NOTE: THIS PIECE CONTAINS MINOR PLOT SPOILERS FOR SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY
It’s a recurring bit with my friends that I’m not a fan of the current state of superhero films. To me, a lot of it is “dunk, rinse, repeat” in terms of story. Superhero faces an issue – whether personally or some foe, superhero punches the issue away, the world is saved once again. “Woah, I can do this now?,” “You did it superperson! You beat evilass!” And my personal favorite “wow, THAT just happened.” Even superhero things attempting to satirize the genre become the very thing they were satirizing. It is incredibly tiring, and most people line up because these studios take advantage of the nostalgia and adoration fans have for these characters or the story being adapted. It’s disgusting! So hear me when I say that this new superhero film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is actually pretty good!
Now, I have a soft spot for stories involving a) Batman orb) Spider-Man. And that’s usually because the stories are relatively contained. Batman is a rich guy whose enemies and capabilities are certainly fantastical, but his own grief is the drive of his morals and compassion. It is seen in a way that I can’t relate to like Superman or whichever other tragic hero may have experienced. Spider-Man is a fantastical kid, but is also incredibly scrappy and smart. He’s relatable, despite the unrelatable abilities – that’s what makes him work. Hell, I’ve seen all of the films that feature these guys and played all of the video games that stars them multiple times. They’re grounded, relatively easy to digest, and the varying degrees of seriousness add enough intrigue for repeat visits.
Lately, the Marvel formula for Spider-Man is to put him in these insane situations that have to have some form of connection to the greater Marvel picture. Why? Because profit, of course. Spider-Man generates great stockholder value and, when placed in varying films, the film blasts off financially. But lately, Marvel has not been on the pioneering trend. They have seemed to hit a financial wall with their other properties – so what do they do? Take charge of the steering wheel and drive it all back to Spider-Man, and the immediate profit that comes with this beloved character. Naturally, because of this, I was incredibly pessimistic about this new entry as it seemed to be another attempt to grab at whatever financial straws they could still pull from. So when the movie came out and it was a more grounded, street driven Spider-Man picture, I couldn’t tell you how surprised I was.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a good picture! The scrappy, street-level hero works best for this iteration of Spider-Man. Once you take Spider-Man into space or the multiverse, you lose the heart of the familial relationship with Aunt May, the friend group dynamic, and the simpler crime approach for the sake of some devastating world altering event. In this film, Spider-Man’s feet are firmly placed in New York City (even if they are on the walls or ceiling), not in some other universe, or some other city, or other country – New York City’s character is as important as Spider-Man himself. There is always room for adaptation, but it makes no sense to remove the setting from the character while maintaining the setting for the character.
If I had to really drive it down what made parts of Spider-Man: Brand New Day NOT work, it would have to be when it shows its MCU baggage. Now, the slight interactions between existing MCU characters weren’t that bad. The Florence Pugh bit, despite not having seen Thunderbolts*, still worked because it relied exclusively on the matter at hand. The same thing with The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) – their focus was on the matter at hand and not this overarching story. But when it introduces new elements that will extend past this film, that’s where the film comes to a screeching halt. Which is unfortunate, the main drive of that point, Sadie Sink, was done well. Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey is an interesting, tragic character, but takes away from the Spider-Man of it all. It makes this film 50% a Spider-Man film, and 50% set up. It muddles the entirety of the film and, while the ethos are retained, it loses the feel it established early on.
Obviously, Jean Grey and The X-Men are the next cash cow Marvel Studios is feverishly waiting to milk until it runs the property dry. And by including Grey in this film in the manner they did, you lose a lot of the heart that made the beginning of the film great. By the end of the nearly two and a half hour runtime, it felt laborious. Clearly, they had to ensure that their current profit machine, Spider-Man, was safe and sound, and their future money maker, Jean Grey, could be properly set up and that everything in this narrative was tied up. Does it accomplish all of this? Yes, but not in a clean way. The film was start and stop and had some fun moments throughout but it never felt like a properly gelled narrative. Even in the other Spider-Man films, the momentum crashes once the in-universe connective tissue has to be laid out. It’s a shame that this is the case here, because the opening moments of Spider-Man: Brand New Day were incredibly exciting and fun to watch.
I won’t go on a limb and say that this film was bad, and Marvel Studios has to keep the train moving. So I can understand why they did what they did, but the heavy handedness is the issue. The moments when you see Spider-Man taking care of local crime or beating smaller organized crime groups is what gave this film heart and vigor. Even in other Spider-Man properties – the films and video games alike – the local and more grounded approaches is what made them shine. Hell, people HATE The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but at least that movie felt like a movie with purpose. The opening moments of Spider-Man: Brand New Day had that same sensation, and the motifs and visual cues lifted from Insomniac Studio’s Spider-Man games fit this overall aesthetic. The introduction to some greater universe purpose kills what the film started.
After the credits, there is a post-credits scene (of course), and it introduces either some off-world Spider-Man reprisal (Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, or both) or that Tom Holland is once again going to space. And honestly, whatever it is, it isn’t any of my business to find out. The ‘basics’ is what gives Spider-Man heart, and this extra nonsense is just some new stimulation for Marvel. Whose success may not be replicated again as Spider-Man is an American staple and Avengers: Doomsday is the culmination of nothing substantial. If there is a way to make all of these things gel together, they haven’t found it yet. By the end of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, I was wishing we stuck with the opening bits for the entire slog of a runtime that we had. But, we’ll have to just take whatever nonsense the Feige machine is cooking next, I suppose.
