Is This the Film We Were Hoping For?

Normally I avoid discussing trailers in my regular articles (that’s what the bonus mini-episodes of the podcast are for), but once in a while something pulls me in and forces me to break that rule. Sometimes it’s the online discourse, other times the trailer itself is so shockingly bad (or good) that I can’t help but comment on it as soon as I can. This time around it’s actually a bit of both because the new trailer for Spider-man: Brand New Day is actually pretty weird and not that great looking, and the online discourse for it seems to be turning against the film.

Let’s be clear: as we’ve noted before, Marvel is not in a great place. The Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. has stumbled for the last few outings and while some things they’ve released have been good (like Wonder Man, or Deadpool & Wolverine), while most of what they’ve put out during Phases IV, V, and now VI have been met with resounding shrugs. The few big hits they’ve had have played against the standard Marvel type, giving the MCU a shot of something different, which clearly indicates that audiences are bored of the same old thing from Marvel.

What the studio needs is a win, especially in the lead up to Avengers: Doomsday. That film is shaking out to be one of the biggest movies in Marvel’s history, and if it fails, it could spell the end for the MCU. That’s not doom and gloom talk, it’s just basic studio math. A franchise can only go on so long, with so many flops and bombs, before the studio pulls the plug. The MCU used to be Marvel’s license to print money, but the last few Box Office failures have made it look more like a money pit. Who knows how long Disney will be willing to throw good money after bad. Marvel needs a very big W.

I’m not certain that Spider-man: Brand New Day is going to be that win, at least not from the looks of the trailer. The previous films had trailers that could easily summarize their storylines. Spider-man: Homecoming was Peter in high school, and he also fights the Vulture. Spider-man: Far From Home saw Peter going overseas on a school trip, and he also battles Mysterio. Spider-man: No Way Home had Peter dealing with a multiversal threat, and all the classic Spider-man movie villains come back. In each case you could watch the trailer and just know what the film was about. A simple hook, it drew you in.

Here, though, Spider-man: Brand New Day feels much sloppier in its initial trailer, almost as if the film is fighting with itself over what it wants to be. Watching the trailer (twice now), I’m still not certain what the exact plot of the film actually is as it has a lot of different parts all battling with each other. We see Spidey going around the city, acting as a hero. He’s doing his own kind of street justice, which sometimes involves him interacting with other heroes (or anti-heroes), such as the Punisher. But there are bigger threats on the horizon, such as Scorpion, and also (for some reason) ninjas. What they are part of, or why, isn’t entirely clear yet.

Meanwhile, his personal life is a mess. He’s now, somehow, neighbors with his former girlfriend and former best friend, both of whom (due to the events of the previous film) have no clue who he was. And yet he starts hanging out with them again despite this. And while that’s going on, he’s also dealing with changes to his own biology as the spider genetics active in his cells start to mutate. Is he becoming more spider than man, or is this something he can fight off. We just don’t know yet.

A danger for superhero films (which Spider-man 3 perfectly illustrated) is that without a very clear hand tightly controlling the rails they can become overstuffed. That’s what this film, at least from this first trailer, seems to be struggling with. It has a lot of ideas – his personal life, his superhero life, his mutation, his villains, former allies, new allies, ninjas – that don’t seem to connect into each other from what little story we can glean. For instance, while it’s fun to see both Frank Castle and Bruce Banner in the trailer for the film, they feel like distractions more than essential parts of the story. We just don’t get why they’re there (beyond, “it’s the MCU so they gotta”).

That is not to say that these various pieces couldn’t somehow be brought together. A simple idea that the stress of being on his own is causing his powers to mutate is something that can tie into Peter’s personal life. Scorpion is a villain from his past so having them show up again to cause trouble adds to the personal drama. It can all build if it’s written right. But then you have the Punisher, or the ninjas, and you have to wonder what’s going on there and if they’re actually useful to the story or just filler? Does the film need filler at all, really?

At the same time, I also worry about what identity this film is going for. Certain shots feel like they were ripped from Sony’s Spider-verse films, which were cool when done over in those movies but feel out of place here. The MCU Spider-man has had his own vibe and while I love the Spider-verse movies, I also like having two versions of Spider-man (three if you also count Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man) that feel distinct from each other. I don’t need them blending together into some kind of morass.

Finally, the CGI in this trailer sucks. I don’t want to pass too hard of judgment just yet as trailers don’t always speak to the final product, especially with Marvel films. Something that looks rough here could get smoothed out with another pass or two from a CGI artist. It certainly doesn’t help to sell the movie, though, and Marvel needs to sell this. They need buy-in from audiences that have, so far, proven to be elusive to Marvel machinations. Spider-man as a franchise has a larger profile that Thunderbolts* or the Fantastic Four, at least in cinemas, so it’s probably that this film will do better than those. But will it do well enough to make Marvel feel good about their theatrical business, especially in the lead up to Avengers: Doomsday? This trailer doesn’t necessarily inspire me with hope.

All of this is to say I hoped for more from this trailer. It’s Spider-man! You want his films to be good. He’s one of the four most popular superheroes (along with Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman). A different superhero team can do okay at the Box Office and no one bats an eye. But if a Spider-man film fails, it’s a big deal. We may not have a failure here… but it doesn’t feel like we have a rousing success either. This isn’t, so far, the massive win Marvel needs.

I’m sure we’ll get at least one more trailer in the lead up to release day (July 31, 2026), and Marvel will have a second chance at proving to us all that this is a film we need to see. Right now, though, I wouldn’t be shocked if this trailer turned off more people that it attracted. It’s a bit of a mess, and that’s not the direction Marvel needs right now. They need to do better.