Spider-Man: Brand New Day Shows Marvel How to Finally Solve Its 18-Year-Old Villain Problem
After Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it’s finally time for Marvel to bring on the bad guys. Not that Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey is your typical villain, of course, however much she played with Peter Parker’s head. Speaking to The Wrap, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers explained that Jean wasn’t always in the film. “We had mind control and we had this story about Peter’s metamorphosis that we loved. We had mind control that was working well but we didn’t have the right character for that story,” McKenna explained.
“We were exploring other characters,” he continued, ” and… It was Jean really helped unlock it. She was the missing piece. It was the piece that the movie was dying for. Once we got her, then everything started unlocking.” The results speak for themselves, with Brand New Day‘s potentially record-breaking box office and 98% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. The end of Brand New Day draws so many narrative threads together, and the result is a joy to behold. But, as unusual as Jean may be as an antagonist, I think she also shows Marvel how to solve the MCU’s oldest villain problem.
Marvel Has Always Preferred “Mirror Image Villains”
Back in 2008, Marvel unwittingly committed to a simple model for their shared universe; the villains tended to be mirror images of the heroes. Iron Man fought industrialists and inventors, and his first villain was a family friend who’d donned armor. The Hulk traded blows with other Gamma-powered brutes. Soon Steve Rogers was fighting super-soldiers and fascist movements born in the Second World War, while Thor battles gods and (later) god-killers. It’s easy to see why Marvel committed to this approach, because it made the villains a commentary; a vision of what the hero could so easily have become.
There was just one problem: it also meant the villains didn’t need much development as characters, because they tended to serve primarily as a reflection of the hero. The closer you got to the hero, the more the villain mattered. Some bad guys still rose above the rest, but that was usually because of fantastic performances (here’s looking at you, Tom Hiddleston). Some good scripts still transcended the formula, making Black Panther‘s Killmonger truly iconic, but there weren’t enough of those. There’s a reason Thanos became the Infinity Saga’s standout; he became the hero of his own story, breaking the pattern.
Marvel’s Been Trying to Move on – But It Hasn’t Worked
To be fair to Marvel, there are signs the MCU has been trying to figure out how to get past its villain problem. Last year’s Captain America: Brave New World may have only grossed a disappointing £415 million in the global box office, but it at least mixed things up a bit; it pitted Sam Wilson’s Captain America against a literal Hulk, about as mismatched a fight as you can get. I viewed that as an interesting experiment, not least because it deliberately switched things up by drawing on villains from other corners of the MCU – specifically, Harrison Ford’s Thunderbolt Ross as the Red Hulk.
But the experiment didn’t work. The problem lay in the script; all the different pieces failed to come together into a cohesive whole, so even a fantastic actor like Ford couldn’t make the Red Hulk a compelling enough villain. Besides which, use of the Red Hulk simply turned the third act into a fairly traditional slugfest; Sam Wilson initially fought a Hulk, and then talked him down, something we’ve seen played out a thousand times in comics, movies, and TV shows. There was spectacle from destroying the White House, but that was about it. Despite an attempt at emotion with the “talking down” part of the versus match, it lacked emotional impact.
Brand New Day Shows How to Make Marvel’s Villains Work
That brings us to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which takes a much more sophisticated approach. On the one hand, Jean continues the Brave New World concept; she’s a character drawn from the wider Marvel Universe, not a traditional Spider-Man villain. The characters have interacted plenty of times in the past, but they’ve never been particularly close. That makes Jean an unusual choice as antagonist, and some of the hardcore fans seem confused and frustrated about it. I’ve seen quite a few complaints that a Spider-Man film should have a Spider-Man villain.
But those complaints miss the smartest thing about Marvel’s use of Jean Grey in Brand New Day. It’s true the character doesn’t come from Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery, but there’s a reason she’s here; because she’s a mirror in themes and arc rather than in mere powers. Both Jean and Peter are wrestling with the same issue, a loss of connection, and it’s why the film ends with a fantastic scene in which the two connect with one another. We’re no longer talking about basic mirror image villains – super-soldiers, Gamma-powered monsters, and the like. We’re talking about something much, much more complex and emotionally satisfying.
When Marvel make a Spider-Man film, they don’t need to draw on Spider-Man characters. Instead, writers can look at the arc they’re putting Spider-Man through, and craft stunning, well-developed villains whose story coalesces with the themes of the movie they’re making. Where Brave New World smashed action figures together, Brand New Day brought two disconnected people into head-on collision. Brand New Day genuinely has one of the smartest approaches I’ve seen in the MCU, and I believe that narrative, thematic strength is one reason this film is clearly loved so much.
I don’t know what Brand New Day means for the MCU going forward. It certainly means Marvel believe there is excitement over the imminent X-Men reboot; Jake Schreier is riding a wave, making it highly likely that will be another blockbuster hit. Beyond that, though, Marvel need to remember that the mirror image villains can be much more complex than they thought, giving stories weight rather than action. If Marvel learn the right lessons from Brand New Day, then who knows? Maybe superhero fatigue really will become a thing of the past.
