u/CrazyFinnishdude

https://preview.redd.it/h4poh0wlghgg1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f27355faf2a5bd8ef6c1579c4c65a12b7bd080f

Everyone always looks down on this costume and talks up how silly it looks, but I completely unironically love it! Easily Magneto's best live-action look thus far. It basically takes the original comic book costume and reinvents it from "supervillain costume" to "Bond villain costume".

And the helmet. Oh God, the helmet has never looked this great in a movie before or since.

I think the problem with it is that we never got to see it in a cool context. The one time we see it, Fassbender is just standing kind of awkwardly, not even saying anything particularly cool. If he was wearing it during a big action scene, bad guy speech or just doing somehting more dynamic period, I feel it would have instantly gone over better. One of the many reasons why Matthew Vaughn should have been allowed to make a full First Class - trilogy, instead of bringing Singer back.

I guess for the sake of comparison I should go over quickly how I feel about Magneto's other live-action costumes.

The original trilogy costume is fine. Nothing mind-blowing, but easily the best costumed look any charcter had in those movies (black leather on X-Men suuuuuuuuucked) and the helmet redesign was pretty neat.

In Days of the Future Past, Future!Magneto looks just boring. Everything that's lame about Singer's X-Men costumes now affects him too. 70's Magneto is better, but without his helmet he would just look like someone wearing a purple paintball body armor.

Apocalypse costume is really ugly. Trying to be more comic book-y, but so overdesigned that it is just an eyesore.

I feel that the "costume" in Dark Phoenix shouldn't even count, but since someone will point it out, if I don't say anything, it is beyond nothingburger. Looks like what a Smallville knock-off X-Men tv-show would do with the character.

Just to be clear, I do think all the villains who got their own spin-offs movies are only/mainly compelling as Spider-Man villains (sorry, fans of the anti-hero Venom) and the very concept of giving them their own movies was basically doomed to fail. Well, at least artistically, can't deny that Venom made money and was succesful enough for a full trilogy.

Still, when I see people basically have the attitude of "if only they had featured Spider-Man...", I feel they kinda oversimplify the matter. Those movies had problems bigger than not having a Tom Holland cameo or the fact that they weren't retroactively shoved into the same continuity as Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man (although, purely in terms of quality, his two movies would fit right in). Even if you completely ignore the source material and judge these movies purely on the types of stories they were trying to tell, there were absolutely ways to make them better.

So, let me go through each of them and explain how their basic premises could have been done better. I'm also going to make a short list of movies that are either better versions of the kind of movie they were trying to be or examples of what they could have been. Partly because it gives some clear points of comparison and to emphasize that the biggest problems were with the execution, not necessarily with the basic premises.

Venom

Yes, Venom has a giant spider logo on his chest and essentially shares Spider-Man's power set, so on the surface making a movie about him without Spider-Man does seem strange. But, if you strip away all of that, what are you left with? A combination of body-horror and monster movie, where an alien creature is taking you over and amplifying your worst impulses to feed on your emotions, and takes a physical form of a scary creature that eats people. And like all the best creature features, you can use the monster to be a metaphor for so many things, like a drug addiction, anger issues, self-destructive impulses or whatever else you wanted to explore.

And then you have a big third-act twist or sequel hook of "there's more than one of these things running around".

Movies like this, but better: The Fly (1986), Upgrade (2018), The Wolf Man (1941/2010), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).

Morbius

How many vampire movies are there? A lot. And some of them have even been more action/blockbuster focused, with the lead themself being a vampire. Making a better version of this movie would not be hard. Heck, it could have been basically just a rip-off of Angel (the Joss Whedon tv-show), with fantsy elements replaced by sci-fi ones and it would have turned out better.

Movies like this, but better: Daybreakers (2009), Near Dark (1987), Vampire Hunter D (2000), Dracula's Daughter (1936).

Madame Web

This is admittedly the trickiest, because with so many spider-themed superhero characters being teased at the end, even the best version of this movie would probably have people saying "these are just lamer versions of Spider-Man". But if we remove all of that and just look at the very bare bones premise, it had potential. "A super-powered killer stalks a group of normal people" is already the basic plot of most slasher movies and giving the main lead (or "the final girl" in horror terms) premonition powers gives the thing a decent gimmick. She can predict the killer's attacks and keep the group alive longer, but they are still physically vulnerable and would die in a direct confrontation.

Movies like this, but better: The Terminator (1984), The Dead Zone (1983), It Follows (2014).

Kraven the Hunter

I mean, just make a basic-ass revenge thriller/action flick. There are even more examples of those than there are vampire films. I'm sure you could even use the animal motif in a more interesting way.

Movies like this, but better: Get Carter (1971), Crow (1994), Desperado (1995), Oldboy (2003), John Wick (2014).

And for the sake of discussion, let's presume that a bigger budget would mean "more room to have fun with the premise", not "more studio control and less creativity".

I personally would go with Evil Toons (1992). A horror-comedy, where the killer is a cartoon is just a genius idea, where you could have fun with mixing both horror and cartoon tropes. Say, the cartoon kills someone by dropping an anvil on them or one of the survivors tries to kill the cartoon by blowing up some gas cylinders, only for it to just get mildly covered in ash. This is unfortunately probably forever just pure fantasy, since a decent looking live-action/animation hybrid movie requires more money and time than most horror movies get and there's the extra hurdle of all big studios treating animation as something meant for kids.

Another one would be Night of the Comet (1984). Pretty decent movie, but the "post-apocalypse city as our playground" section of the story was clearly limited by the filming locations the crew had access to. Would be fun to see what this would look like, if their had less production limitations.