The cast-list on both of these movies is looking pretty staggering right now…
2020 will mark the first year since 2009 that we won’t be getting a Marvel movie in the cinemas, but 2021 will be more than making up for that, with the arrivals of Black Widow (May), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (July), and Eternals (November).
There is also the currently untitled third Spider-Man movie due before the year is out, and this week has been absolutely bananas in terms of the casting news for that movie.
On top of the returning main cast from Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far From Home – Tom Holland, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, Jacob Batalon – the movie is also set to be folding in Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), ahead of his own sequel, the Multiverse of Madness, due in March 2022.
However, it was also announced that Jamie Foxx would be returning for the role of Electro, last seen in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which featured a different actor (Andrew Garfield) playing Peter Parker. But that’s okay, because rumour has it that Garfield is also set to play a role in the upcoming threequel.
As is the original blockbuster Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), alongside the original MJ (Kirsten Dunst), and most recently announced, Alfred Molina is set to reprise the role of Doctor Octopus, last seen in Spider-Man 2, as well as Charlie Cox as Daredevil, from the Netflix show!
The presence of Doctor Strange and all of this past and present Spider-Men and various generations of villains would indicate that the plot is going down a path quite similar to the Oscar-winning Into The Spider-Verse, which featured many different timelines of the Spider-Man story coming together to defeat and inter-dimensional threat.
It all makes for an epic-sounding and potentially mind-boggling big-screen story, but also sounds similar to what DC have cooking in their kitchen…
To be fair, the DC timeline is a bit of a mess right now. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker isn’t the same as Jared Leto’s Joker from Suicide Squad (and the soon-to-be-released four-hour-long re-edit of Justice League), which may not be the same Joker that could be found in Robert Pattinson’s upcoming take on The Batman.
2021’s The Suicide Squad isn’t exactly a sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad, but it does feature actors playing the same characters in both movies, and thinking about what is connected to what else makes our brains hurt a bit.
The best thing to do is to reset the timeline in some manner, and that is exactly what it sounds like will happen with the upcoming movie based around Ezra Miller’s version of The Flash. He was also last seen in Justice League, and his standalone movie is reportedly set to feature both Micheal Keaton and Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne (side note: Keaton could ALSO appear in Spider-Man 3 as the Vulture, just FYI).
This would indicate that the movie will be developing elements from the famous Flashpoint story arc from the comics, which is essentially another messing-with-the-timelines plot that brings together several versions of the same characters in to the same reality.
A lot of the above is still subject to rumour and confirmation, but…. yeah, it does appear that both Marvel and DC are essentially making the same movie at the same time. And quite frankly, we can’t wait to get back into the cinema and see them both.
Spider-Man 3 is set for Irish cinemas on 17 December 20201, while The Flash is currently due to arrive in Irish cinemas on 4 November 2022.
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