Brand New Day is Marvel’s Best Shot at Ending a 19-Year-Old Spider-Man Curse

Historically, Spider-Man movies have done reasonably well when they restrain themselves and choose to develop a single villain for Peter Parker to fight. This is true of Spider-Man’s Green Goblin, Spider-Man 2’s Doctor Octopus, The Amazing Spider-Man’s Lizard, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Vulture, and Spider-Man: Far From Home’s Mysterio.

However, where Spider-Man movies routinely falter is when they stuff themselves with two or more villains and struggle to juggle them all. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is already fated to potentially fall prey to this decades-old curse, but there is a chance that it has finally discovered a way to break it.

Is a Sinister Six Impossible to Do Well?

A Sinister Six would be a dream for any Spider-Man movie, becoming the ultimate spectacle as Peter, by himself, battles six iconic and colorful villains. Ironically, there arguably isn’t a single Spider-Man movie that has successfully adapted more than one lead villain.

Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Tinkerer and two Shockers are reduced to lackluster, unmemorable henchmen, for instance, while Spider-Man: Far From Home’s elementals aren’t even real, much less actual villains. Spider-Man: No Way Home inorganically skirts around this multi-villain curse by turning a 1v3 fight at the Statue of Liberty into a 3v3 fight (Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus both conveniently not making their entrances until Electro, Lizard, and Sandman are subdued), with Green Goblin being the only true, lead villain of the movie.

If Dennis Carradine is counted as a villain, as maybe he should be, then Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie is technically the only Spider-Man movie to harmonize two ‘lead’ villains appropriately, giving one half of the movie to each. The Amazing Spider-Man would later fail in its attempt, though, with Peter and the movie itself swiftly abandoning the pursuit of Uncle Ben’s killer as soon as Dr. Curtis Connors’ Lizard appears.

Spider-Man 3 & TASM2 Illustrate the Downfall of Multiple Villains

Spider-Man 3 could’ve been a fantastic movie if it had stripped away two of its three villains and focused solely on the development of one. For example, a Spider-Man 3 with Sandman as its lone villain and a symbiote-suited Peter who learns that Sandman’s Flint Marko is his uncle’s true killer could’ve been fantastic, ending with a tease for Venom in a fourth movie. Likewise, Harry Osborn’s throughline as the New Goblin deserved its own movie to flourish, and could’ve been a great fifth entry.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has quite a few problems that wouldn’t necessarily be solved by giving its villains their own movies. Still, it’s possible that the Osborns’ retroviral hyperplasia “curse” could’ve been fleshed out better if Harry Osborn wasn’t forced to share the movie’s runtime with absurd Alexei Sytsevich/Rhino bookends and a social outcast Electro, all while Peter uncovers the truth of his parents’ deaths, seesaws on his relationship with Gwen Stacy, and grapples with the fact that Gwen is preparing to move to London.

Brand New Day Has an Edge

The presently undisclosed period between Spider-Man: No Way Home and Spider-Man: Brand New Day is where the latter movie has an opportunity to thrive. That said, it will only thrive if it can convincingly and satisfyingly illustrate what Peter Parker’s life was like in that span, particularly in terms of what characters and antagonists he’s been interacting with.

For instance, we know that Peter will be quite familiar with Frank Castle’s Punisher, a murderous antihero character whom we’ve never seen Peter interact with or have any knowledge of thus far. As such, Spider-Man: Brand New Day must clearly express that they met at some point after Spider-Man: No Way Home in order for them to have any kind of rapport as crime-fighters in New York City.

Similarly, C-tier Spider-Man villains, such as Boomerang and Tarantula, aren’t likely to be in Spider-Man: Brand New Day for long. They’ll presumably appear at the beginning of the movie in a montage of Peter’s latest Spider-Man exploits, which could simultaneously detail what his life has been like since Doctor Strange cast a spell that made everyone forget who Peter was.

Of course, many more villains are peppered into this movie, including Scorpion and Tombstone, and there’s a possibility that other rumored villains will appear. It will be fascinating to see how this number of villains is approached, whether most of them are featured montage-style or not, and yet Scorpion wouldn’t need much of an introduction at all.

Scorpion’s Mac Gargan debuted as a petty goon in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and a brief flashback of him and his neck tattoo in Tom Holland’s first Spider-Man movie is likely all the exposition he’ll need besides an explanation as to where he received a mechanized suit. On the other hand, Tombstone would surely require some lore as a crime lord supposedly coming out of the woodwork, and who was somehow never mentioned by Wilson Fisk’s Kingpin in Daredevil: Born Again.

So, while some villains’ appearances have a high likelihood of being fleeting cameos and others are established characters, it will still be an impressive feat if Spider-Man: Brand New Day can shoulder its enormous cast. If it can’t, Spider-Man: Brand New Day will join the likes of Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man: No Way Home as a Spider-Man movie that failed to meaningfully support a larger roster of villains.