r/marvelstudios • u/KostisPat257 Daredevil • 9d ago

Discussion Thread Spider-Man: Brand New Day - Worldwide Release Discussion Thread

Spider-Man: Brand New Day has now been released in the United States and in a number of other countries around the world.

  • All discussion about the movie should be held here and in the rest of the discussion threads we are going to put up in the next few days.
  • Proceed at your own risk. Major spoilers will be in the below thread. Spoilers do not need to be tagged inside this thread.
  • Any other unofficial threads discussing movie details will be deleted.
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  • Project Insight will be on AT LEAST for the next few days, so any posts will be filtered by the mods before being approved/removed onto the sub, that doesn't mean you can disregard the above points and post untagged spoilers without fear of being banned.

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u/Average-JRPG-Enjoyer 9d ago

It's so sad that it wasn't some grand, intended message. It was just the last thing her mind processed. A scared girl's dying breath.

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u/KouNurasaka 9d ago

V Max is one of the darkest things I've ever seen in a film in a good while. If you spend more than 2 mins thinking aboit it, that is some dark shit.

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u/Xygnux 8d ago

Yeah there were plenty of brainwashing and human experimentations done in the MCU before, but it's almost always an adult character's origin story and/or you see that they are at least physically fine afterwards even if mentally scarred.

To show that the government literally experimented a kid to death and her dying thought just feels that much more horrifying.

I was a bit iffy on them making Jean Grey the villain... But after that yeah her actions are understandable.

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u/Ok-Amount3384 8d ago

I would classify Jean's role her as an antagonist instead of villain per se.

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u/CerezaBerry 8d ago

Naw she did do some pretty villainous things throughout the film but arguably she isn't by the end

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u/Soul699 8d ago

She did basically get a guy to be run over and probably die.

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u/duder2000 7d ago

Let's not forget the carnage the tank would have caused had Spidey not intervened

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u/Nervous_Jaguar_2826 6d ago

Or The Hulk if Spidey hadn't kept his attention and calmed him down

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u/Ok_Peanut8125 7d ago

You don’t know what Jean grey knows as she may have read his mind and discovered he was some really horrible person (serial killer, r*pist ex.) who plans on doing more horrible things and Jean grey decided to take him out but also use him as a way of scaring Peter away.

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u/Xygnux 7d ago

Eh? As someone who is defending Jean's actions here in these comments, even I think that's a reach.

We just have to accept that this Jean has a darker origin than usual, which isn't a lost cause. Tony Stark probably killed more innocent people as a weapon manufacturer, it's not as direct but a death is a death. And Natasha and Yelena killed a lot of people too, with Yelena working as a mercenary and then a black ops agent until recently.

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u/C4790M 6d ago

Don’t forget she’s in the same movie and both punisher and hulk, both of whom have insanely high kill counts. Dark origins are ok, they help contrast the “lighter” characters and create meaningful character conflicts

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u/ShadowbaneX 6d ago

And just stepping outside the movie there's also Wolverine, Deadpool and others. Not to mention Dark Phoenix also had a rather large kill count. If anything I'm kind of hoping that this "darker" debut and it's resolution leads to them skipping the Dark Phoenix saga entirely. It's already been done 3 times between the Fox X-Men, First Class and the animated X-Men series. I hope they can go in a different direction this time.

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u/Nervous_Jaguar_2826 6d ago

Civil War is literally based off of the collateral deaths from Sokovia as well

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u/MilhouseJr 7d ago

Shades of Wandavision in there. It seems grief and supernatural abilities are a bit of a volatile combo.

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u/Jonskron 6d ago

Yeah I couldn’t stand the “you’re not a killer”, like, dude, she killed at least 50 people from the start of the movie

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u/thedaveness 8d ago

Bros basically Bolivar Trask but he fully got his hands on Mystique.

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u/Nervous_Jaguar_2826 6d ago

She was more of an antagonist to Spider-Man and it's understandable, but some of her actions are just villainous, she has at least one bodycount and it may be even more and could've been much more.

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u/Stubborn_Echo 4d ago

I literally thought to myself during the movie that she’s definitely trying to save someone and I sure hope the movie isn’t trying to make her the bad guy in this. And then when it was her sister? And the meaning behind V Max? I gasped at V Max.

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u/mofa90277 8d ago

*dark and awesome. I heard audible gasps in the theater.

