Commentary: The secret to 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day's' record-breaking box office is love, not spectacle
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Set us as preferred With the biggest global opening weekend in history, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is cleaning up at the box office in a manner that left “The Odyssey” spitting sand.(Relatively speaking; “The Odyssey” also had a strong worldwide debut and is on track to become the third R-rated film to hit the billion-dollar mark.) But while Christopher Nolan’s vision of a nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem has received, with the exception of a few less-than-impressed classics experts and the usual “replacement theory” nut jobs, waves of gratitude for helping revitalize cinema, the success of “Spider-Man” has many of these same people scratching their heads.Certainly the reviews have been mixed — some find the narrative streamlined and personal with Tom Holland giving his best-ever performance; others declare “Brand New Day” to be overstuffed with franchise teasers and/or suggest that, at 30, Holland is getting a bit old for the job.So how is it, pundits wondered, that Spidey has vanquished the ultimate supervillain: superhero fatigue.
It’s simple really: love.There’s a reason “Love Actually” featured a kid in Spider-Man face paint, as opposed to a Superman cape.People, especially kids (and the adults they will become), love Spider-Man with an affection that is deep and true.
Unlike so many other superheroes, Peter Parker is one of us.He’s not a super-scientist or a god or an extraterrestrial or a one-percenter able to develop all manner of nifty crime-fighting gadgetry.
He’s a kid who, having been accidentally endowed with superpowers that do not disfigure him, physically or emotionally (no Red Room trauma, inner rage monster, centurylong life span), remains a kid with an adolescent’s delight in all he can now do.Movies Yes, ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ has one post-credits sc...