It’s tempting to look at the absolutely jaw-dropping box-office of Brand New Day (third highest grossing film of all time, baby) and conclude that any worries about the MCU’s continued viability have been put to bed but I’m honestly still a little dubious.

Right now, I think the same thing is happening to superhero movies that happened to superhero comics in the nineteen fifties. Immediately after the big bang of Superman’s debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938, superheroes became a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist during the war years. But, after the war ended interest in superheroes cratered for a lot of reasons too long to go into here, thus bringing to an end the Golden Age of Comic Books. If you have even a cursory knowledge of comics history you probably already knew that. But, what’s sometimes forgotten is that the genre did not completely die.

Superman, famously, not only rode out the collapse of the superhero genre but was even more popular a decade after his debut thanks to radio, movie serials and TV. But even in the comics, the Superman family of titles kept going strong and he wasn’t the only one. All through the fifties Batman, Wonder-Woman and (for some fucking reason) Aquaman were consistently published. These were characters so beloved (and also Aquaman) that they were able to survive the collapse of their genre.

And, as it has so often done before, the history of the superhero genre in movies has repeated what happened in the comics. What it boils down to is that here, in 2026, the really big names, like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man can still put bums on seats. We are not back in 2014 where Marvel could release a movie about, say, Beta Ray Bill teaming up with Power Pack and Howard the Duck to run a Thai restaurant on Mars and still expect it to make a billion dollars.

Maybe I’m wrong (I am, after all, always wrong about everything) and I’ve no doubt that Doomsday will make all the money in the world. That movie is pretty much as sure a bet as anything in this life is. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no risk involved to Marvel. Transformers: Age of Extinction made huge money but so many people saw it and hated it that it poisoned the well for The Last Knight. If Doomsday is not just successful but successful and loved, then we have the opportunity for a real comeback as a new generation of fans is created and old fans who dropped have their interest re-ignited. But a financially successful but loathed Doomsday could actually do more damage long term than a good one that failed at the box office.

Anyway, that’s all in the future.

I’ve come to realise that within me are two wolves. And by “wolves” I mean “middle aged white dudes”.

On the one hand, I try to review these movies as movies, judging them as works of art on their own merit. But the guy on the right keeps complaining about things they changed from the comics. I try to keep that guy in check but I don’t want to ignore him entirely either. Yes, total fidelity to source material is neither possible, sensible or even desirable. But if, for example, a movie adapts a book and absolutely butchers its themes and characters, then that is a flaw of the film and it is valid criticism to point that out. I bring this up because this review is definitely going to trend negative but my criticisms are going to be more Comic Book Guy than Anton Ego. As a movie on its own, it’s fine. But as a Spider-Man movie I think it’s fucking terrible.

So, when we last checked in on Young Master Parker you will recall that all memory of him had been erased from reality and he was basically at square zero, beginning a superhero hero career with no reputation, no Aunt May and no Stark Industries backing. And I was totally on board for that. More than any other top-tier superhero, Spider-Man is supposed to be an underdog.

He’s always struggling to pay his bills, the media hates him, the cops don’t trust him. So I was super excite that this reset meant that we were going to get a scrappy, street-level Spider-Man fighting crime in a city where all the odds are stacked against him.

And then Brand New Establishes in its opening montage that Peter is already New York’s most beloved superhero and that he’s operating out of an apartment in New York with cutting edge tech and that he’s able to afford all this despite having no visible source of income SO NEVER FUCKING MIND THEN.

Fucking Sex in the City had more realistic economics.

Anyway, Peter stills misses MJ and Ned and has thrown himself into his work to compensate, forming a professional relationship with NYPD Detective Jean De Wolff, a character from the comics who was never revealed to be a werewolf which was such a missed opportunity.

Peter gets called in when an armoured car gets hijacked and goes on a tear through New York city in a sequence that just screams “”Hey, Spider-Man 2 on the Playstation was pretty sick, right?”

Peter’s attempts to stop the APC are complicated by the arrival of one Francis Castle.

So…let’s talk about Punisher.

Frank “The Punisher” Castle was introduced as a minor Spider-Man villain in 1974, essentially an homage to Mack Bolan from Don Pendleton’s “The Executioner” series of pulp novels. Like all the best characters, he can be summed up very simply. Vietnam Vet + Family Killed by Mob Violence = Perpetual One Man War against Crime.

He proved incredibly popular and by the nineties he had no fewer than four ongoing titles running concurrently (and he wasn’t even a mutant!) and has had some absolutely legendary runs by creators like Garth Ennis. Despite this popularity, Marvel has been somewhat nervous about this character for a very long time now. Like Judge Dredd, he’s not a character that you’re supposed to root for, but some fans (and, let’s be honest, creators) tend to forget that (I say this, but r/Punisher is hilariously one of the nicest and most chill sub-reddits I’ve ever encountered.) The Skull logo in particular has been adopted by several real life far-right groups. The comics have, at time, tried very explicitly to rebuke that connection but that always felt really hollow to me.

