Spider-Man: Brand New Day is threatening to break a promise that the Marvel Cinematic Universe made when announcing the upcoming film. The MCU has gone big with a lot of movies. The Fantastic Four: First Steps brought in a comic-book-accurate Galactus and almost destroyed the entire world. The Thunderbolts* was a pretty basic superhero movie made spectacular thanks to Sentry and his alter ego, Void. Even the last Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: No Way Home, broke the tradition of making Spider-Man a friendly neighborhood superhero by introducing the multiverse and magic to the film. The MCU promised to scale things back in Brand New Day.
However, there are a lot of news briefs coming out of the next superhero movie that threatens to break that promise and turn Spider-Man 4 into another massive superhero movie.
When it comes to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the MCU had said they were bringing things back to ground level for Spider-Man. The idea was to get the street-level hero back to fight to save his city from his more familiar rogues. There wasn’t supposed to be magic, or giant crossovers with other heroes, and it was going to be Spider-Man facing his more basic rogues.
The idea was that Spider-Man would fight more basic street-level criminals from his comic books, and specifically, the mob-based criminals who try to run the streets. In the comics. When Kingpin gained more power and became the Mayor of New York City, the minor crime bosses fought for control. This seemed like the case here, with names like Tombstone, Boomerang, and Scorpion hinted at as possible villains. Even Mister Negative was mentioned, and even with his powers, he was still a basic villain for Spider-Man to face. There shouldn’t be any multiverse storylines, and Spider-Man would just be fighting to save the people of New York City.
However, as great as that sounds, it seems like the MCU is pushing more and more into the next Spider-Man movie, and it sounds like they will be breaking the promise that this will be a street-level Spider-Man movie. The idea here was for Spider-Man to get caught in the middle of a gangland war, trying to stop people like Scorpion (making his long-awaited return after his first Spider-Man appearance) and underrated comic book villains like Boomerang. The movie seems like there is a lot more than that, in what might be an overbloated MCU movie.
The biggest problem with the idea of this remaining a more street-level dialed-down Spider-Man movie came when the MCU announced Hulk was appearing in it. Having Spider-Man fight the Hulk is not a way to keep this as a basic Spider-Man tale. If Hulk loses control, as many sources have claimed, that will completely overshadow anything that Spider-Man does in this movie. A raging Hulk would dominate the conversations, something that shouldn’t happen after a Spider-Man film.
Punisher showing up is also concerning, but on a smaller level. It’s important to remember that Punisher actually started as a Spider-Man character. This is a nice callback to how the now-popular antihero started in comics, but at the same time, it is also a way to overshadow Spider-Man. If Punisher is in the movie, people will be talking about him and not Spider-Man, especially with how popular he was in Daredevil: Born Again and his former Netflix appearances. As cool as it would be, it is something that once again takes the emphasis off Spider-Man.
The entire idea of Brand New Day is already worrisome since it is named after the event following Spider-Man’s most hated storyline, One More Day. The end of No Way Home had the same ending, although with the difference of Doctor Strange doing Peter Parker a favor instead of Mephisto doing it. However, starting over without his friends and popular supporting characters from the last three movies is a daring choice. Having Spider-Man fight street-level gangsters is a great way to show his new world, but adding Hulk and Punisher is distracting from that goal and goes back on the promise to dial things back in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
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