In 2021, current Spidey actor Tom Holland said, “If I’m playing Spider-Man after I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong.” So, when it was announced he was in talks to star in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, he indicated that if he were to don the mask again, the story would have to be something special.
Then came the trailer. Peter Parker is lonely, worn-down, depressed. He doggedly throws himself into the role of Spider-Man solely to distract himself from the fact that his soulmate and best friend forgot he ever existed. He finds himself losing time, waking up in strange places, and realizing that his spider genes are taking over.
For Spider-Man nerds, this is reminiscent of the “Man-Spider” story arc from the comics and the 1994 cartoon, but, more importantly, it hearkens to the original Brand New Day storyline from the comics, where Parker dealt with loneliness, existential darkness, and mental-health crises. This kind of raw, character-driven storytelling hasn’t been seen since Iron Man or Logan. Modern MCU has become topical, tepid, and flashy. Can Marvel Studios allow themselves to take the risk of focusing on a dark, serious, slow burn of a storyline?
No. No, they can’t.
I watched in horror as the teaser trailer was revealed to be a flimsy red herring. Let’s talk about the real story of MCU’s Brand New Day. It starts out strong. Peter is battling his own demons, the curse of selflessness and obligation, the curse of a hero. He begins to lose himself.
Suddenly, a spooky villain comes out of left field and starts possessing people’s minds, causing them to do horrible things, and intentionally kills several people in cold blood. Spidey soon discovers that this is… Jean Grey? From the X-Men?! What’s going on?
Oh. Jean is to be featured as a major protagonist in the upcoming Secret Wars. She hijacked an entire Spider-Man film just to set up her role in the next Avengers instalment. Well, that’s cheap. Furthermore, she’s portrayed as a pure, innocent victim of an evil corporation. When I think about innocent victims, I don’t think of people who mind control an old man to step in front of a speeding bus, then chuck innocent civilians from skyscrapers.
This is what is known as egregious mischaracterization, reframing a narrative to fit a contrived story. It assumes the audience are idiots, and disrespects those who were hoping for a rich, intellectual character story.
Instead, what we got was a series of irrelevant, unrelated combat encounters. A bunch of ninjas show up for three minutes and never again. The Punisher is there for literally no reason. MJ and Ned make an appearance, but they are clueless and useless. This is an MCU action seizure.
There was a great story in the making here, and I wish I could see the early drafts of this script. I get the feeling that somebody wanted to do something really special, but corporate Marvel Studios didn’t trust their audience to have the intelligence and attention span greater than drooling, brain-dead toddlers.