My personal feelings are that Frank Castle is a great supporting character. I love having him as the devil on Daredevil or Captain America’s shoulder, tempting them down his path. Or the loose cannon ally that they have to team up with just so you know the situation is really dire.

All this is a really long-winded way of saying that Frank Castle should not be one of Spidey’s Amazing Friends.

Like, no? No, Spider-Man, beloved icon of children everywhere, should not be best buds with America’s most prolific serial killer. He should not be trusting him to look after Mary Jane and nagging him not to FUCKING MURDER people like he’s reminding him to leave the toilet seat down. Frank Castle is a very, very, very bad man. He has killed more people than Covid, Spider-Man should not be friends with him.

Anyway, the APC crashes into a facility run by the Department of Damage Control (DODC), who were first mentioned aaaaall the way back in Iron Man as essentially SHIELD’s janitorial staff and are now a full on department of the executive branch.

Peter quickly realises that he’s dealing with a body hopper, who takes control of several people to spring Scorpion, one of Spidey’s enemies from lockup. During the course of this, the mysterious body hopper tries to telepathically take control of Spider-man, but can’t.

You, like I, probably have questions. So let’s take them one by one.

1. Does Spider-Man have telepathy or other kind of similar mental power? No.
2. Does he use some kind of tech or kit which protects him from telepathic attack? No.
3. Is there something related to his spider-powers that might make him immune to such an attack? There is not.
4. Is it explained in the movie how he was able to resist being mentally possessed? Again, no.

Good, glad I was able to answer all those questions. Moving on.

Looking for answers, Spider-Man visits Yelena Belova who operates out of a Russian sauna. Y’know how the Superman series has “villain’s blonde bimbo girlfriend who is secretly a genius” as its weirdly specific signature trope? Apparently the Spider-man equivalent is “Peter Parker is forced to strip in front of a blonde super-spy from the former Soviet Bloc”. Yelena tells Peter that someone has been targeting DODC facilities looking for something called “V-Max” which sounds like a marital aid.

Peter, because he likes torturing himself, decides to crash Ned and MJ’s housewarming and poses as their neighbour “Maynard”. After seeing MJ kiss her new boyfriend Peter freaks out and returns home, only to wake up the next morning in a web cocoon and having evolved new organic web-spinners. He does some genetic analysis and discovers that his spideryness is starting to overpower his manitude.

So at this point we have three central mysteries:

1. Who is the body-hopper?
2. What is V-Max and why do they want it?
3. What is happening to Peter Parker?

And this, for me, is the highpoint of the movie because these are all genuine mysteries that I want to know the answer to. Unfortunately, I don’t find any of the actual answers all that compelling. Let’s start with the body-hopper. At the start the body-hopper is actually a really strong villain, a mocking, sadistic presence that could be anyone and attack from any angle. And it really threw me for a loop. Body-hopping? Who in Spider-Man’s rogues gallery does that? And then it hit me!

Yes, Xuan Cao Manh, aka Karma.

Best known as a member of the X-Men successor team New Mutants, she debuted as an antagonist of Spider-Man in Marvel Team Up #100 back in 1980. And I was like “Cool. Deep cut. Obscure character with a unique and interesting power. Okay Marvel, I’m on board.”

And then they revealed that it’s actually Jean Grey.

And okay, fine, it’s a big reveal and I won’t lie I was excited at first but this turns out to be a massive miss-step. I’ve sure you know where this is going but we’ll get there when we get there.

Spider-Man visits DODC Headquarters and meets Bill Metzger, the current head of Damage Control who gives him a tour. He tells Spider-Man that the DODC is all about taking dangerous cape shit and turning it into a useful and productive tool of the American government. He even introduces him to members of the fucking Hand who he has working for him as security, saying they were just a couple of misunderstood kids who needed a bit of a steer.

Spidey asks Metzger if he knows anything about “V-Max” and Metzger professes ignorance (well, he would, wouldn’t he?). Meanwhile, Spidey’s new mutation creates more and more problems. His senses are becoming super acute and his AI powered web-shooters refuse to work while his organic web-shooters are active. Like, they literally flounce off his wrists like a jealous girlfriend.

It is the dumbest shit.

Peter gets into a fight with Scorpion who’s possessed by the body hopper and loses control as his mutation takes over and his eyes go black. And at this point I thought: “Oh shit, I know where this is going.”

And, not gonna lie, I would have been all on board for watching Tom Holland sprout four arms and turn into Man-Spider and there are signs that was on the cards at some point but…no, ultimately they decided they didn’t love us enough.

Anyway, time for fan service. Peter visits Bruce Banner where he’s now teaching as a university lecturer and gets some tips on how to build an inhibitor to keep the mutation in check.

