https://imgur.com/a/QCiSY0q

As of recent news spread, Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures failed to reach an agreement to renew their collaboration for Spider-Man movies. Entire Spider-Man communities have been stormed with skepticism to say the least, and hopelessness and desperation to say the worst, even though "over-reaction" would be the best fitting word.

As usual in our days and age, everything must become a Twitter hash tag, an internet trend, various kind of reactions spread throughout the net, Instagram accounts being delirious and YouTube videos filled with indignation and regret. And all of this not because the Brazilian government is still cutting the Amazonian Forest or large Chunks of the Siberian region is burning or hundreds of desperate people are dying in the Mediterranean sea or any other kind of natural and human disaster is happening somewhere on planet Earth. No, all of this because the most popular fictional character ever created is no longer part of the, arguably, greatest commercial success in silverscreen's history.
#savespiderman here, #savespiderman there.

As if Spider-Man ever needed Marvel Studios to save him.
As if people could pretend to ignore historical facts, like Spider-Man's movie right being sold in 1998 from Marvel to Sony in order to get out of chapter seven and save themselves from bankruptcy. Not only that, but Marvel offered the entirety of their characters to Sony, but Sony executives refused as they believed that only Spider-Man was worth the effort and the money. It was a bad, short-sighted move, a mistake that benefitted Marvel in the long run as they were capable of re-establish their wealth and later founding one of the greatest and most successful Hollywood studio ever made.

With this piece I don't want to defend Sony Pictures, nor condemn Marvel Studios. Both of them are financial Juggernauts and their best interest is money, not the millions of fans in the world. For sure, in 2015 when the deal went through, Sony and Marvel didn't seek each other just to give the fans what they wanted and please their comic book power fantasy. Money was the sole reason that deal happened. Sony got a lot of greens from the five solo movies they developed from 2002 to 2014, but they realized that they could get more by cooperating with Disney-owned Marvel Studios. Marvel, on the other hand, realized how incomplete felt their cinematograpic universe without its main hero, the most popular, recognized and loved character of their stable. It was the perfect marriage for both parties. A timed marriage, however. The moment the agreement was signed and officialized, destiny - or for better saying- Business' clock started to ticking down. The agreement was made to let Sony catch their breath after the negative feedback that the Amazing Spider-Man 2 received from fans and press in 2014.
Sony desperately needed to rebuild a long lost virginity with the fanbase of the character, Marvel needed Spider-Man to give some authority and credibility to their MCU. That agreement however had its ends. The moment the character would become bankable again, Sony would take him back. That was the deal both parties signed and agreed on.

So, as you can see, the problem does not lie with the percentages as many pseudo-news sites falsely reported. Nor it is a problem concerning the quality of the movies. The core, the heart, the very centre of the whole situation lies in the kind of deal that was signed. It may resemble a monkey paw wish, maybe Sony lacked some good will or maybe Marvel shot too early, too much, aiming at the moon.

It doesn't matter.
Spider-Man doesn't need to be saved from anyone. One could debate whether the Marvel Studios labeled movies were better than Sony's ones or viceversa. But one thing is for sure, Spider-Man will always be there. Where? Top of the mountain, top billing superhero, a brand of his own, the one kind that makes oneself wonder if is Spider-Man that holds Marvel afloat and not viceversa.
Fans' overreacting isn't something totally new, and it is reasonable enough, especially when you have the allegedly most popular fictional character ever made. The fanbase was dissatisfied to say the least when the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon show was canceled after two seasons met with overwhelming good reception from both critics and audience.
Despite Spider-Man 3's shortcomings, many people were saddened by the lack of a proper ending to the Raimi trilogy and the lack of a fourth chapter that, against all odds, entered pre-production phase.
And Spider-Man fans were disappointed even when the game studios behind Spider-Man: Web of Shadows was shut down and their highly anticipated sequel was canned by Activision.
But what about comic books? After the One More Day disaster, the Dan Slott era begun. It was a very controversial direction taken by Slott, but Spidey came back on top of the food chain after years of disappointing sales.
Even after Slott's run started to fade, the current run by Nick Spencer, ten years later, brought back a lot of enthusiasm and interest even in the old paper format.

