Not many Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) properties got a fourth treatment. Thor’s fourth outing was not particularly well received by the public and put a halt on to potential fifth movie immediately, and now fans are wondering whether Thor would survive Doomsday at all.
For Tom Holland’s Spiderman, the first trilogy wrapped up his time as a high school student while ruthlessly threw him back to the ground, losing everything and everyone he knows. In Brand New Day, he is back on his own.
Honestly, I personally believe that if the current Spiderman movies are not managed by the MCU talents and Kevin Feige at the helm, it would have died a horrible death like the previous attempts and its Spiderverse counterparts completely controlled by Sony. Sony, as a film company seems to have no idea what they are doing with most of their properties. In the recent years, the two properties they left alone – the first Spiderman animation and K-Pop Demon Hunter (which they sold the rights to Netflix saying nobody would be watching that garbage) both took the world by storm. In the second Spiderman animation, they got involved, it became a bloated mess. This was the same with all the Side-Spiderverse villain movies they created. Apart from Venom, which mostly contributed to Tom Hardy’s performance, everything was a mess that even watching the trailers already informed you to stay away from the cinema.
On the other hand, the MCU even made the older Spidermen looked cool and new again, making the audience wanting to see more of them. That is the difference between Sony and Marvel Studios. Marvel Studios understand the character and are protective of the properties despite it is about making money. Sony, on the other hand, like all other parts of its business, is just interested in milking every last drop of good will from its fans, thinking the more bloated the better. It was rumoured that Sony wanted the fourth Spiderman to be a multiversal movie bringing a lot of the Spiderverse character into the mix, but Marvel stood its ground and said no. Spiderman Brand New Day proved that Marvel was right again.
It has been said that the MCU at one point churned out so much stuff that it became a burden to just see their movies. I personally felt that way too, but after the last year of correction, Spiderman Brand New Day required minimum Television homework and still delivered a fun movie that is completely MCU. Tom Holland has grown with the character, and it shows. He is more mature but at the same time the character is more alone, and just like in his own words, Peter Parker became Spiderman, but the man of Peter Parker is disappering. This trigger a mutation of the spider genes, which really led into the whole concept of X-gene mutation, which so happened, it was what his enemy is about.
There are several aspects of the treatment of Brand New Day that I really like. Firstly, it did not attempt to resolve the Doctor Strange spell in this movie. As Zendaya’s MJ said, the spell worked. She had no memories or recollections of their adventures at all. This made MJ’s gesture of asking Ned and Spiderman to spend some time together after accidentally finding out the truth both bitter and sweet. Secondly, it touched on the importance of loneliness in a big city. Peter could help the city, but the success of helping the city did not make him happier. He drowned himself in this line of work, but he did not crawl out from the hole he dug. In fact, loneliness is a big theme throughout the movie – Peter Parker, Jean Grey, the Punisher, and MJ (who felt unconsciously distanced to people around her except for Ned). This led to the third aspect of mutation and his discussion with Bruce Banner on who can decide what is good and what is bad in natural evolution? And this coming from Bruce was more ironic because while he initially put on the inhibitor to help his arm heal (he mentioned in She-Hulk that even in Smart Hulk form the wounds refused to heal until he reverted completely back to human form), he eventually suppressed the Hulk personality for good without seeking consent from “the other guy”. So, when there is a chance “the other guy” completely took over and became even angrier. Lastly, Peter eventually used his own experience and failure to guide Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey on to the right path showed that Peter learnt the wrongs of his ways and became a mentor himself to this new superpower being. That’s a graduation of his role as a pupil in the last few phases. However, not everything is resolved – Peter developed the universal inhibitor, which comics fans will know what that implied; the guy who wanted to experiment on mutants is still at large; and people who were affected by Jean during this whole story will forever remember, or even fear, the power of such individuals (remember the Sokovia Accord against mainly Wanda Maximoff at that time?).
How the MCU will continue to evolve is yet to be seen, but for me, as an audience member, I enjoyed my time inside the cinema and when those easter eggs and cameos showed up, I was reasonably surprised (I tried to stop reading and watching things about ‘speculations’ for a while). The original gang from the original trilogy is back but the dynamics are different, which gave their relationship a brand new and completely fresh take, and I think that is a very clever move. Sadie Sink’s debut was great and completely rid of her shadow as Max from Stranger Things. And also, she displayed a more mature approach to her acting. How the new X-men movie will pan out is still unknown but with Jack Schreier at the helm, I believe it will be a more personal story like the Thunderbolts* (which I really liked).
In the meantime, I will just enjoy Spiderman Brand New Day as it is and looking forward for the Blue-Ray to come out down the line.
