Yes, we're all excited about the news and thinking about how amazing Spider-Man could be now that Marvel have a hand on it. But now that the dust is settled, the question has to be asked, is getting Spider-Man back home really a great idea? Here are some points that might possibly (hopefully not) change your mind:
1. Civil War
Upon knowing that Civil War was going to be adapted in the MCU, a lot of us claimed: "but they can't do that without Spider-Man! He plays a pivotal role there!" But then we started thinking how that would play out. Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man? Not possible. Specially since the Avengers defeated the Chitauri in NY, plus the universes don't even fit together. New Peter Parker? Not possible, Sony wouldn't allow two different versions of the same character in the cinemas. Miles Morales? Not likely (more on that later), plus, if you're recasting the role going in a different direction, you can just switch the characters for someone else. And on top of that, Marvel's version is not about the secret identities. The biggest thing that happened in Civil War, specially for the Spidey's fans, was watching him reveal his identity for the first time ever. This story is not about it, it's about superheroes working for the goverment and has nothing to do with identity. The script is written. So now they either have to rewrite everything with production almost starting, rushing things so nothing gets delayed (specially now that they added a Spider-Man movie to their Phase 3), or just shoehorn Spider-Man somewhere in the movie.
2. New Spider-Man solo movie
I for once was really looking forward to see Sony's plans for Spider-Man. Not because I thought they had good plans (althought I didn't really hate TASM2 as much as some people) but because if they were releasing a movie by 2016 or 2017, it was probably going to be terrible. Statistically at least you could see how everything pointed that the next Spidey movie was going to be the lowest grossing movie of them all. People would've gotten sick of the way they were using the character. Sony wouldn't risk producing another Spidey film, letting the character die and the rights to return to Marvel. Most MCU actors contracts would've been expiring by then and both the MCU and the audience would've been ready to see a new take of Spider-Man, with Marvel properly fitting him in their next phase.
3. Avengers Infinity Wars
There are so many superheroes right now in the MCU that they can do something as big as Civil War and they're now introducing a ton more characters (in tv, Netflix and movies). They can either not put them all there, which would be a huge thumbs down for them, or risking having a mega bloated couple of movies, where none of the characters have enough screen time just to have a ton of them, similar to what happens in X-Men, which is obviously controlled by Fox and Marvel can do a better job than them any day of the week, but think about it, there are not a ton of very important X-Men other than the main team and Fox can't even do that right, wouldn't it be a similar challenge for Marvel to make all those superheroes work in the same way with just two movies, specially when it took not only a ton of Civil War comics to pull that simpler story off, but also every issue of the superheroes' titles at the time to tell that story? Spider-Man is a big character and even if we see him in a support role he'll still have as much presence as Iron Man or Captain America
4. Peter Parker?
A lot of people agree that Andrew Garfield is the quintessential Peter Parker. He loves the character so much and you can really tell in his performance. His whole character (personality, movements, costume, etc...) is probably the only reason even hardcore fans kinda liked TASM2, even if nothing else was done properly. Marvel, however, would never use Garfield, specially since they want to distanciate from Sony's movies.Probably the only way they could actually do that is if they use Miles Morales, but that's not going to happen for two reasons:
a) Most people would go like "who? That's not Spider-Man! He's not black!". It's one thing to do a Guardians of the Galaxy move, where you take some characters no one knows anything about and tweak them to make an amazing movie and another to take a larger-than-life character and change his whole identity and motivation, presumably with a new origin story.
b) Miles Morales is temporary. As every superhero including his counterpart twice from the main Marvel universe, Peter just got a break so we could see another guy take over the mantle. Why would Marvel use a temporary replacement (which by the way has already ended in the Ultimate comics with Peter's return) for their main, more-profitable cinematic universe? They can't even sell more comics of Miles Morales if they went that way without creating a new series for him!
After thinking all that I was hoping they wouldn't get the rights and Sony would just recast the role with Miles Morales for TASM3, taking attention further away from Peter Parker so Marvel could use him properly. I want to clarify something though: I really want this to work. Spider-Man is my favorite character and I'd love to see a movie where it's all done properly. I really want this to come and bite me in the butt in a couple of years and go out of the cinema saying "holy crap Marvel's done it again", but right now I just don't see that happening.
So now that you know this, what do you think? Do you think Marvel will be up to the test that lies ahead or do you think it will fall short?