Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s first trailer understandably broke the internet. The first look at the fourth MCU Spider-Man solo film set an unbelievable record of 718 million trailer views in the first 24 hours, easily eclipsing the previous record holder, Grand Theft Auto VI’s 455 million. The people yearn for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, it seems. Yet although there is much about the new film’s plot and characters we don’t yet know – get your final guesses as to who Sadie Sink is playing in now, folks – one aspect of the trailer is reason to be optimistic not just about Brand New Day, but about the future of the MCU as a whole: just how many villains there seem to be running around.
I don’t mean that ironically. We get glimpses of Scorpion, Boomerang, Tarantula, and even some ninjas from the Hand. Plus, we also know Tombstone will be showing up and possibly even more characters depending on who winds up in the main antagonist role. Why is this a big deal? Isn’t the prevailing wisdom that comic book movies with too many villains are bad? Well, this speaks to the MCU finally delivering on one of its outstanding promises when it comes to adapting the source material: faithfully portraying a world chock-full of villains and vigilantes. Let’s take a look at how Brand New Day is changing the game for the MCU.
Life, Death, and Villains in Comic Book Movies
I’ve been banging this drum for quite a while, and I’m doing it again: One of the MCU’s biggest missteps has been killing off too many villains. Major foes who have been recurring threats in the comics like Obadiah Stane, Arnim Zola, Ronan the Accuser, Baron Strucker, Crossbones, Purple Man, Ulysses Klaw, Ego the Living Planet, Hela, Surtur, Batroc, the Supreme Intelligence, Mandarin, Mysterio, Muse, and Thanos have all been blown away. Others are in weird situations, like the Sacred Timeline’s Loki being killed in Infinity War but an alternate Loki surviving via Endgame’s time heist, Ultron being set to return over a decade after his debut in VisionQuest, and Kang the Conqueror having many living variants but seemingly being jettisoned from the series after Jonathan Majors’ firing.
It’s hardly a problem exclusive to the MCU, having been part of comic book movies as far back as Tim Burton’s first Batman film in 1989. Despite the Joker being Batman’s archenemy who has been threatening Gotham for more than 80 years in the comics, Burton’s film series kills him off at the end of the first entry. Why? For some momentary catharsis at the film’s climax? Would putting him in jail or Arkham Asylum so he could theoretically be used again really have made the movie worse? Setting aside Batman’s lethality in that series as well as the DCEU, it shows a startling lack of foresight to take a hero’s greatest enemies and put them in the ground after only one appearance. Not every movie where that happens does it poorly; Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 1 and 2 give tragic weight to the deaths of Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. But in a world where superhero franchises are so commonplace, you’d think someone in charge would clue in that keeping villains alive would be beneficial in the long term.
The big gambit of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was to recreate the universe of Marvel comics on the big screen. It’s kind of in the name, after all. But a huge part of the fun of that universe is that there are numerous heroes and villains running around who have lives outside of big battles. Sure, maybe it’s slightly unrealistic for supervillain prisons to have revolving doors where menaces who can threaten global destruction keep evading their sentences, but it’s also slightly unrealistic for a spider bite to give someone superpowers. The relationships that villains develop with their adversaries as well as their fellow villains can be some of the most interesting dramatic material in the comic books, and Brand New Day including so many threats indicates the filmmakers are aware of that.
Let the Super Villains Live!
One of the common refrains in comic book movie discourse leading into the rise of the MCU was that films in the genre with “too many villains” were worse than movies with a single threat. Such broad statements rarely hold up to scrutiny, but it’s worth examining why that line of thought gained so much traction in the first place. To bring back the Raimi Spider-Man example, both 1 and 2 have one main villain each, and are generally regarded as great films. Spider-Man 3, meanwhile, has three big villains in Sandman, Venom, and Harry Osborn’s New Goblin, and is typically referred to as the trilogy’s weak link. But is the movie not as good because there are three antagonists, or because there’s not much of a strong narrative thread between them? Spider-Man 3 is messy because it’s trying to inelegantly juggle five or six plotlines at once, not necessarily because three bad guys from the comics show up.
