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So due to forces beyond our control, Steve and I recorded our Nintendo E3 podcast on a weaker machine. Audacity was incapable of keeping up with the recording, and so I’d say 80% of the podcast was filled with gaps of conversation, where mid-sentence Steve or I would suddenly interrupt ourselves with a point several sentences down the line. It was almost impossible for me to decipher what and where the conversation was, and would have been impossible for someone that would not have been an active participant. A shame, as the conversation truly was worthy of being our fiftieth episode.

While our conversation on Spider-Man: Far From Home is a good one – or so I’d like to think – it also feels like any other episode. So perhaps we’ll try something special for our fifty-first.

We’re at an interesting point with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We’re also at a frustrating point with film – and geek – fandom. The first thing I heard about Far From Home was that it was “doing poorly at the Box Office”. This is no doubt fueled by the speculation that a movie needs to make X times its budget in order to be considered a success, and domestically the latest web-slinging adventure has failed to account for double. However, that’s pretty common for Hollywood these days, as the bulk of the cash is in the International market. In this regard, Spider-Man: Far From Home is currently over $850 million in sales.

This would be good news, but rumor is that this film has to cross the $1 billion mark or else the film rights revert to Sony. Evidently Marvel has creative control over the character and the content of the film, but Sony is the one bank-rolling the film, handling distribution, and spending the money on marketing.

So those that are hoping for bad news for the MCU are twisting the story around. Spider-Man: Far From Home is performing well and indicates that Marvel’s super heroes could still be going strong. There’s no sense of fatigue yet according to the box office. Even if the film fails to achieve the $1 billion requisite, it could be in Sony’s best interests to maintain their relationship with Marvel anyway. The final box office for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was around $700 million, which will be significantly lower than Far From Home by time it exits theaters. Venom managed to perform surprisingly well, but it’s final box office was just a bit behind Far From Home’s current count, which is not final. It’s pretty clear that a Spider-Man film in the MCU has a higher chance of success than yet another reboot.

Nevertheless, Spider-Man is also a different quantity compared to the rest of Marvel’s remaining headlining characters. How much do people truly like Doctor Strange? Will his sequel butts to seats? Is it considered an insult that Falcon and Winter Soldier are being shoved onto Disney’s new streaming service rather than giving them their own movie? Of course, Disney’s purchasing of competitor Fox could no doubt be seen as a move to try and bolster said service, hoping to make a proper competitor to Netflix. Disney clearly has their eyes on the future, and by moving two of their “second generation Avengers” onto a subscription-based platform could be their move to try and slowly shift their focus out of the risky business of the silver screen. Or, if I were to put my MCU Haters hat on, is this just a tactic to have fewer men on screen so Marvel’s slate of female heroes can come on board and claim the spotlight? We know Taika Waititi is directing Thor 4, but will it be Chris Hemsworth standing tall as the Norse God of Thunder?

It is too early to say, and even as someone that is not a fan of Marvel’s current comic line-up – though really, I’m far more a fan of manga and independent comics at this stage than either DC or Marvel – I trust the creatives at Marvel to do a good job. They’ve proven to have a stable pulse on, yes, the Internet, but also on the average movie-goer that simply has too much going on in their life to even pay attention to or be aware of the culture wars turning Twitter into a no-(wo)man’s-land.

Regardless, I’m curious to see where the universe goes from here, even if I cannot promise to be in the theater seats every time.

Did you get to see Spider-Man: Far From Home? Any thoughts on the future of the MCU? Feel free to comment below, or send us an e-mail with your thoughts.

Opening theme music by my buddy Brandon, a.k.a. Fallen Prophecy.