Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s Weakest Links Help Make It A Hit

Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s Weakest Links Help Make It A Hit

It was the best of Spider-times, it was the worst of Spider-times.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is proving to be exactly what many people want in a superhero movie, even more so than Avengers: Endgame, which many considered to be the ultimate comic book crossover blockbuster. Brand New Day cost about $225 million to make and made a billion dollars in record time. Endgame cost closer to $400 million, and it still made a billion... but not quite as fast as Brand New Day did. Spidey’s latest has also performed better than Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was essentially Peter Parker’s Endgame, featuring every live-action version of Spider-Man and their respective villains (even Venom, in a post-credits scene) in what seemed like an impossible-to-top Spider-event.

However, Brand New Day isn’t doing as well as its predecessors with critics, which also makes it a little surprising to see it pull in so much dough in such a short amount of time. But is it doing so well in part because the critics don’t like it as much? Can a movie that breaks the rules of the MCU mega-hit formula while leaving plenty of “plot holes” in its wake actually result in a better experience for audiences? Let’s talk about it!

Beloved actors in roles that don’t always add up

Past superhero movies made stars out of their actors, but as their interconnected cinematic universes have grown more bloated, each individual film in a given mega-franchise has needed more and more pre-existing star power to bring in audiences. And though none of Brand New Day’s actors are likely to be nominated for any awards for this picture, all the major players here are highly recognizable faces with fanbases of their own. Just as the critically underwhelming (but financially triumphant) Beetlejuice 2 united fans of Stranger Things, Schitt’s Creek, and Wednesday by casting Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Jenny Ortega, Brand New Day took subtle steps to bring multiple entertainment forces together under one roof.

Of course, you have Tom Holland and Zendaya, the internationally beloved sweethearts whose real-life romance has become an industry in and of itself whether they want it to or not. Then you have Tramell Tillman (known for his creepy and delightful role in Apple TV’s Severance), Sadie Sink (Stranger Things’ stand out star), Mark Ruffalo (from the MCU and countless meaningful critical darlings) and Jon Berenthal (who made a name for himself on The Walking Dead). That adds up to a celebrity crossover cornucopia that’s less about big-name superheroes meeting up and more about massively popular actors from various franchises all bouncing around in the same film.

And it’s delightful, don’t get us wrong, but you could cut Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk from the movie entirely and the only thing you’d lose out on would be a couple of cool boss fights and a beloved, respected actor chatting in a few scenes. The fact that Sadie Sink plays Jean Grey from the X-Men also is immaterial; other than having red hair, there’s very little about her that resembles any pre-established version of the character. The writers have even said that they wrote the film with a mind-control villain first, then retrofitted Jean into the role after the fact. And that’s not even getting into how it makes absolutely no sense that Spider-Man would suddenly have a “good cop/murder cop” dynamic with Bernthal’s Punisher.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Long story short, instead of packing Brand New Day with “Spider-relevant” characters as No Way Home did, it was able to stick with just actors that people really want to see, pleasing new and old fans alike.

The less you know about the MCU before seeing Brand New Day, the better

If you only know The Punisher from Brand New Day, then it won’t seem weird to you that Spider-Man is so protective and trusting towards him. But if you watched The Punisher: One Last Kill, last year’s Disney+ special, you saw Frank Castle kill about 100 people in the span of about 20 minutes in broad daylight, and that makes their relationship a little less explicable. If Peter Parker is so afraid of Jean Grey’s body-hopping, trouble-making mystery villain, then why the heck does he let The Punisher (a guy who by some counts has over 300 on screen kills to his name) run free for the entirety of the film? And it’s not out of lack of opportunities. Peter may web The Punisher’s mouth shut so he can’t swear, or plug up one of his guns temporarily, but he shows no interest in putting him behind bars, or telling his new best friends on the police force about Frank’s booby-trapped lair down at the shipyard, which has undoubtedly killed a few snoopers over the years.

In fact, he brings MJ there, where she’s almost killed by one of those traps. And then he leaves her with Frank! This is despite the fact that Frank could very well be (and eventually is) possessed by Jean Grey himself. And Peter could have instead called the New Avengers (who seem pretty safe from Jean’s psychic shenanigans) or Damage Control (who are already taking every precaution to keep Jean out of their house) for help. But instead, he trusts Frank with the love of his life, because... other than all those people he killed, he’s a pretty safe guy to be around?