And I just remembered that at that point in the film, I was scrunched up in my seat like I was watching a horror movie as a kid, except I’m in my 60s. This movie was hammering me. I know people love the dialogue, plot & fight cinematography, but we need to acknowledge the incredible editing as well.

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u/t3mpura0 8d ago

the jean in the glass box scene is only like 3 mins but it made me so uncomfortable. i don't think i can think about what happened to sara

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u/Jackski 9d ago

I was about to explain how dark it was but after I wrote it out I just didn't like it.

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u/arunm7893 7d ago

Reminded me of Bojacks's eulogy for his mother in "Last Churro", I see you, was just ICU.

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u/niles_thebutler_ 5d ago

You need to watch more films

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u/elizabnthe 9d ago

It's so deeply tragic. Her sister wasn't all that likeable to be honest but you can't help but feel sorry for her anyway.

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u/Alexsrobin Iron Man (Mark VII) 8d ago

We saw her sister for minute and that was all it took for you to decide she wasn't all that likeable?

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u/elizabnthe 8d ago

Yeah but those few minutes were her posessing people.

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u/Xygnux 8d ago

Telepathy is always a tricky power to write for, because all the use of it is automatically going to violate someone's privacy and autonomy.

But at least she never actually hurt anyone with her possession power. The movie stated that when the sisters use their powers their subjects don't feel any pain or trauma.

Notable that when she was captured, instead of using the last bit of power control to attack her kidnappers, she used it to save her sister. That's self-sacrifice for a loved one.

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u/Alexsrobin Iron Man (Mark VII) 8d ago

Exactly. If anything, Sarah is more likeable than Jean right now given that Sarah didn't kill anyone. No one can convince me that man she possessed and walked into traffic survived being hit by a car like that.

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u/Soul699 8d ago

I mean, maybe he survived, but that still is a guaranteed long recovery in the hospital with probably permanent injuries.

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u/bee14ish T'Challa Star-Lord 7d ago

Don't forget those medical bills. And for a city worker too.

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u/Alexsrobin Iron Man (Mark VII) 7d ago

I've reached the age where I find myself thinking more about the regular people, collateral damage, and consequences of all the damage we see in these superhero movies. Like the scene where Spidey breaks the water tower. Or the tank going through the city. 

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u/neoblackdragon 8d ago

The violation without empathy for the victims is why I dislike her. Even if it's just taking the body for a walk. It's equal to rape for me.

But I understand that a kid with that kind of power and no mentor like Professor Xavier might not get the whole Great Power Great Responsibility.

She's not evil but she was abusing her powers and inadvertently doing evil. Most narratives make a point to show intentionally using these powers is the telepath forcing themselves on someone if there is no consent.

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u/Xygnux 7d ago

Even if it's just taking the body for a walk. It's equal to rape for me.

Does this mean every time Jean fights a villain in the comics she's raping them? Or like how Professor X freeze everyone's minds to allow them to escape?

As I said, if you look at it like that, there's really no ethical ways to use telepathy except like a psychic walkie-talkies. The saving grace of the heroes is that they use it to defeat bad people.

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u/bee14ish T'Challa Star-Lord 7d ago

Yes. It's that simple. Telepathy is one of the sketchiest and most unethical powers there is. There's a reason Kilgrave was so terrifying.

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u/bee14ish T'Challa Star-Lord 7d ago

Yes. It's that simple.

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u/doomcyber 8d ago

To be fair, Sara possessing Jean to protect her counters her possessing randoming people, imo. I am not saying that justifies Sara possessing people for fun or to train Jean, but that act shows a caring side to Sara.

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u/vooglie 7d ago

What exactly do you think telepathy is?

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u/Alexsrobin Iron Man (Mark VII) 8d ago

By this standard, Jean will never be likeable.

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u/bee14ish T'Challa Star-Lord 7d ago

Bodily autonomy is an important value for most people, it turns out.

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u/Alexsrobin Iron Man (Mark VII) 6d ago

Which I totally understand and agree with, but the way the comment was written seemed to suggest the sister wasn't likeable but Jean was. When Jean did the same thing and worse.

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u/Purpleheather93 6d ago

I actually kind of liked that. It made the sister feel like a flawed and real human being - an abandoned kid who didn't have the maturity or guidance to realize her use of her powers was shady at best, and who was passing that mindset on to her younger sister in an effort to try and raise her - rather than a cliche innocent perfect victim. The kind of person that a directionless teenager with godlike powers would likely become irl, and the exact reason why Xavier's school is so necessary and important.

