starkwest:

Taking away the fact that without Downey and his breakthrough performance as Iron Man there would be no MCU.

Taking away the fact that Iron Man and Spider-Man have a long and storied history together in the comics.

Taking away the fact that many (so very many) people on this and other sites like to do nothing but bitch and find fault with everything.

There is one fact that everyone seems to want to ignore:

Movie making is a business. It exists to make money. Holland is an untested actor entering into a multi billion dollar franchise. The powers that be want security of customer draw. Downey gives them that draw.

Secondly (and mostly importantly to the pissing contest of ‘my hero is better than yours’) when Sony and Marvel cut the deal to give Marvel back certain rights to the image and theatrical use of Peter Parker/Spider-Man codas were put in place that in the first solo outing of Spider-Man an ‘A’ list Avenger would appear in the movie. Sony (not being stupid and knowing as a stone cold fact that Downey would put thousands of asses in seats) asked for and received Iron Man. The reason it took so long to announce that Spider-Man was back in the Marvel fold is the same damn reason it took so long to announce that the Cap 3 title was Civil War: Marvel and Fiege had to go to Downey and ask him if he would consider amending his contract to appear in both movies. Downey didn’t ‘beg’ or ‘bully’ to be in either movie. He was pursed by the studio and all sources point to it being a not so easy task to convince him.

It took all of 20 mins research to uncover all this but by all means go ahead and spread all the hate and continue all the bickering because no matter what the result and the facts will remain the same.

Downey will be the one whose name will always come to mind when you mention Marvel to anyone in the general public (and remember that fandom is a very small portion of those ticket sales) and that is why Marvel pursues him. Because at the end of the day come flame wars or passionate meta monologues this franchise is about the bottom line and Downey makes that bottom line a lovely shade of black.

~west~