Speaking of which, if you have any awareness of the ninja group The Hand, you’ll know it makes absolutely no sense that they would join Damage Control—let alone while remaining dressed in their full ninja regalia. It’s not clear why Damage Control would want them around in the first place, as they aren’t exactly the most trustworthy group of lying, murdering assassins out there. They don’t even have superpowers! Some of them just know some magic, which the Damage Control folks could presumably just learn themselves. Without hiring some goofballs in full ninja garb to be their fake cops?

But none of these questions will come to mind if, just like The Punisher, you only vaguely remember The Hand from the Daredevil show on Netflix from years ago, which is where the bulk of its target audience probably sits. By not being tied to the previous depictions of any of these characters, Brand New Day is free to use them for all the fun set visual set pieces, charming banter, and story momentum as it can. And all that motion builds to one, big crowd-pleasing message.

Everyone loves Spider-Man, even when they shouldn’t

Brand New Day has several overlapping angsty issues for Spider-Man to deal with, some of which feel like echoes, or even apologies, for the ways past superhero movies like X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man 3 handled similar material. When broken down individually, these messages could look muddled, or even at odds with one other. But by the end, they all come together to form clear, feel-good final thesis statements about the character.

For starters, Peter is a workaholic now, but not for a real job. He only works to fight crime. Technically, he’s not on the police’s payroll, but given how good he is at catching crooks, his street-level crimefighting looks about as breezy and fun as playing PlayStation 5’s Spider-Man 2. But he’s checked out from civilian life because he refuses to reconnect with his former best friend Ned and ex-girlfriend MJ. It seems like he wants to protect them, but it’s not clear from what. The implication is that he’s afraid they'll die if he’s part of their life, the way his aunt did. But May wasn’t murdered because Peter was Spider-Man. Green Goblin killed her because, per her guidance, Peter tried (and failed) to turn the Goblin good using one of the many scientific devices available to Peter through his A.I.-enhanced 3D printer.

Yet this is exactly what Peter tries to do in Brand New Day to both the Hulk and Jean Grey! And when he does finally talk to his ex-girlfriend, why does he initially do it under a fake name, when the whole deal with that situation is that she forgot that Peter Parker even existed?

Well, maybe Peter is confused about how magical amnesia works, because his powers are suddenly mutating, and he’s worried that these powers will hurt Ned and MJ... right? Nope. That’s an entirely different issue of internal conflict here, which is probably the most tacked on, extra-cheese angst of the film. It would be one thing if Peter grew four more arms or something, but instead he just gets organic web shooters (which, coincidentally, work exactly like the mechanical ones he’s been using up until now) and his eyes turn black sometimes. Oh, and one time, he gets a little too mad and slams the Scorpion into a moving police car. Not great! But definitely not on the level of hulking out or doing finger guns at women passing by.

One of the reasons you can tell that none of these internal conflicts are that big of a deal is that everyone in this movie approves of Spider-Man. Sure, the cops get a little snippy when he almost kills one of them, but by the next scene with them, all is forgiven. Black Widow loves him, too, in a way that’s borderline sexual harassment. Damage Control mostly tries to use him, but they definitely seem to like him throughout. Even Jean Grey, who has absolutely no use for humanity at all, eventually comes to care for him.

Oh, and wanted fugitive Frank Castle? He’s probably the one who loves Peter most of all, to the point where he watched over him in his hospital room after (you guessed it) Frank accidentally shoots him. Sure, the police probably should have arrested Frank as he sat there (both for shooting Spider-Man and everyone else), but that would have wrecked the opportunity for Frank and Peter to have a touching moment where Frank talks about how amazing Peter is. And really, all these superhero-shaped chess pieces on the Brand New Day board are there for precisely that reason: to show how much everyone loves Spider-Man. Just like in Captain America: Brave New World, it’s good vibes that makes Brand New Day’s Hulk stop rampaging. But this time, it’s good vibes for Spider-Man specifically.

And you know what, it feels good to see it. For all of Brand New Day’s internal inconsistencies, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is a relentlessly good person in this movie, just as he’s always been. Seeing the good guy be truly good, while being appreciated almost non-stop throughout the entire movie, with even hateful malcontents like Frank Castle and Jean Grey taking a shine to him, is the kind of fairy tale that our ever-divided world is hungry for right now. If the price of experiencing this relentlessly fun film is to be conked on the head with some magical amnesia of our own, allowing us to ignore the internal incongruities of the movie’s ideas and moral failings of some of its main characters, that’s a small price to pay for this much-needed piece of emotional escapism.