For this National Day holiday (at least for me), our main activity for the day was finally watching Spider-Man: Brand New Day once Tobie was done with work for the day. It was a pretty good movie, and it nicely built on all the character development across these Tom Holland Spider-Man movies.
I cried a number of times during the movie, as seems to be the case for many of the Spider-Man movies. To be fair, this particular addition to the story was quite heavy, as the big focus was Peter Parker literally trying to survive on his own with no support from friends or family given the events of the last movie. Anyone would get emotional.
I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before, but I will stress that Spider-Man was my first superhero and he remains one of my favorite characters. I got into his comics in a major way, and I'm intimately familiar with a lot of the nuances of the character. So the various movie adaptations really work for me when they capture key aspects of the character.
The first Tobey Maguire movie made me cry at the very end as they stressed the classic Peter Parker conflict of needing to keep himself somewhat distant from those he loves in order to protect them. I got weepy in the second movie given how Alfred Molina masterfully portrayed Doctor Octopus and added a father-son dynamic between him and Spider-Man that totally made sense. The Andrew Garfield movies moved me in how he really portrayed Peter Parker as a citizen of New York, with the city pretty much being a recurring character across the movies. I even cried in the first Spider-Verse animated movie when Miles had to go through his version of the central tragedy that defines a lot of Spider-Mans. And I know I was particularly moved at the end of No Way Home when Peter still made the choice to make everyone forget him for the greater good.
Brand New Day had a lot of these moments and really depicted this instance of Peter at his lowest. The message of this movie, especially in the context of this iteration of the franchise, is that Spider-Man can't exist without Peter Parker. The man is just as important as the superhero alter ego, as the two bring balance to one another in order to make him that friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
As much as Spider-Man is often defined by his tragedies that help ground him and make him the hero that he is, it's not like the movies don't balance things with the lighter stuff. The second Spider-Verse movie pretty much codified several aspects of the character, given how things repeat across the adaptations and other interpretations of the Spider-Man story. He'll always be a balance of both, yet always grounded by his loved ones.
These movies are never going to be the best things ever, nor will they win significant awards beyond those for technical merit. But they'll be a lot of fun to watch in theaters, and they'll pull at my geeky heartstrings. Spider-Man is always going to be my guy.
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