What I am trying to say, you may wonder?

That the entertainment business has patterns. Some more predictable than others. Spider-Man is a character created in 1962 (eons ago if we consider that the character might be older than any of his fans and that he survived all his three creators- Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and the often forgotten Jack Kirby who designed most of the costume and penciled the very first cover of a Spider-Man story), with the first multimedia release being the 1966 cartoon.
Since then Spider-Man has had many ups and downs (the former being far more than the latter), some of them being more dramatic and more deserving of attention, like the aforementioned 1997-1999 almost-bankruptcy of Marvel, or the bad press gained by stories like Sins Past and One More Day, or the bad video games the characters received before the 2018 masterpiece made by Insomniac (under Sony banner, ironically) or the even worse cartoon series like this current one or the abysmal ultimate Spider-Man.

Spider-Man survived all of this and was left unscathed. Every other intellectual property would be dead or gravely wounded by this time.
No. Spider-Man always get up and Fought back. For every bad story or stalling writer's run the character has received, it was counterbalanced by some Kraven's Last Hunt, Loeb's Blue, The Night Gwen Stacy died, etc.
For every bad cartoon show, Spider-Man got Spectacular and the Animated Series. For every Spider-Man friend or foe there was a Spider-Man PS4.
It happened so many times in the past that the fanbase has nothing to fear about. This is a clear pattern
Whenever Spider-Man failed, he came back stronger and better than before in a way that only art imitating life (and not viceversa!) could do.

As everything else Spider-Man related, Sony win/lose ratio is not that bad after all. The first two Raimi movies, alongside Bryan Singer's X-men flicks and 1999 Blade starring Wesley Snipes literally created the concept of the current superhero movie formula.
The first Amazing Spider-Man was somewhat decent and still respected by the audience.
Amazing Spider-Man 2 is undeniably a bad movie, but it had a very epic and grim final act and Gwen Stacy's character was given justice after Raimi failed to prove himself brave enough to use her and her father as something more than talking cameos.
More recently, Sony had two major hits with Venom (2018)and the animated Into the Spider-Verse, which won an Oscar and put an end over Disney's dominating streak at the Academy Awards.

In other words, Sony has everything needed to pull on by itself a solo, successful Spider-Man movie capable of reaching a billion in the box office. This, of course, taking into account the worst case scenario, which is not set stone yet.
Nothing, as of right now, impedes Sony and Marvel to reach for another agreement, maybe in a month or two, when hot temperamental egos and internet outrage will be cooled down.
Sony and Marvel are still negotiating. Even though the negotiations should go south, something I personally doubt as it would collide with everyone's interests, Sony could still pull a wild card from the sleeve and make a solo Tom Holland movie sharing the screen with the well-received Venom portrayed by Tom Hardy. Avoidance or carefully wording dialogs hinting at other Marvel heroes will be needed, but a Peter Parker finally capable of freeing himself from the emotional burden of Tony Stark and embracing adulthood and maturity could be a very well needed change. After all Peter Parker will not be a teenager for ever. He will not be a shadow of Iron man forever.

Anticipating the coming-of-age aspect of the character wouldn't be too damaging, as the loyal MCU fanbase will be mostly, well, still loyal, while old timers and "purists" of the character, disappointed by the many and often unneeded changes made in the MCU lore, will find a new reason to come back sitting in the theater after so many years.

So Spider-Man will survive. The negotiations are still on. A reboot is not necessary. Either way we're going to have our daily allowance of Spider-Man merchandise, made of paper, celluloid, plastic or pixels. In other words, the world is still spinning, the sky is still blue and nobody is caring enough about the Amazonian or the Siberian or the Mediterranean.