By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Willem Dafoe played the iconic Spider-Man long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe existed. As the Green Goblin, he attacked our beloved hero in Sam Raimi’s first Spider Man film, and later returned to the role to tackle Tom Holland’s Spidey No Way Home. Recently, the actor confirmed that he would like to come back again (“I would come back,” he told Entertainment Tonight), but the truth is that Willem Dafoe returning to the MCU would be a big mistake.
Willem Dafoe in the MCU
This is not a slight against Dafoe himself. He is an amazing actor and has long earned his status as a Hollywood legend. In fact, it was a real coup for Raimi to cast this man for his debut Spider Man film, and the veteran actor manages to channel equal amounts of pathos and mania into his performance as Peter Parker’s arch-nemesis. Willem Dafoe’s acting skills have never been in question, but if he were to return to the MCU, it would prove once and for all that Disney is running out of original ideas.
At this point, even the biggest Marvel fans are starting to admit that the House of Ideas has… well, run out of ideas. After the exhaustion of the great hero took part in the transformation Miracles in a historic box office bomb, Kevin Feige and crew decided to play it safe and cast the beloved Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, the next Big Bad of the Avengers. Now, there are reports that Chris Evans will also return Avengers: Doomsdaywhich makes it clear that the whole plan of Disney is to bring back everyone’s favorite actors and you just hope that this puts the butts in the seats.
Different varieties
And it’s as good as Willem Dafoe’s MCU debut No Way Homeit’s important to note that all the storytelling around diversity is symptomatic of Marvel’s larger narrative problem. While the comics have given us some great stories set in other worlds and Sony’s Spiderverse has shown how well this can work on film, the MCU has historically relied on The Different as an easy way to appeal to fanboy nostalgia. After all, why take the time to write a great story if the audience will care if they get to see Patrick Stewart as Professor X again?
At the risk of sounding like an old crank (get off my lawn, little fans!), audiences need to remember that every time a variant is used as a storytelling medium, it’s because an overpaid Disney writer didn’t want to appear. and a new memorable villain or engaging story. That’s why all the old school cameos are the worst part No Way Home; it’s nice to see more Spideys coming together on screen, but narratively there’s no point in Tom Holland’s webhead fighting bad guys from another universe he’s never met.
While it was great to see Willem Dafoe in the MCU, he is arguably the worst example of this. Instead of Holland’s Spidey getting a memorable new villain like Vulture or Mysterio, he got what’s left of Tobey Maguire. Emotionally, the only way this movie changed Peter Parker was to kill his aunt, something any villain would do. No Way Home it’s generally well received by fans, but it’s a movie powered by the members’ berries, and aside from our longing for these classic Sony heroes and villains, there’s not much there about our real hero and his world.
Willem Dafoe has expressed an interest in returning to the MCU, and he might sing his heart out if given half a chance. But he shouldn’t come back because Disney needs to learn to stop relying on nostalgia and various shenanigans to compensate for their inability to give us something new. It’s time for the House of Mouse to toss the berries around like an old pumpkin bomb and try to do the kind of storytelling that has made the Marvel Cinematic Universe one of the most popular franchises in the world.
Source: ET Online
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