Just over a month after Supergirl’s disappointing debut, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is projected to swing into theaters at a potential $465 million opening, which would be Sony’s second biggest movie opening, according to Deadline. The trailer is the first to surpass one billion views, which it accomplished within four days of its release.
Every major superhero studio has taken a hit over the past three years. Marvel’s The Marvels and Thunderbolts* underperformed, DC struggled to launch new hero franchises with The Flash and Blue Beetle and Sony’s Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter failed to build enthusiasm for its Spider-Man universe lacking Spider-Man himself.
Many have attributed these films’ failures to superhero fatigue. With Marvel, Warner Bros. and Sony all putting out multiple new superhero movies and television shows a year, the market becomes oversaturated. As all three studios are building their own broader cinematic universe, each new release demands more from audiences in staying caught up on content.
And yet, Spider-Man still stands immune, despite Brand New Day being the ninth live-action movie centered around the web-slinging hero since 2002, and the fourth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s franchise reboot.
Most of the failing superhero movies share one important trait in common: they are centered around characters that aren’t well known to the non-comic book reading public. Many have cited this as a reason that Supergirl performed poorly.
Spider-Man, however, has consistently been one of Marvel’s most popular characters since his debut in 1962. He has anchored blockbuster movies, Saturday morning cartoons, video games and even a Broadway musical.
It seems that every generation has inherited its own version of Spider-Man to grow up with, whether it’s the 1967 animated Spider-Man show with the classic theme song, 1994’s Spider-Man: The Animated Series, or today’s Marvel Cinematic Universe films starring Tom Holland.
Rebooting the Spider-Man franchise every few years has helped to keep the character fresh as well as bring in new audiences. Through each reboot, Spider-Man has proved himself to be a character with the rare ability to continually refresh himself without losing his central identity.
Spider-Man is a hero rooted in nostalgia and, by design, is one that fans can relate to. Unlike Batman and Iron Man, he isn’t wealthy. Unlike Superman and Captain America, he isn’t written to uphold moral ideals. Instead, Spider-Man is aspirational because, just like his fans, he, too, is just a regular person underneath the mask, perpetually figuring life out, making mistakes and learning from them.
Another common pitfall of the superhero genre is that some movies seem to be made just to set up sequels in the cinematic universe. Spider-Man’s stories, however, still stay grounded in universal coming-of-age themes.
The MCU began its Spider-Man franchise reboot in 2017 with Spider-Man: Homecoming, which many critics likened to a modern John Hughes movie. In Homecoming, like in Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s movies before, the emotional stakes are as important to the story as the superhero action sequences. For Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, asking his crush to the homecoming dance is as daunting as fighting villains like the Vulture.
In a 2021 GQ interview, Tom Holland said that “If I’m playing Spider-Man after I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong.”
With Brand New Day, he will be making his seventh film appearance as the superhero, coincidentally, at the age of 30.
Luckily for his fans, he clarified to the same publication this year that he “would love to pass the baton on” to a new actor when he’s ready to.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s box office projections suggest that there is still an appetite for Holland to continue in this role. More than that, they tell us that in a time where public interest in superhero movies is waning, Spider-Man is still a long way away from overstaying his welcome – if he ever will.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, July 31.
