I haven’t paid much attention to the MCU Spider-Man. Thanks to Sony being stupid, Spider-Man: Homecoming was a good movie but it didn’t feel like Spider-Man since so much of his world was changed. I think this is the point where Marvel Studios started thinking loyalty to the source material was unnecessary, and with Disney owning Marvel and kicking out the people who made sure fans saw their favorite characters properly portrayed on screen. So I pretty much ignored all the other sequels going forward.
Still, I have a deadline and I’m finally getting a filler buffer together, so I don’t want to use it until I have enough to make me happy. So let’s look at the new trailer.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day begins what I’m assuming is a new title trend of using “day” in the title as they must ran out of titles for “home”. (Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home.) So instead they chose the worst name they could have. “Brand New Day” still has bad memories for Spider-Marriage fans. Maybe they should have workshopped Can’t Go Home? Hopefully they’re smart enough to not have the trend involve using old storyline names and aren’t planning to call the next one Clone Saga or Maximum Clonage. Seriously, Sony/Marvel, NO CLONES! EVER! At any rate, it’s not everyone forgetting Peter and Mary Jane’s wedding, as Peter and Michelle Jones (Temu MJ) were never married. After the events of No Way Home, Peter had Doctor Strange make everyone forget Peter Parker existed, leading to this movie.
Here’s the description of the movie from the official website (no pun intended):
After the record-breaking global success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spider-Man: Brand New Day marks an entirely new chapter for Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Four years have passed since the events of No Way Home, and Peter is now an adult living entirely alone, having voluntarily erased himself from the lives and memories of those he loves. Crime-fighting in a New York that no longer knows his name, he’s devoted himself entirely to protecting his city — a full-time Spider-Man — but as the demands on him intensify, the pressure sparks a surprising physical evolution that threatens his existence, even as a strange new pattern of crimes gives rise to one of the most powerful threats he has ever faced.
I looked up the director, Destin Daniel Cretton, and his credits include Shang-Chi & The Legend Of The 10 Rings and Wonder Man. That’s not exactly promising. Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers are the screenwriters and they worked on the previous movies, which seem to get a lot of praise. The adaptation errors were Sony’s fault, not wanting to let too much of the iconography of Peter Parker potentially get damaged out of worries they wouldn’t be able to use them. You know, like the last three live-action Spider-Man films they made did. Spider-Man 3 has detractors and the “Amazing Spider-Man” movies really have detractors. I’ve seen neither, perfectly happy to end at Rami’s Spider-Man 2. Even Rami’s films I have notes for, like organic webbing or giving Sandman the Jack Napier treatment by making him Uncle Ben’s killer, which he wasn’t in the comics.
I hope that’s not organic webbing I’m seeing there. The part involving Peter’s mutation going further is something we’ve seen in the comics and some other adaptations. There’s an interesting story there, but then they seem to be tossing everything in there. Peter being a 24/7 Spider-Man should have been what they stuck with, using the Hand (usually a Daredevil problem) as the villains of the story. Peter dealing with MJ and Ned not knowing him, Aunt May dying (I’ll come back to that), the Punisher being involved for some reason…this seems like a few more subplots than we need. With no Reed Richards or Professor Xavier (yet) on Earth-1999999 like in the comics (the REAL 616), or Curt Connors like in the Fox Kids cartoon (Earth-92131), using Bruce Banner, who isn’t in 24/7 Hulk form thankfully, as the mutation expert was a smart move.
As for Aunt May, she seemed to have less purpose in the movies than she did in the comics. In Rami’s films she showed us Peter’s moral compass. I couldn’t tell you what if anything she did in Homecoming and I haven’t heard of her making an impact in the other movies. I didn’t even know she died, something the comics couldn’t let happen, hence their “One More/Brand New Day”. She was used as an excuse to retroactively remove the Spider-Marriage from continuity when the only storylines involving Aunt May involves being sick, being broke, missing Uncle Ben or marrying someone else who is usually the wrong person to marry, and doting over Peter. You could do more with Mary Jane than you can Aunt May, and it’s odd that the movies, who couldn’t care less about the comics–and maybe that’s why–seem to be the ones to understand this.
So would I go see this movie? I admit it’s the first MCU Spider-Man movie I’ve been curious about since Homecoming, but probably not. It seems like there’s too much going on, and this is still a movie series that seems to avoid getting Peter’s world right. The “three stages” of spider is just egg, spiderling, and adult…or baby, kid and grown-up. They make it sound more impressive than it is. I just can’t get invested in this take on Spider-Man, but at least it looks like a better movie than we’ve seen from Disney era Marvel Studios thus far. Then again it hasn’t come out yet.
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