It fails, and then Spider-Man gets accosted by the body-hopper who tells him that she’s been in his apartment and discovered a letter he wrote to MJ. She’s now going to attack MJ to punish Peter for helping Damage Control. The precipitates a race across the city to reach MJ in time.

Spider-Man reaches MJ and convinces her to come with him and he takes her to a rooftop. While explaining the situation Peter admits to MJ that they used to know each other. She unmasks him and says “Peter”. They hug and kiss. And then she says it.

“Go ahead Peter. Touch her.”

There is a fine fucking art in making a villain who is at once a compelling antagonist while also being sympathetic and layered and Brand New Day botches it thoroughly with this scene.

You can have a villain that is callous or brutal or even downright cruel. But once you cross the line into actual sadism then any chance of that character having a redemption arc has been closed off, at least for the current story. Maybe further down the line, if you’re willing to do the work.

Here’s a good example. Magneto, probably the most loved and morally complex supervillain ever created. And, for simplicity’s sake, let’s keep it to the movies. Magneto does some absolutely heinous shit.

But, he maintains a degree of sympathy from the audience because even if his actions are reprehensible, his goals of mutant liberation are understandable. He does these things because he believes he is right, not for reasons that are selfish or evil.

If however, Bryan Singer had Magneto sexually abuse Senator Kelly for his own gratification (not that I could imagine Singer doing such a thing!) then Magneto pretty much has to die at the end of that movie. The audience won’t settle for anything less. A line has been crossed.

Now, the movie tries to give Jean Grey that kind of sympathetic justification. Her sister was abducted by Damage Control and she’ll do anything to save her. Fair enough. But there’s two problems with that.

1. In flashback, we see that Sara is also a monster who uses people as living toys, so busting her out is weak justification and
2. So much of what Jean does has no strategic or tactical purpose beyond pure sadism…

She doesn’t need to do this. Scare Spider-Man off, show him that his loved ones aren’t safe, okay. But mentally violating the woman he loves, using her body to kiss him and give him hope and then telling him that MJ has no memory or feelings for him at all?

That’s not moral ambiguity. That’s fucking psychopathy.

And this will have long lasting affects. Jean Grey is a major pillar of the X-Men and now this version of the character will always have this scene on the roof hanging over her.

Anyway, after ensuring that Peter Parker will never be able to trust another human being for the rest of his life, ever, she tries to Gwen Stacey MJ by jumping off the rough. Spider-Man saves her and decides to take MJ to the one person he can be sure will protect her; The Punisher.

On Castle’s boat Spider-Man and MJ talk and she helps him fix his universal inhibitor because she’s a biotech genius which kinda comes out of nowhere but whatever.

Peter learns that Jean is launching an attack on DODC headquarters and swings in to save everyone with Frank tagging along on MJ’s insistence. Unfortunately, while the DODC has an army, Jean has a Hulk, and uses poor Banner’s possessed body to twat Frank and Peter around like chew toys. Eventually Peter is able to subdue the Hulk and Jean is tranquilised, with her last word being “Sara” before she passes out. Metzger says that “Sara” was a colleague of his who passed away and that Jean must have picked that up when she possessed him which she totally did.

Peter swings back to Frank’s raft and discovers that MJ has found the letter he wrote to her and now knows everything. I know I’ve been pissing and moaning a lot but I do want to make clear that none of my complaints have anything to with the actors. Holland, Zendaya, Berenthal, Sink and Ruffalo are all doing great work in this and this scene is wonderful.

MJ thanks Peter for everything he’s done for her but says she doesn’t love him because she, well, she doesn’t know him. He’s devastated but he takes it like a champ and offers to leave her home. She invites him in and introduces him to Ned who is a huge Spider-Man fan, going as far as to create an app that tracks his sightings across the city. Spidey stays and hangs out and the movie shows us that they’re huge, super dorky nerds by having them…quote Lord of the Rings at each other.

When they’re alone Peter tells MJ that while Jean was in her body she kissed him and she’s all “well, you didn’t know and that wasn’t your fault but thanks for telling me” and that’s great. Fictional characters being ethical and mature, you love to see it. But then she mentions that she doesn’t remember anything from when Jean possessed her and Peter realises that Metzger was lying about Jean learning about Sara from being in his mind.

That’s not what what that means at all. Metzger never said he remembered Jean learning about someone called Sara while in his mind. He just said “oh, Sarah is someone I’ve been thinking about, that must be where she got the name from”. Unless Peter is saying that Jean shouldn’t be able to remember anything that she learned while possessing someone but we know that’s not true, she constantly references conversations and things that happening while she was puppeting something. That’s our big third act twist folks, and it relies on Spider-man being completely wrong and yet being accidentally right.

