Spider-Man: Brand New Day — Immediate Reaction

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. This is your host, Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, and I just got home from watching Spider-Man: Brand New Day. And oh my freaking goodness, was it a hell of a ride. It did everything I hoped it would do. There was web slinging, there was jumping all around the city fighting different types of crime. The main throughout plot was hinted at but never really fully dropped until, well, this movie, going to see it. And I really like how everything pieced together. This is just my immediate reaction, so I'll likely have another episode next week about maybe a deeper dive going into things. But I'm— I gotta talk about the things in order that they come to my mind in this one because we've been waiting for so long to know who Sadie Sink officially is, and it is Jean Grey, as many have speculated, which I think is pretty great. I like that they're bringing an X-Men character, probably one that's going to be in the franchise for quite a while, in this early and giving her her own backstory and trauma. And I just really, really like that they decided to use her as a character. And Sadie Sink, great actress. So her getting older only solidifies the fact that she'll probably continue to be a great actress and fall even further into the role that we know from the old, you know, X-Men '97 or the comics, which I haven't covered X-Men '97 on this show. Do you want to hear that? [email protected]. I want your take on this movie. What did you think? Did you walk out laughing? Did you sleep through the whole thing? I think for another thing that comes to mind is how they integrated the Punisher, watching his series and the short gory film on Disney Plus that came out. One last kill, which was exceptionally awesome. They're still able to keep him with his guns and keep him in the fight and helping out Spider-Man in whatever way he can. I loved him using guns against the Incredible Hulk and them not doing anything. And then the moment where he admits that to Peter that he doesn't want to be fighting the Hulk anymore— get me away from this guy. And, uh, yeah, it was good to see the Hulk. It was good to see, honestly, the Hulk, like the real Hulk, not just Ruffalo Hulk. Ruffalo and then Hulk, Smart Hulk, and then Hulk Hulk. You know, we thought Hulk Hulk might have been gone for a while there, but we got a good taste that he is still in there. And that inhibitor chip is completely foreshadowing something that we'll probably use against all the mutants, like Jean Grey and her being completely used by Damage Control in the end. I mean, good God, that, that's a great twist because Damage Control is slowly becoming one of the biggest bad corporations, government installations that we've seen in the MCU, going all the way back to Spider-Man: Homecoming where we learned that Tony Stark helped put it in place. But I would strongly argue if he were still here, I don't think he'd agree with a lot of their actions and the way they take people and put them away without trial or anything like that. And obviously the way they use Jean Grey's sister and took her power, and they're able to use her power to manipulate the Hand to do their dirty doings. And that's kind of what we see in all the posters— Peter fighting the Hand. They chose to show that instead of, you know, giving away the Jean Grey character payoff and all the characters in the movie. It was very interesting going through the movie Not knowing you know what characters he was going to interact with. Is he going to even be talking to Ned and MJ a lot? And the MJ plotline was pretty much dead center, and it kind of I'll just say it. It kind of reminds me a little bit of Guardians of the Galaxy, where Peter misses Gamora and he's trying to find the real Gamora. But the fact is, the person he once knew is no longer there, and that's something that MJ does tell Peter when he gets home and she found the letter. He could not bring himself to read the letter to her, give it to her, and she found. responded herself. I do like how open she was to the idea. I do like how— well, one thing I didn't like, which broke, which broke my heart, was the moment where he was with MJ and she remembered him and they started kissing and he started crying. And it was such a beautiful moment up until when you even, probably seconds like me beforehand, realized this isn't real. This is Jean Grey. manipulating things again. And damn, that stuck. That stuck really harsh. I, I think Peter was scarred by that move. Definitely heard an audible gasp when it was officially Jean Grey because it seemed like people figured that out. Then people kind of like started giving wild, wacky, crazy theories. Some people stuck with Jean Grey, but we didn't know for sure until now. At least I didn't. Avoiding spoilers and spoilery videos I really wanted to be surprised, and it was a good enough surprise for me. It just is a great nod that the X-Men are coming, not even just the version from Avengers: Doomsday, the original MCU X-Men, with maybe Hugh Jackman sticking in the picture as Wolverine. I don't