Nostalgia loop: it's time for Sony to get Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back in their Spidey suits | Ben Child

"In many ways the entirety of geek culture certainly as far as the movies are concerned is built on giving the people what they want. The Flash exhumed Michael Keaton's Batman, but left him drifting through the end-of-days haze of a dying cinematic universe. Hugh Jackman's Wolverine returned for one last hurrah in Deadpool & Wolverine, even though we already had his last hurrah in Logan. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness brought back Patrick Stewart's Professor X for the umpteenth time,"

"Has there ever been a better cinematic Spider-Man villain than Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin? Did any of the Marvel films give us an antagonist with the same startling blend of pathos and menace as that delivered by Alfred Molina's Doc Oc? And what about Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, the two wall-crawlers we never thought we'd see again, who somehow turned a fan-service cameo into an elegy for the superhero genre itself?"

"So buzzy was that crowd-pleasing film that it seemed as if the pair were destined to return, if not in continuing adventures within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then surely in episodes that followed on from their own brutally curtailed timelines in the Sam Raimi and Marc Webb films. But it's now been the best part of four years since Maguire and Garfield became viral saints of multiverse sentimentality digital messiahs for a genre already gasping for air beneath the weight of its own nostalgic excess."

Geek culture in movies prioritizes nostalgic returns of beloved characters, frequently reviving legacy heroes and villains across cinematic universes. The Flash resurrected Michael Keaton's Batman but left him adrift; Hugh Jackman's Wolverine briefly returned despite Logan serving as his farewell; Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness brought back Patrick Stewart's Professor X only to destroy him. Spider-Man: No Way Home reunited Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, delivering potent nostalgia and elegy for the superhero genre. Since then, Maguire and Garfield have remained largely absent while Sony's spin-offs—Madame Web, Morbius, Kraven the Hunter—failed to capture comparable audience interest.

Read at www.theguardian.com