Spider-Man: A Brand New Day for the MCU.
Written By: Daunte Lee Jones
College Football, Film, & MMA Contributor
Actress: (Zendaya) as MJ and Actor (Jacob Batalon) as Ned Leeds.
Actress: Sadie Sink as Jean Grey in Spiderman Brand New Day.
Official movie posters for Spider-Man Brand New Day.
Spiderman Brand New Day truly marks a new day for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The fourth film of Tom Holland’s journey as the wall-crawler expands on elements from his previous films like the unexpected twist, heartfelt moments, and heavy decisions, while still finding a way to add its interesting touch to the Spiderman mythos.
With its budget of $225 million the film is on track to break the Star Wars: The Force Awakens' record gross of $936 million at the box office and has already earned the highest grossing domestic opening weekend in U.S. history with $360 million breaking Avengers: Endgame’s record of $357.1M record. The film has truly lived up to its gargantuan expectations and leaves the audience on their toes waiting for the next Spidey film.
With the shocking reveal and large focus of the film on Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, the MCU has officially begun their portrayal of a new X-men. One of Marvel’s most expansive properties will offer the MCU a boost in well-known characters that Marvel has been lacking in recent times due to their franchise characters either becoming overused and stale of having their character arcs finished. Casting has already begun for the mutants with actors Charles Melton and Samara Weaving linked to Beast and Emma Frost, and many big names in the running to join the team like Inde Navarette, Adam Driver, and Cooper Hoffman.
The film explores Peter’s relationships after his decision to have everyone forget who Peter Parker was in the past film. Once being reintroduced to MJ and Ned, the audience feels touched seeing the glimpses of the past friendships but also depressed knowing that things can never be the same. Parker is forced to deal with the pain of his decision in a scene with MJ that explores the factor of the current version of her and the version of her that Peter fell in love with are two different people. The movie doesn’t give Peter an easy decision to make to suddenly fix the couple's relationship but gives a realistic take to what would happen in that position with him being rejected which gives the decision from the last film even more weight.
With this film Spiderman has officially faced more of his own comic villains than any MCU character ever. Although the two main antagonists of the film: Jean Grey and Bill Metzger aren’t traditional Spiderman villains, applause should go to them and the consistently good performances and character work from the series’ well explored villains. Even though only a moment seeing villains like Tombstone and The Hand brought to life while also still feeling the influence of past villains on the story like the shocker’s technologies makes the world feel so vibrant and real.
The only part of the movie I believe lowers its quality is the third act. Unfortunately, instead of finding a new way to end the story and having consequences and setup factors explored in unforeseen ways, the film falls back on classic Marvel tropes of the hero convincing the antagonist to change their ways while also letting other antagonists somehow escape after huge levels of damage to the city.
Plot devices like V-Max and Peter’s awakened abilities are also thrown away at the end of the film and answered in non-enthusiastic ways almost if the team forgot about them. So, while this kind of ending is new to Holland’s spiderman, it is still a kind that annoys and bores the audience even when used correctly due to overexposure. Overall, the film deserves B+ grade, and I would recommend anyone to watch it for the heart pulling moments and comic accurate portrayals.
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