By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Willem Dafoe played the most iconic Spider-Man villain long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe even existed. As Green Goblin, he menaced our titular hero in Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man film, and he later returned to the role to haunt Tom Holland’s Spidey in No Way Home. Recently, the actor confirmed that he’d be willing to come back yet again (“I could come back,” he told Entertainment Tonight), but the blunt truth is that Willem Dafoe returning to the MCU would be a huge mistake.
Willem Dafoe In The MCU
This isn’t a slight against Dafoe himself. He is a magnificent actor and long ago earned his status as a Hollywood legend. Frankly, it was a real coup for Raimi to cast the man for his original Spider-Man film, and the veteran actor managed to channel equal amounts of pathos and mania in his performance as Peter Parker’s greatest foe. Willem Dafoe’s acting skills have never been in question, but if he were to return to the MCU, it would signal 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 superhero fatigue played a part in transforming The Marvels into a historic box office bomb, Kevin Feige and crew decided to play a safety and inexplicably cast beloved Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, the Avengers’ next Big Bad. Now, there are reports that Chris Evans will also return in Avengers: Doomsday, making it clear that Disney’s entire plan is to bring everyone’s favorite performers back and simply hope this puts butts in seats.
Various Variants
And as cool as Willem Dafoe’s MCU premiere was in No Way Home, it’s important to note that all the storytelling about Variants is a symptom of Marvel’s larger narrative problem. While the comics have given us great stories built around alternate universes and Sony’s Spiderverse has demonstrated how well this can work in film, the MCU has historically relied on Variants as a simplified way to appeal to fanboy nostalgia. After all, why should you take the time to write a good story if audiences will mostly care about whether they get to see Patrick Stewart as Professor X again?
At the risk of sounding like an old crank (get off my lawn, younger fans!), audiences need to remember that every time a Variant is used as a storytelling crutch, it is because an overpaid Disney writer didn’t want to come up with a memorable new villain or an engaging story. This is why all the old-school cameos are the worst part of No Way Home; it’s fun to see multiple Spideys team up onscreen, but there is narratively no purpose in Tom Holland’s webhead fighting bad guys from another universe whom he never encountered.
While it was fun to see Willem Dafoe in the MCU, he’s arguably the worst example of this. Instead of Holland’s Spidey getting a memorable new villain like Vulture or Mysterio, he got Tobey Maguire’s leftovers. Emotionally, the only way this movie changed Peter Parker is by killing off his aunt, something that could have been done by any bad guy. No Way Home was generally well-received by fans, but it’s a movie powered by member berries, and outside of our nostalgia for these vintage Sony heroes and villains, there’s not much there there for our actual hero and his world.
Willem Dafoe has expressed an interest in returning to the MCU, and he’d probably act his heart out if given even half an opportunity. But he shouldn’t ever return because Disney needs to learn to stop leaning on nostalgia and multiversal shenanigans to compensate for their inability to offer us anything new. It’s time for the House of Mouse to throw the member berries out like an old pumpkin bomb and try doing the kind of original storytelling that made the Marvel Cinematic Universe one of the most popular franchises in the world.
Source: ET Online