Peter contacts Yelena who actually, really, does use the Russian sauna as her office.

Yelena tells him that Jean’s sister Sara had similar powers to Jean and was black bagged by the DODC so Spidey decides to rescue her because red-heads are his kryptonite.

So Jean’s being interrogated by Metzger in a cell and she demnds to know what “V-Max” is and he reveals…that he has no idea what the fuck she’s talking about. See, “V-Max” was the last telepathic message Sara gave her sister. Metzger begins brutally experimenting on Jean, trying to gauge the extent of her powers. Looking up at the ceiling, Jean sees a weathered label on a ventilation shaft, VENTAMAX, which has faded to read V-MAX. And Jean realises what “V-Max” actually is. Not a code. Not a secret weapon. Not some obscure X-Man villain. Just the last thing her sister saw before she died.

Does it work as a twist? Eh. I dunno, man.

I think it works better than similar twists. It’s better than “your parents were nobody, Rey” for example. But at a twist like this, where you were expecting a big dramatic reveal and instead get something small and tragic and mundane, I think that needs emotional investment to really land. If I truly cared about Jean and Sara then sure, I could see this hitting hard. But this reminds me of a play I saw many years ago about the relationship between Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl. And that play was well written and it had historical interest but ultimately you can’t have emotional stakes in a relationship drama if I hate both people and do not want good things to happen to them. And that’s kinda where I am with this. Oh, sadistic psychopath Jean Grey will never be reunited with her almost as awful sister?

Jean has a crashout and creates a massive bubble of psychic energy that freezes everyone in half of New York regardless of whether or not they’re driving a car, crossing the street or performing a medical operation.

Spider-Man however, is unaffected.

1. Does the movie explain why Spider-Man is unaffected? No it bloody doesn’t!

He battles the Hand, who are now controlled by Jean by deactivating his inhibitor chip and embracing his inner black-eyed Spider. So this answers our finally mystery, what is happening to Peter Parker? And the answer is “he’s just becoming more badass, don’t worry about it”. Jean tries to take over Peter’s mind and discovers a memory of Aunt May telling Peter she loves him and is proud of him.

And you might say “well, that’s the reason why she couldn’t take over his mind” to which I say…really? Nobody else that she possessed had a family member tell them they love them? Man, New York is a rough city.

Peter and Jean bond over the people that they’ve lost (fucking really?) but Peter senses that Frank has set up position with a long distance rifle to take Jean out and…y’know…save the millions of innocents she’s psychically paralysed. Between this and Wandavision, I swear to God, this universe. If Galactus showed up to devour the Earth and happened to be a cute red-head everyone would be all “well, have we considered her side of this?”

Anyway, Peter takes the bullet for Jean. He wakes up in hospital to find that Frank has been waiting by his bedside for days.

Look, I haven’t seen the Punisher TV show. Did he get a pardon in that? Did the government just say “yeah, we’re cool with the guy with a skull on his chest murdering criminals left right and centre”? Because otherwise, what the fuck?

He’s been on trial! His identity is public knowledge! HE HAS 310 CONFIRMED KILLS AND THAT’S JUST ONSCREEN! THERE ARE COPS ALL AROUND THE HOSPITAL! JUST TAKE HIM ALREADY!

Oy oy oy oy.

Anyway, Frank tells Peter that Jean used her powers to keep his heart beating while he was in a coma. Frank apologises for shooting Peter and they admit they’re friends (ew, ew, ew) and Frank distracts the adoring crowd outside so that Peter can escape the hospital without having to pay the medical bills that would inevitably cripple him. Or maybe not? I don’t even know if money still exists in this world.

And the movie ends with Peter realising he doesn’t have to be alone and reconnecting with Ned using their old handshake.

***

What is so frustrating to me is that the elements for a really great story are here. There are parts I like. As always with the Holland spider movies the Peter/MJ/Ned stuff is, I think, the strongest part.

But the frankly weird ethics leave a bad taste in my mouth.

***

Scoring

Adaptation: 05/25

Squadered opportunities to the left, squandered opportunities to the right.

Our Heroic Heroes: 08/25

Spider-Man should not be friends with the Punisher. I don’t know if I’ve made my feelings on this clear. Apart from that, Holland is still my favourite live action Peter Parker.

Our Nefarious Villain: 04/25

She is a fucking monster, which is good for a villain, but I don’t think the movie realises that.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 14/25

Alright, fair is fair, Berenthal is actually hilarious as Frank. There’s a bit where, while possessed by Jean, he does this swishy walk out of the room that had me cackling. Ruffalo gives a great Hulk and on this blog we stan Zendaya as the one true MJ.

The Stinger

Ned’s Spider-Man tracker app shows Spider-Man being taken to space.

And the audience went…

FINAL SCORE: 31%

NEXT UPDATE: 26 November 2026

NEXT TIME: Oh, God.