{"id":979989,"date":"2026-08-04T11:46:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T11:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/979989\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T11:46:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T11:46:33","slug":"spider-man-brand-new-day-fights-superhero-fatigue-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/979989\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ fights superhero fatigue with love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the biggest global opening weekend<\/a> in history, \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day\u201d is cleaning up at the box office in a manner that left \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d spitting sand. (Relatively speaking; \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d also had a strong worldwide debut<\/a> and is on track to become the third R-rated film to hit the billion-dollar mark.) <\/p>\n

But while Christopher Nolan\u2019s vision of a nearly 3,000<\/a>–<\/a>year<\/a>–<\/a>old epic poem<\/a> has received, with the exception of a few less-than<\/a>–<\/a>impressed classics experts <\/a>and the usual \u201creplacement theory\u201d nut jobs, waves of gratitude for helping revitalize cinema, the success of \u201cSpider-Man\u201d has many of these same people scratching their heads.<\/p>\n

Certainly the reviews have been mixed \u2014 some find the narrative streamlined and personal with Tom Holland giving his best-ever performance; others declare \u201cBrand New Day\u201d to be overstuffed with franchise teasers<\/a> and\/or suggest that, at 30, Holland is getting a bit old for the job.<\/p>\n

So how is it, pundits wondered, that Spidey has vanquished the ultimate supervillain: superhero fatigue.<\/a> <\/p>\n

It\u2019s simple really: love.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason \u201cLove Actually\u201d featured a kid in Spider-Man face paint<\/a>, as opposed to a Superman cape. People, especially kids (and the adults they will become), love Spider-Man with an affection that is deep and true. Unlike so many other superheroes, Peter Parker is one of us. He\u2019s not a super-scientist or a god or an extraterrestrial or a one-percenter able to develop all manner of nifty crime-fighting gadgetry. He\u2019s a kid who, having been accidentally endowed with superpowers that do not disfigure him, physically or emotionally (no Red Room trauma, inner rage monster, centurylong life span), remains a kid with an adolescent\u2019s delight in all he can now do. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s funny, sweet and, having been raised right (in this latest iteration by Marisa Tomei\u2019s hip and humanitarian Aunt May), extremely polite, even as he takes down all the bad guys \u2014 a cheeky bright spot in a landscape super-peopled almost exclusively with adults and all their existential whinging and regretful brooding.<\/p>\n

But our feelings for the character is not the only, or most important, love story helping to drive the success of \u201cBrand New Day.\u201d Perhaps because they are closest in age to Romeo and Juliet, the complicated courtship of Peter and MJ (or Gwen), has always been the best built-in love story in the multiverse. The actors playing those roles \u2014 Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone \u2014 invariably became romantic partners so when the series was revived with Holland, with Zendaya as MJ, producer Amy Pascal warned them not to date.<\/a><\/p>\n

Mercifully, they did not listen and in Holland and Zendaya, \u201cBrand New Day\u201d has a real-life beloved couple (recently married) playing a fictional beloved couple, now divided by the memory-erasing spell of the previous film, \u201cSpider-Man: No Way Home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers\u2019 decision to have Peter Parker wiped from everyone\u2019s memory, including MJ\u2018s and Ned\u2019s (Jacob Batalon), was a brilliant twist that not only saved us from \u201cSpider-Man Goes to College\u201d but also injected a star-crossed romantic pathos that Shakespeare would envy.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t have been the only person who bought an opening weekend ticket for the sole purpose of finding out if\/when\/how Peter and MJ would find their way back to each other.<\/p>\n

This has been spoiled elsewhere, but we\u2019ll leave it at they do and they don\u2019t. Although the more jaded among us might see the ambiguity as a nakedly emotional hook for future films, including \u201cAvengers: Doomsday,\u201d the opportunity for both Peter and MJ to mature a bit, independent of each other, feels thematically essential and more than a little revolutionary. It certainly sparks an intriguing question about the nature of romantic love, something too often associated with \u201cbeing saved\u201d in Marvel, and many other, films.<\/p>\n

Seeing the famously private couple playfully interact with each other and Batalon during the press tour of \u201cBrand New Day\u201d only amped up the already fevered anticipation of how the trio will regroup as surely they must \u2014 the love Peter has for Ned is just as strong and singular as his love for MJ. The fact that we\u2019ve watched these actors grow up before our eyes (Zendaya and Batalon were 19 and Holland 20 when they filmed \u201cSpider-Man: Homecoming\u201d in 2016) makes it even more of a family affair \u2014 of course we want to know what happens to Spidey and his gang!<\/p>\n

Given the extraordinary success of \u201cBrand New Day,\u201d on top of \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d there is a very good chance that Hollywood, in its infinite and historically flawed wisdom, will decide that superhero fatigue is a myth and that what audiences really want is spectacle. So this is a plea for those in charge to tear their eyes away from the box office returns and look at the film itself. <\/p>\n

Yes, \u201cBrand New Day\u201d is full of terrific web-slinging and swinging scenes (albeit ones in which Spider-Man gets even more beat up than usual), but its power is emotional not spectacular, built more on dialogue than special effects.<\/p>\n

Holland\u2019s Spider-Man relates more personally to everyone \u2014 friends and foes \u2014 than any other superhero; his scenes with the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Det. DeWolff (Liza Col\u00f3n-Zayas) and, at the end, Jean Grey (Sadie Sink) are always less about exposition or explosive action than character revelation and connection. <\/p>\n

He cares and so do we.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how it works in love stories and, as \u201cBrand New Day\u201d is proving, love stories are pretty hard to beat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the biggest global opening weekend in history, \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day\u201d is cleaning up at the box…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":979990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[148925,1582,276,19919,393283,388827,18996,2961,224,5337,4818,253935,64914,148924,393282,65165,25852,393281,1748,32773],"class_list":["post-979989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-brand-new-day","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-character","tag-future-film","tag-jacob-batalon","tag-kid","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-love","tag-love-story","tag-mj","tag-peter-parker","tag-record-breaking-box-office","tag-spider-man","tag-success","tag-superhero-fatigue","tag-tom-holland","tag-zendaya"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117037078575650979","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/979990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}