Last week, Marvel Studios released the ninth live-action Spider-Man movie, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” Despite some recent superhero flops, its box office performance has blown other movies this year out of the water, grossing $1.1 billion and counting. I sat down with my colleagues Will Leitch and Jim Geraghty to hear what they thought. — Damir Marusic
Damir Marusic: Hey, guys, thanks for joining me today.
Jim Geraghty: Hey there.
Will Leitch: Greetings to all. Web shooters ready.
Marusic: So I went to a late-night showing of the new Spider-Man movie last night. I was surprised how much I enjoyed myself. What did you guys think of it?
Geraghty: I loved it, but I’m probably the target audience — I collected comic books from 1989 to 1993 or so. I liked just about everything Marvel did in theaters up to “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019. Since then … it’s been really hit-or-miss.
It’s been fascinating to see superheroes become such mainstream entertainment, because comic shops used to be the hangout for nerds, geeks and outsiders. The genre was destined to peak and decline, at least a little. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is showing audiences will still love it when filmmakers get the formula just right.
Leitch: The movie is smart to dial down the multiverse madness of the previous film, “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which featured three alternate-universe Peter Parkers — it was overly complicated and fan-nerdy. Spider-Man is, at his best, a smaller-scale character: a kid who is relatable because he is otherwise a normal, conflicted person who finds himself blessed and cursed with his superhero abilities. Getting back to telling that story really helped.
Marusic: I was a comic book fan growing up, Jim. Will, did you come at this from comic book land first? It struck me that the generation growing up with these stories isn’t wedded to the originals.
Leitch: I’m not really a comic book person. I try to look at these things as movie experiences on their own. Frankly, I think a lot of fans are getting exhausted with Marvel’s crossover plots — every new release requiring you to have seen the other nearly 40 movies, and every TV spin-off, to understand what’s going on. Who can keep track of all that? I shouldn’t have to go look all this stuff up every time I want to just sit down and watch a movie.
You saw this with the trailer last month for “Avengers: Doomsday,” slated to come out in December, which will feature more than two dozen Marvel heroes. It was greeted with exhaustion — “oh, wow, we’re doing this again?” — in a way that this Spider-Man movie wasn’t.
Marusic: Yes, people are saying there’s superhero movie fatigue. Is that right? Feels like it’s bad-movie fatigue. Good superhero movies get a hearing!
Geraghty: Marvel has overdone the crossover plots at times. Fans can start to feel like a bunch of scenes and characters have been awkwardly inserted to be trailers for future movies. But when Spider-Man makes about a billion dollars worldwide in a week, the “superhero movie fatigue” excuse for other movies evaporates.
Marusic: I think part of the reason I was so pleasantly surprised by “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is because the other recent blockbuster, Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” featured a leading man brought low by life and his decisions. Odysseus was a broken man seeking redemption. Not saying I needed him to be a superhero, and I’m not saying superhero movies are one-dimensional — they can be complex! — but I think I’m a little tired of that mood.
Geraghty: I liked “The Odyssey,” but everything in it was heavy, intense, ponderous. You can make a serious summer blockbuster work, but I walked out of the theater after “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” in a much happier mood.
There’s something Charlie Brown-ish about Peter Parker. Fans love him because he rarely gets clean wins, which I suspect is part of what makes him so relatable.
Leitch: I think that’s key to Spider-Man, absolutely. His best stories are ones that are about him and his friends and his life — not about him having to band together with other superheroes to save the world. Spider-Man is someone we root for to win and be happy.
Marusic: Spider-Man, to me, has always been about coming of age. The first comic came out in 1962, and I think it also captured something about America at the time. “With great power comes great responsibility” — like America and its role in the world. I feel like we still need that.
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