know if they're gonna do that or not, but you know, I like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. It might just be weird to see him with a bunch of really young X-Men, but who knows. The release of Black Panther 3 coming in, I think 2028 after Secret Wars, is going to have a more grown-up T'Challa. So we might have some of these characters like, well, Sadie Sinks' Jean Grey be a little bit older. I don't know if they'll age her up though. I mean, a couple of years are going to go by before we see that movie, and I think it might— some things usually get pushed up a year. So I don't want the X-Men to get pushed off into eternity until 2029. That's not what I'm saying. But in reality, the X-Men can definitely— they could be pushed back to get them right, especially since they're giving us a test run with them with the classic X-Men from the Fox universe and giving them a proper send-off. And I wonder if they'll incorporate any of the older— I mean, newer Fox movies with the younger characters, uh, with Michael Fassbender and— oh man, I don't remember the main guy's name— Professor X from that series. I think that would be pretty cool too. Something I really liked about the movie was Peter getting stronger, his mutation taking over, the idea that it is kind of like a mutation, kind of even more leaning into the mutant side of things, and he doesn't want to accept it. It's almost like he's becoming Spider-Man again. We never even seen him turn into Spider-Man. I imagine the beginning was his senses were heightened and his powers were most likely showing up and shocking him, and he had to get used to them. But in this movie, it became such a big thing that he didn't want that extra power. He didn't want the webs, the webs coming out of him like that. He was actually pretty grossed out by it, the way he like touched his hand and the, the webs kind of like fell out awkwardly. Like, you know, it was gross. He's so grossed out by it, and him being grossed out by it obviously makes me feel a little bit like that too. And, uh, Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, his Spider-Man should have been there give him a little advice on that situation. You know, Spider-Man to Spider-Man, this is what it's like growing up. Um, giving him the, the web talk, you know. Peter keeps bringing flowers to May's grave. There's no Happy in this one because Happy's not a part of Peter's life anymore. Something in me wanted Peter to go back to Doctor Strange to see if he could fix anything for him, but that would have been cheap and kind of like undermined the end of the last movie. So obviously they were gonna have to stick with the decision they made. And write themselves out of it. So at the end of the movie, you know, Peter—I thought he was grabbing flowers for MJ, but it hit me—he's going to bring them to May. He did that a couple times, and he sees Ned, and I'm sure all he can remember is MJ telling him, "I think Ned would like knowing the truth," and we don't actually get to see Peter telling Ned the exact truth that he was Spider-Man. They used to be best friends and all that. But it is shown through a muscle memory incident where Peter walks up to Ned and they shake hands and their old handshake kind of comes back to life, which leaves us with Ned saying, Peter. It's open to interpretation right now that Ned may or may not have remembered everything in that moment, or he just felt right, like, oh, Peter, okay. And this is my friend. This guy's gonna be a good friend of mine, I think. I personally think it's the second one. However, I wouldn't hate it if they did have Ned be like the only person who remembers Peter. I mean, that would make him just like family to Peter, and just knowing that Ned knows what Peter went through. And I like how these Spider-Man movies have a through-line story, and I even heard somewhere in one of the many videos I watched before I seen the movie that the guy who made the soundtrack, he made it with little bits and pieces of the original Spider-Man soundtrack, but pieces taken out because he's missing little parts of his life. You know, I think this movie had so much Spider-Man being Spider-Man, if you know what I mean. Like running throughout the city, webbing around, taking care of this bad guy, taking care of that bad guy. We get to see Tombstone and Scorpion, and Scorpion was being mind controlled at One point, but we got to see an earlier fight between them, and Scorpion is badass looking. I thought Michael, I think Michael Mando from Better Call Saul, great actor. I want to see more of him as Scorpion. I think he's a great, great villain, and he wasn't like the main villain or anything. He was just part of the catalog, kind of like we get to know in other iterations of the character, like in video games, more or less for me video games. Yelena Belova kind of Telling Peter he's more of a street hero and the Avengers deal with bigger threats maybe is an explanation for why at the end of the post-credits scene where we see Peter being pinged in space by Ned's thing— that's a whole other subject, right? But it's the fact that Peter might not be invited to Avengers: