Like many, I saw Spider-Man: Brand New Day over its record-breaking opening weekend. While the superhero sequel does a lot right with Tom Holland’s fan-favorite webslinger, there were a few head-scratching moments. Sadie Sink‘s character is at the center of almost all of them.
Why Spider-Man: Brand New Day loses focus when Sadie Sink takes center stage
One of Brand New Day’s worst-kept secrets was that Sink was playing the mutant superhero Jean Grey of the X-Men. When this casting first made the rounds online as a rumor, I didn’t like it, but decided to go into Brand New Day with an open mind. Unfortunately, my worries were not unfounded. Jean Grey absolutely ruins what could have easily been Tom Holland’s best Spider-Man movie yet.
There’s a lot to like in Brand New Day. The new Spider-Man suit is a huge improvement over all of the hero’s previous suits shown in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The inclusion of Hulk, Punisher, and Black Widow feels natural and is a good use of the MCU’s whole schtick of “it’s all connected”. The movie even handled Peter and MJ’s relationship in a mature way that left the door open for a proper rekindling while also not undoing the ending of No Way Home.
Then with about an hour left of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the movie becomes X-Men Origins: Jean Grey. Spider-Man just disappears from the narrative while Jean Grey gets an extended flashback sequence and multiple Damage Control scenes. Is it too much to ask for a little Spider-Man in my Spider-Man movie?
Spider-Man franchise producer Amy Pascal has come out saying that it was director Destin Daniel Cretton’s idea to have a teenager villain rather than a traditional monster, with Jean Grey complementing the movie’s central theme of human isolation and the importance of reaching out to others.
While that may be true, it still doesn’t make Jean Grey’s inclusion feel like she’s not just there to set up the MCU X-Men. The film should have seen Sink play an original villain with a similar backstory than Jean Grey. If the movie had done that, it wouldn’t have felt like such a blatant “the X-Men are coming to the MCU soon, get hyped, fandom!”
But there was a whole different way to tackle Peter’s loneliness, and it was staring Sony and Marvel straight in their faces: Jon Bernthal’s Punisher.
Frank Castle and Peter Parker have very comparable stories of loss and being pushed down a darker, lonelier path that consumes them. The movie could have expanded Punisher’s role in the movie and had him be the one to reach out to Peter. The Punisher knows Peter’s a kid, so it would make sense that he doesn’t want to see Spider-Man go down the same path he followed all those years ago.
At the very least, it would have kept Brand New Day solely focused on Spider-Man, while also beefing up one of the best parts of the movie: the buddy cop dynamic the webslinger has with Punisher. It’s disappointing that in a movie brimming with stuff fans have been wanting to see for years, like Scorpion’s return and crime bosses like Tombstone, that it’s underused in favor of teeing up Jean Grey’s X-Men arc.
Hopefully, Spider-Man 5 — which is all but guaranteed now that Brand New Day has already joined the $1 billion club — will finally let Holland be the sole lead of his solo movie. I want to see an actual Spider-Man villain as the main antagonist, and I don’t want any sort of characters or storylines that feel like they’re only there to set up a different, non-Spider-Man MCU movie.
