Spider-Man Brand New Day spends much of its runtime reckoning with the consequence of No Way Home. If you remember, that movie ends with everyone in the universe, in the multiverse, forgetting Peter Parker. So in Brand New Day, he’s sad because his best friend and the love of his life don’t remember him either.
No Way Home was the MCU version of the 2007 One More Day storyline from the comics. In the original, Spider-Man reveals his secret identity during the Civil War and Kingpin hires a sniper who misses Peter and critically wounds Aunt May. Nothing seems to help her, so Peter goes to the devil, Mephisto, and asks him to save May. The cost? Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane. For completely stupid reasons, he agrees to the deal. Peter wakes up with no memory of ever being with MJ. May’s also alive and well. This new era was called Brand New Day.
What’s crazy is that modern Spider-Man comics are still in the Brand New Day universe. That’s 19 years of Peter not being with Mary Jane and living a completely different existence than the one that made him so popular in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. And Aunt May is still alive.
As much as I hate the One More Day decision and Brand New Day era of Spider-Man, I at least respect that they’ve had the guts to stick with it.
I can’t say as much for the MCU.
They couldn’t let Spider-Man do something different for a single movie? The longest they could go is half of a movie? Why even end No Way Home like that if you’re not going to commit to what comes after?
Brand New Day presents itself as a story about grief, except the people Peter primarily grieves, Ned and MJ, are the exact people he gets back into his life. So like…okay? Usually the power of this kind of story is the character coming to terms with things and moving forward. But Brand New Day’s sense of forward momentum is reconnecting Peter with those he lost.
Look, people will praise Brand New Day because the actors all do a great job and the emotional beats mostly work. There are some creative sequences and the cinematography is sometimes interesting. The bar for these movies is so low that all of that will be enough for it to have a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But it’s the rough draft of a much better film. The MCU is still in major trouble if this is the best they can do with their most iconic hero. Most of the scenes left me thinking, “This was their best idea?” The only one where I truly had no notes was the Hulk sequence. That was cool.
Now to riff on some other topics: Punisher, Hulk, Jean Grey
Frank Castle’s there because Frank also lost people and isolated himself, so he serves as this symbol for what Peter could become. But do we ever really think Peter’s going to become like the Punisher? That lonely? That angry? They tease it for one scene and then Peter never struggles with his emotions that way again.
And Bruce Banner is there because Bruce is scared of being “both” Bruce and Hulk. Which ties into a half-baked subplot that culminates with Jean Grey asking “Are you Peter Parker? Or are you Spider-Man?” And he’s like “I’m both” and levels up his powers.
Then Jean Gray is there because she’s also lost someone and is grieving and mad. Peter’s fight with her is an externalization of his fight with himself. And by saving her, he saves himself.
Can we talk about Jean Grey for a second? What a weird way to express her powers. And introduce mutants to Earth-616. Body snatching people within a 33-foot distance is not the first thing I think of when I think about how an Omega-level telepath uses her powers. I get that this version of Jean Grey is untrained and barely scratching the surface of her ability. But, still. I found how they went about it pretty stupid. It’s like someone watched the Smile movies and wanted to do a lame version of how that monster presents itself as other people.
Same with the climax. Jean’s powers unleash and create a forcefield that paralyzes everyone inside. Why? You could choose any number of things and that’s the best thing anyone involved in the film could come up with? Visually, it was goofy. And logically, what?
Jean Grey felt like a character out of the Fox X-Men movies. And if that sounds like an insult, that’s because it is.
