It wouldn’t be a month out of the year, if Marvel wasn’t finding away to make a splash in the news. As films begin to pick up steam in the production department, it makes sense that something big would come along before the year was out. However you feel about learning when WandaVision is set to strike in 2021, that’s not the kind of news that sends shockwaves cross the internet. Now, a former Spider-Man foe rearing his goggle-wearing head once again, is exactly that kind of news.
The Hollywood Reporter has a small article today confirming a rather big scoop: Alfred Molina is returning as Dr. Otto Octavius. Doc Ock, if he’s your nemesis. His joining the picture makes him the 2nd former bad guy, after Jamie Foxx revealed Electro was coming back, to make the jump from a previous iteration of the web-slinger’s exploits. The news continues to make, whatever this Spider-Man 3 ends up being called, one of the more interesting films under the Marvel banner…er, quasi-banner. The Spider-man picture, of course, technically belongs with Columbia/Sony (thank James Bond for that. No, really). With their “letting” Marvel have the character appear in the MCU, but raking in the cash for themselves. It also easily allows someone like Alfred Molina to return to the wonderfully villainous role he played to perfection in Spider-Man 2.
A move like this comes at a fun, but weird, time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 2020 was without a big release due to Covid-19. The last film to hit theaters, strangely enough, was Spider-Man: Far From Home and served as the close of Phase 3. That left the future of Phase 4 uncertain. A future whose plan involved folding television shows (WandaVision) into the world of the movies. In order to tell a massive all-encompassing story. From the look of things, the overarching aspect will be Parallel Universes. Something plainly obvious when you connect all the web strands. Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is set to play Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) next mentor of sorts. His next film happens to be entitled Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness. Where he to have a co-star in Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) herself. Coincidence? I think not.
Those wanting to bet on possible speculation that massive “House of M” adaptation of sorts is underway, should place said bets now.
What’s most intruiging about bringing Molina’s Doc Ock back into the folk, is how he’s used. Though he is the main antagonist of Spider-Man 2, he ends on more lucid and relatively sane state of being. Also drowning underwater, but ignore that. Given his advance intellect and relationship with Peter Parker, his involvement may not actually be that of a villain. At the same time, anything could be the case. Marvel likes keeping things as secretive as they can. Until they show us some footage or tell us the plot of the movie, everyone’s right until proven wrong. So what’s your wildest guess as to how Otto gets tied up in the young webhead’s latest shenanigans?
