Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness may have recently become the highest-grossing movie of Sam Raimi’s lengthy career after crossing the $900 million barrier at the box office, but fans have already turned their backs on the Sorcerer Supreme’s adventures in favor of the maligned Spider-Man 3.
While the conclusion to Tobey Maguire’s trilogy isn’t quite the cinematic dumpster fire certain corners of the internet would have you believe, it’s nonetheless a massive step down in quality from its two predecessors, both of which comfortably rank as a pair of the finest Marvel Comics adaptations ever made.
As everyone knows, Raimi’s creative vision was severely impacted by studio interference, with Venom shoehorned into the story against the filmmaker’s wishes. It would be an understatement to say the end product was diminished as a result, but fans are hoping that their calls to #ReleaseTheRaimiCut won’t fall on deaf ears.
While fan campaigns demanding extended editions and re-edited versions of disappointing blockbusters very rarely yields any tangible results, we can’t overlook the fact that Sony opted to re-release Morbius in a thousand theaters based entirely on the popularity of memes mocking the Living Vampire’s debut for being so terrible.
If the studio was willing to do that, then the prospect of having Spider-Man 3 rejigged and sent back out into the wild with some additional footage can’t be discounted by any means, even though the company’s status as the only one of Hollywood’s “Big Five” studios without an in-house streaming service does create a potential roadblock to making this dream become a reality.