was already commonplace. And the evidence of No Way Home’s Electro being a variant of the version present in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was clear as day.
While in the prime Webbverse, Electro had illuminated blue-colored skin and electricity, and looked like this before his transformation.
So if we apply MCU Multiverse logic to this and say that there was one slight change within the two movies of the Webbverse that caused Electro to gain his powers a different way than how we initially saw it in Amazing Spider-Man 2, now his electricity is comic accurate yellow in the variant timeline of the Webbverse before being plopped into No Way Home, and he looks like this.
/The same can be said of the version of Doctor Octopus we saw in the trailer being a slight variant of the one we see in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, and it’s all thanks to him delivering this line:/ (“Hello, Peter.”)
/Now if you recall, Octavius didn’t know Spider-Man and Peter Parker were the same person in Spider-Man 2 until the very end of the movie/(Brilliant but lazy)
/Which was IMMEDIATELY followed by him regaining control of his mechanical tentacles and drowning the fusion reactor along with him in it./ (I will not die a monster)
So if learning Spider-Man’s true identity was immediately followed by him regaining control and sacrificing himself to save New York from his dangerous experiment in the prime Raimiverse...
/Then why would he know who Peter is while being malicious toward him unless this is a variant of Raimiverse Doc Ock that took a slightly different path from the one we saw him take in Spider-Man 2?/
Honestly, the only villain they’re introducing this way that feels like they may ACTUALLY be plucked DIRECTLY from their respective prime timeline is Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin from the Raimiverse.
/Yes, there’s the pumpkin bomb and the laugh. But there’s also the small fact that Dafoe’s depiction of Norman has ALWAYS been antagonistic toward Peter slash Spider-Man, even up until his death./ (Oh)
Also, while it would make sense to do it after the Thanksgiving scene when Norman came to the revelation that Peter and Spidey are one and the same...
/You can technically pluck Gobby from ANY point in Raimi’s Spider-Man after their first bout at the parade to put him in No Way Home and it works./
At this point, the only way Green Goblin as depicted in No Way Home can be proven to be a variant of the Green Goblin from the prime Raimiverse and not that same Green Goblin displaced, is if they found a way to utilize Dafoe’s facial features via Thanos-level facial recognition to give him more of an outfit resembling his comic book self as opposed to how they did it in the first Raimi movie because of technology limitations.
In a way, using this route to reutilize legacy characters and the actors that portray them is actually pretty brilliant. Because not only does it allow the film to properly bank on nostalgia, but it also allows it to do so without sullying the work of the movies originally responsible for creating those beloved iterations of said characters.
If you can understand that Loki as we knew him truly did die by the end of the Infinity Saga and that the Loki that we’ve been following in the Disney Plus series is a variant of that same version of the character that trailed off the path of the sacred timeline thanks to the Avengers trying to go back in time to reclaim the Infinity Stones during the events of Endgame...
Then Tom Holland Spider-Man possibly fighting VARIANTS of variants from his alternate universes rogues gallery thanks to a spell gone wrong shouldn’t really be that farfetched to you.
No, I’m not simplifying a single word I just said. Rewatch the video.
Now is there a chance I’m wrong about ALL of this? Absolutely, and I’m fine with it!
I’ve been wrong before in my theories and predictions, and I actually ENJOY being wrong sometimes; it helps me see different perspectives in storytelling and keeps me humble on the regular.
But if this is in fact how they’re gonna explain the slight changes that are being made to Spider-Man’s legacy villains that have had their fair share of time on screen before properly joining the MCU, I can’t really be mad at it.
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what you thought of the teaser trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home. Y’know, WHICHEVER one you decided to watch.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, what YOU think the reason is for the slight differences in the legacy villains we’ve seen in the trailer if you think my variant of a variant theory is a bit too much for casual moviegoers to swallow.
*huffs* There’s a “Webbing” joke somewhere in there, but I already said the F-word twice and I’m not trying to get this video demonetized.
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