Less than some arbitrary number of villainous characters, what matters is narrative purpose and thematic clarity.
Many good-to-great comic book movies have several villains and work out fine. Batman Begins has Scarecrow, Ra’s al Ghul, and Carmine Falcone. Both Spider-Verse movies feature tons of antagonists from across the multiverse. And regarding MCU Spider-Man, No Way Home featured several villains from previous Spidey movies and still had a coherent story. Less than some arbitrary number of villainous characters, what matters is narrative purpose and thematic clarity. It’s too early to say if Brand New Day will have those things, but that the trailer is highlighting many B- and C-level Spider-Man villains from the comics hints that they’re going to be used to establish Spidey’s new status quo, letting us in on what he’s been up to since Doctor Strange wiped the world’s memory of Peter Parker at the end of No Way Home.
This also relates to other goings-on in the MCU, specifically Daredevil: Born Again Season 2. A major storyline of both seasons is Mayor Fisk cracking down on vigilante activity in New York with his Anti-Vigilante Task Force. Born Again sets up that there are many such characters running around the city doing their own thing. Not just Daredevil, but also Swordsman, White Tiger, Jessica Jones, and Punisher (who is set to appear in Brand New Day, mind you!). We doubt the show will have a Spidey appearance, but it’s worth noting that both the film and show are creating a new structure to the MCU’s world where many superpowered heroes and villains are existing simultaneously, and not all of them are associated with a centralized big team like the Avengers or the overall saga arc. It’s a better system than big villains showing up and getting permanently defeated one at a time, and also hints at some particular comics the MCU may be set to draw from.
Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day Setting Up the Sinister Six?
Any Spider-Man fan worth their salt knows that the Sinister Six is the premiere team of Spider-Man villains who join forces to take down the Wall-Crawler. While the original incarnation founded by Doctor Octopus is the most iconic, the roster has been remarkably malleable, with the lineup including all kinds of different enemies over the years. So many villains being part of Brand New Day has us wondering if some of them will wind up being part of a Sinister Six in this or a future movie. Especially since Spider-Man: Homecoming’s post-credits scene indicates Michael Mando’s Scorpion has some friends who also hate Spidey, is Scorpion in Brand New Day (sporting a new armored suit, no less) putting together a team to take out Spider-Man? Too bad Michael Keaton’s Vulture is trapped in the Morbius universe!
Sony has wanted to adapt the Sinister Six into live action for some time, with a long-gestating spin-off about the team crumbling to dust after the Sony hack in 2014. However, Brand New Day putting so much focus on Spidey’s lower-tier enemies has us thinking that the film may be drawing from the recurring “Foes” comics, those being Deadly Foes of Spider-Man, Lethal Foes of Spider-Man, and the more recent Superior Foes of Spider-Man. All three series involve teams of Spidey’s more obscure enemies and their misshapen plans, including oddball picks like Speed Demon, the Answer, and Stegron the Dinosaur Man. Fred Myers, aka Boomerang, who is seen in the Brand New Day trailer, is a major character in Superior Foes, and that’s not even getting into Bokeem Woodbine’s Shocker still being alive and Janice Lincoln, aka the Beetle, being Tombstone’s daughter. Perhaps the MCU’s Sinister Six will be similar to the team in that comic, where it’s not Spidey’s all-time greatest enemies, but a bunch of B-level threats.
Either way, what the trailer hints about Brand New Day’s approach to villains seems like a welcome change. Even if many of the characters from the trailer only wind up being part of a montage, it still helps create a setting that feels more akin to the source material than the MCU has attempted in the past. Between Brand New Day and Daredevil: Born Again, the MCU finally feels like the sort of place where you could bump into all kinds of superpowered characters while just walking the street. It took too long, but better late than never, right?
Also, if anyone at Marvel Studios is reading this: It’s not too late to say that Mysterio faked his death in Far From Home! He would totally do that!
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles, and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