Doomsday. It was Spider-Man will return, not in Avengers: Doomsday Spider-Man will return. Maybe they just keep him out of the whole conflict. They don't know him that well. I don't know why they wouldn't give him a call for a little extra help, which makes me think the events of Doomsday is very fast— are very fast. They happen in a short amount of time, and to rally as many people together as they can, not maybe one of them would think to call Spider-Man, just like they wouldn't think to call Daredevil or any other New York street hero. So there's kind of a little bit of groundwork laid out there to answer your question as to why Spider-Man isn't in this movie when we go see it in December. He got his own movie, he's got his own story going on, and that's enough for now. Secret Wars will be a very different story, I'm assuming. The Hulk fight was great. Good to see Hulk back. I do feel bad for Bruce having to go back into Like a mental hospital and into the system because he caused a lot of ruckus and scared some people as Hulk. Wasn't the worst Hulk destruction of all time. It wasn't like in Age of Ultron when Scarlet Witch took over him and made him live his worst nightmare, but he wasn't in great shape either. He was definitely destroying things and smashing plenty, and he has been in there so long being repressed. I just don't think that what Bruce had told us before in Endgame, when he took the best of both worlds— I think he took a little piece of Hulk's power. I think he buried Hulk deep in there, and Hulk came out in a very angry way in this movie. It's just a good excuse even to see Spider-Man go up against the Incredible Hulk. I mean, we like to see our heroes fighting before they team up, and I like to think that this is a chance for The Incredible Hulk to come back in Doomsday or Secret Wars to help fight the big fight against Doctor Doom and whatever threats may lay ahead from there on. However, he may just be stuck in the mental ward for being the Hulk, which I think would be ridiculous and awful. Okay, so I'm going crazy talking about this. I can talk about little things all day. This is my immediate reaction to the movie. I loved it. Would I change anything about it? I don't know. I don't know. You know, the first thing I want to say is, with a little bit of— don't take this the wrong way— I just felt like something might have was missing. But that feeling could very much be attributed to the fact that Peter doesn't have his friends in his life and how well that story resonated with me. The fact that his friends are out of reach, but he's seeing them, he's with them. He's a hair away from telling them the truth every moment. He doesn't know how they'll react from the truth. So that, that feeling that I have of there was something missing might be a very intentional theme brought on by the movie itself. So I want to think about it, let it marinate. I might go see it again. I'll be honest with you, it was great to be in the theater watching a Spider-Man movie again. Honestly, I had— so I, you know, I had a little bit of uncomfortable seat situation. I won't Talk too much about it, but it was a little distracting. And I did enjoy my stay. So what did you think of the movie? Marvel Maniac pod at gmail.com. If you love Marvel Maniac as much as I love making it, you don't have to love it. You could just like it. Give it a review. Leave it a rating wherever you listen to your podcast. Join our Discord server. It is in the notes of this episode, and I would love to see you there talking about Spider-Man and. The MCU in general, and even Harry Potter, because I have—I host a Harry Potter show called Magic Muggle Harry Potter After Show, where I'm reading through the books. And it's called Honest First to Discord. Don't be shy. Join us. Assemble with us. And yeah, this was a ride. I mean, it's nothing like a new Spider-Man movie to really get you thinking. I'm still thinking about stuff over and over again. I'm gonna leave you. Before I disassemble, my, my last final favorite part, it's when Peter was leaving the hospital and everyone was cheering for Spider-Man. You get to see how loved Spider-Man has been— become over the last 4 years of him just diving into the job and into the role. He is New York's protector. He is officially the canon Spider-Man where Iron Man isn't one-upping him or actually helping him you know, on the ferry thing. We all have that. And then the comedy moment where the Punisher wore his mask and his gloves and waved out the window to not signal anyone that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, causing any more multiversal spells to get them to forget it so his life doesn't get ruined again. We've had enough of that for Peter. But it's just good to see that the city is on Peter's side, and that's kind of like something that I think resonates with him as he's walking away from that and get to see all the posters and all the kids like just cheering for him. And he's, he's a hero and portrayed so well by Tom Holland. I'm thankful for having him as our Spider-Man, and I'm thankful for you being here today. Again, thank you, and until next time, Avengers disassemble.