Spider-Man: Brand New Day – SPOILER discussion

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One last spoiler thread, for old times’ sake.

Out tomorrow.

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Todd, Dave

So far, the reviews I’ve seen are positive.

So that is the first superhero film I’ve seen in as long as I can remember where I a) didn’t know who the villain was going in and b) didn’t work it out before the film revealed it. Which is a really nice feeling and a little surprising given I, unwittingly, saw two different trailers for it.

Those trailers had a lot of disparate stuff in them and the film does too. It’s very keen to stake out space in the MCU with various connections. But it does really well to make it cohere and keep it as Peter’s story, while also doing well by the other characters.

It didn’t go as far with some stuff as I expected/feared (The Other, the Hand), but they didn’t feel superfluous (well, maybe the Hand, but they’re *cool*) and it’s presumably going to build on this. This film has probably the best screen version of the villain there’s been, which is nice.

The direction is great. It feels quite different to the Home trilogy, less fresh-faced. Cretton really gets into how mad it is jumping around as Spidey and creates some excellent fight scenes, as you’d hope after Shang-Chi. I hope he does more.

Normally, I go to the cinema in the middle of the day, when there’s usually only about 20 people at a screening. The earliest this was showing was 6pm, so it was sold out and mostly full of teens. Which is fine, but when the end credits started they *applauded*. Like, vociferously. And again at the entirely boilerplate “Spider-Man will return” tag at the end of the credits. Baffling.

Weird movie. While there are a few individual elements of it that I liked, as a whole it feels like the least exciting or engaging Spidey movie ever. Just a big nothing burger. A lot of the creative decisions I find totally baffling to be honest.

It’s not all bad – there’s decent chemistry with Punisher for example. And I like the general grounded look and feel.

But it’s trying to tell lots of different stories at the same time that don’t mesh together very well and are under-developed (the man-spider stuff; the ethical argument around inhibiting powers; reversing the effects of the spell from the last movie; Jean Grey and Sarah’s backstory) so it doesn’t end up feeling very coherent. It’s like watching four episodes of a mediocre Spider-Man TV show back to back.

Also, like a lot of late-era MCU stuff, the shared universe stuff is definitely a lot more of a drag than anything else. Odd to have a Spider-Man film where Spider-Man villains show up for about ten minutes in total and the rest of it is a backdoor pilot for the X-Men.

You find yourself longing for the days that Spidey movies were separate so they could just tell their own story.

I liked the first hour quite a bit, but the movie completely falls apart in the third act. There’s no feeling of any threat, no villain, and the ending is basically “everyone ran away.”

The Damage Control twist is the most obvious thing in the world, and even more annoyingly, the movie completely fails to use Tramell Tillman in any interesting way. Juiceless. The Hand stuff was completely stupid too.

Sure, Sadie Sink is Jean Grey, but basically just in name. It could have literally been any telepath character. I guess she’ll be back in the actual X-Men movie, but probably as a completely different version of the character?

Some of the Punisher scenes were decent, but not many, and the movie seriously starts to overuse him as it goes on. I don’t care about Frank’s emotional life in the TV shows, and I care less here.

Jean de Wolff disappears for the entire second half. I assume she had more to do and it was cut?

Yelena was a fun surprise. Didn’t the need the second scene, but always happy to see Pugh.

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Dave

paul f wrote:

I liked the first hour quite a bit, but the movie completely falls apart in the third act.

For the first 15-20 minutes I was thinking it was going to be great. A proper Spidey movie for the MCU finally. But it goes downhill pretty much from the point he visits Black Widow, for me.

paul f wrote:

Sure, Sadie Sink is Jean Grey, but basically just in name. It could have literally been any telepath character. I guess she’ll be back in the actual X-Men movie, but probably as a completely different version of the character?

Who knows at this point. Making a Spidey movie a backdoor pilot for a new X-Men film just seems like a bonkers idea to me in general.

I feel like Marvel are making the same mistake with X-Men that they did with their Fantastic Four reboot, in terms of giving away appearances in other projects that then remove the novelty of the first dedicated movie.

paul f wrote:

Jean de Wolff disappears for the entire second half. I assume she had more to do and it was cut?

It’s a shame too as I love Liza Colón-Zayas and think she did well here. Those early scenes with Spidey worked well and I wish we’d seen more of that movie.

Is the last scene she shows up (before the curtain call at the end) the Scorpion fight? Again, weird choice.

Talking of Scorpion, selling the movie so heavily on him in the trailers feels less like a clever misdirect and more like a massive disappointment. Again, Mando is a great actor but he’s given nothing to do here.

paul f wrote:

Sure, Sadie Sink is Jean Grey, but basically just in name. It could have literally been any telepath character.

I’m not going to try and insist everyone should have loved the movie as much as I did, but this is one point I will disagree on. I think this was a really good take on Jean in a world without Xavier (as the MCU seems to be) and the X-Men. One of Jean’s defining character traits, which is sometimes smoothed over admittedly, is that she has a massive temper. Think smashing up Emma in Morrison’s New X-Men. In a world where she didn’t have training with Xavier (and him limiting her powers) I think the actions she takes here are very much in character for Jean. A powerful telepath driven to right a wrong through the means open to her. Then the realisation that her sister died through torture causing the exponential leap in her powers is parallel to her usual origin of her powers going wildly out of control upon the death of her friend when she’s a kid.

Also, I think this goes some way to setting up a “hated and feared” status quo for mutants that is tricky really to justify in a universe with other super-humans running around. How that pans out long term, I don’t know, but I think Jean worked well here.