Despite decades of publishing and thousands of comics, Spider-Man’s time on the big screen has only seen a handful of his villains make it into a movie (the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day may change that in a major way). Though there’s been only some overlap between the different versions of the character in film, some of the villains have been done justice with regard to how comic book readers always saw them. Others, however, failed to clear the bar with fans and have left a sour taste behind with how poorly they were treated.
There are two villains that come to mind with this: Sandman in the Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man 3 and Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Though both villains returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home and got a little bit of a more accurate treatment, it still wasn’t enough to overcome how badly they were adapted before. Now, though, the two villains are set to be reinvented in the upcoming Spider-Noir TV series, and it could become the exact thing needed to make them great villains again.
Spider-Man Noir Can Redeem Sandman and Electro
As fans recall, both of these villains were given the short end of the stick in their previous live-action appearances. Sandman in Spider-Man 3, for example, was played by Thomas Haden Church on the big screen, but was pushed to the side in favor of bringing Venom into the film as well. As a result, the antagonist doesn’t get a lot to do and has to play second fiddle to an even worse version of another villain. The Electro played by Jamie Foxx in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 marked a Batman & Robin-like destruction of the character in terms of origin, looks, and menace.
Spider-Noir will see Boardwalk Empire‘s Jack Huston playing the role of Flint Marko, aka Sandman, while an unknown actor is set to play Electro in the series. There’s an immediate advantage to these two villains being used in the series, and it’s that the fandom is well aware of how poorly they were treated in previous adaptations. More important than that, though, and the thing that will immediately make these versions more interesting, is that Spider-Noir has eight episodes, meaning it can commit more time to the development of these villains as actual characters. This was one of the biggest complaints about both characters in the feature films, and it’s an advantage that Spider-Noir has in its favor.
Another major criticism of these two villains in their original movies was how they interacted with their fellow ne’er-do-wells in the movies, which includes the fact that they’re forced into a team-up in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Spider-Man villains have long had a history of working together, both begrudgingly or enthusiastically, but neither of these villains had interesting team-ups in live-action, a major element that Spider-Noir can fix.
Spider-Man Noir May Create the Template for Some Villains
Sandman and Electro aren’t the only villains from Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery that will appear, but to make it more interesting, some of the others that will appear are making their live-action debut. Spider-Noir will also include Brendan Gleeson as the gangster, Silvio Silvermane, while Li Jun Lee is playing a character called Cat Hardy, clearly the Spider-Noir version of Black Cat.
As surprising as it might be that neither of these villains has been on the big screen (technically Felicity Jones played Hardy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as well, but didn’t suit up), it gives Spider-Noir the chance to make a great first impression. Some fans will come to the series with preconceived notions about these two antagonists, but for many it will be the first time they’re encountering them at all, even if they are a multiversal variant from a film noir world. Spider-Noir can set the tone for Black Cat as a character who walks the line between hero and villain, while also making it clear that Silvermaine is one of the great gangster characters from Marvel comics.
The one thing holding this back, though, is that Spider-Noir has some constraints put on it. With the series being set in a world that is reminiscent of the 1930s, that means a character like Silvermaine may never get to the place that many comic fans know him for: his robot body. Furthermore, “Cat Hardy” could make it clear that a comic-accurate Black Cat may be planned for the big screen, so the series had to make adjustments. In any event, Spider-Noir has great potential to not only reveal the possibility for an alternate Marvel Earth as a storytelling device, but in finally giving Spider-Man fans the villains that they recognize.