I know it’s holiday season. And I know I should be spreading holiday cheer. But am I a Scrooge because I’m not that excited to see Avengers: Doomsday next year? in fact, I am way more geeked 🤓 to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day!
Cooking with old grease in Doomsday
Looking at how Marvel Studios is leaning into re-casting its original cast members in familiar (Chris Evans as Captain America) and unfamiliar (Robert Downey, Jr. as some version of Doctor Doom) roles, it’s apparent that they’ve scrapped their strategy of introducing new faces and building them up.
I get the strategy financially. It’s $afe and it makes the Disney bean counters and large investors happy. And to a large extent, it will appease MCU-weary and disillusioned fans’s nostalgia, which will hopefully lead to a plethora of box office receipts.
The bad news is that this approach signals the seemingly end of the fresh and audacious approach that brought us the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man and Dr. Strange—way lesser known superheroes that built up their IP the hard way via methodical, deft storytelling.
Cooking with less old grease in Spider-Man
One could argue that Spider-Man: Brand New Day is similarly safe like Avengers: Doomsday in that it’s leaning into familiar IP and leveraging actors (Tom Holland, Zendaya) from the height of the MCU’s success. And you wouldn’t be wrong.
But what separates Disney’s Spider-Man franchise is that it leans into Peter Parker’s evolution as a man and Spidey’s growth as a hero while not over-emphasizing larger MCU world-building.
And to boot, it’s introducing a certain Marvel Comics anti-hero 💀 that is long overdue (with all due respect to previous iterations) on the silver screen. 🎥
For me, it’s the Brand New Day over Doomsday.
Hopefully, both are great “days.” 😊
