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It’s taken 10 years, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day is finally about to give us the classic Peter Parker. Tom Holland debuted in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, and he immediately won viewers over as the perfect Spider-Man. He’s since appeared in six live-action MCU movies, but Spider-Man: No Way Home subtly rewrote the entire saga so far as something of an origin story. It featured the “power and responsibility” line, apparently given by Aunt May in the MCU rather than Uncle Ben.
Speaking to Empire, Marvel and Sony bosses have confirmed Spider-Man: Brand New Day doubles down on this approach. “It is the first Spider-Man film that we’ve made in the MCU that is focused on the classic elements of Spider-Man,” Marvel’s Kevin Feige explained. “He’s doing the Spidey thing of living in a rather sad, small apartment, listening to the police scanner and going out and using his great power responsibly.” According to director Destin Daniel Cretton, he’s committed himself wholeheartedly to his job as Spider-Man, wallowing in his grief.
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We’re Finally Seeing the Classic Spider-Man
It’s definitely the right approach for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which finally promises to deliver a version of Peter Parker who’s operating independently of the Avengers. There are plenty of team-ups; the film features Jon Bernthal’s Punisher as well as Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, but Sadie Sink’s mystery character. But this really does feel like the first independent Spider-Man movie, one where the wall-crawler simply happens to be trying to survive (but not necessarily thrive) in the MCU.
Feige undoubtedly meant this comment to serve as hype for the new movie. It definitely pulls that off, but it does so in a rather strange manner; it feels like a back-handed compliment, implicitly criticizing everything the MCU has done with Spider-Man so far. If Brand New Day is a “classic” Spider-Man we haven’t seen before in the MCU, why did it take so long to happen? The answer, of course, is that Marvel has realized the shared universe concept is no longer the draw it used to be, so the connectivity is no longer the main focus.
Peter Parker has always been known for what the comics call “the Parker luck,” the fact any happy period is only temporary and Spider-Man usually reverts to a status quo where he’s struggling. It sounds as though that idea will be a core part of this “classic” Spider-Man, a version who’s more introverted and brooding, isolated from those he loves because he has embraced the mantra of power and responsibility. It will be fascinating to see Tom Holland portray this version of Spider-Man.
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