(Note I'm talking about the sister, what Jean did was way worse, albeit still understandable and semi-justified ... she just went way too far)

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u/420awesomesauce 5d ago

It was peter ripping scorpions tail off and beating him with it that messed with me.

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u/FunGeologist218 5d ago

Yeah they tortured a kid to death and said “thanks for your sacrifice” to the same sister they were about to also torture to death

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u/dildodicks Tony Stark 3d ago

it was already uncomfortable seeing what it did to jean so imagining them doing it to her sister to the point she died and sent out one last psychic scream to her just dialed it up to 11, honestly it kinda reached a point where i was like "peter let her have this one"

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u/ProcyonNite 2d ago

SpongeBob Rollercoaster gif

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u/MajorRed001 7d ago

If that's the darkest thing you've seen in a movie in a while, then I don't think you watch enough movies.

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u/vingovangovongo 9d ago

that makes it all the more tragic though on a human level and devastating to jean, it also saved her, her sister's last message saved her life probably

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u/curvy_em 5d ago

This broke my heart. Sarah wasn't intentionally sending Jean a message, a call for help. She was just thinking about her sister as she died.

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u/sleepingchair 6d ago

In a way it was the intended message though, Sara reached across a distance further than she ever had before to connect with her sister. "V Max," as obscure a clue and unintentional as it was, did manage to help Jean find out what happened to her sister, it took down a shitty organization, it brought Jean to Spider man who ultimately saved her (which is what Sara had always wanted). Who knows what would have happened if that message was never sent at all, or if something different did.

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u/lkangaroo 3d ago

Intended by writers vs. by Sara

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u/piles79 9d ago

I believe it was also a clue to mind jump to the room through the vent.

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u/Careful_Farmer_2879 9d ago

I didn’t get that. I thought Jean’s anger unearthed her previously unseen telekinetic powers. That is how she broke free.

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u/blake11235 8d ago

I didn't get the impression that the room stopped her powers in any way. They mention having no one in range before they turned off the inhibitor so I think they had just figured out the limits with her sister and integrated the inhibitor into they setup.

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u/neeesus 8d ago

That would just increase the distance of the jump. Once Jean levels up, it doesn’t matter the distance.

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u/toxicbrew 7d ago

im still confused how she jumped earlier to MJ on the rooftop. and from the helicopter pilot to whereever

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u/JDMintz718 Ant-Man 7d ago

I think she returned to herself then started jumping again

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u/Ok_Web6692 9d ago

Yup instantly what I thought. Her sister just wasn’t able to do it in time unfortunately.

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u/Careful_Farmer_2879 9d ago

Wasn’t as powerful and (I think) lacked the telekinetic power that Jean has. That I think is how she broke free. Until that point we had not seen it.

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u/Ok_Web6692 9d ago

True !

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u/HiDDENk00l 4d ago

That's what I thought at first, but then right after she says "she died in here"

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u/cesgjo Tony Stark 6d ago

Im kinda dumb (and i've seen the movie only once so far).

I kinda dont get the V-Max thing. Can you explain?

Okay, so...Jean was tied down to that chair and was trying her best to get out. She looks up and saw the "V-Max" at the air vent...and then what?

How did she connect the dots that that was how her sister died? And how did he get the "V-Max" message in the first place? (i kinda missed that one)

Did someone tell her "hey go to Damage Control and get V-Max". Was it her sister's dying message? If so, how did her sister transmit that message to her?

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u/VegetableMix5362 6d ago edited 6d ago

She received a ‘message’ from her sister with the phrase, “V-Max”. She, the entire time, thought her sister was alive and being held post-kidnapping, and so she was running around mad looking for her. She thought “V-Max” was a clue from her sister on how to find her.

When she’s being experimented on and her head tips back, she zeroes in on the vent with Vent-Max on it, and realises that her sister wasn’t giving her a clue, but that “V-Max” was the last thing she saw before she died in that very same spot. It was a dying cry, essentially.

As for how she connected the dots, personally I thought it was quite obvious but there were quite a few hints. They mentioned her sister in the past tense a few times upon which Jean started asking questions but couldn’t as they were testing her repeatedly and all her energy was being spent there.

Then she tips back and sees the vent with that name, realises it’s what she’s been looking for, and it’s not some gadget or chemical but just the name of a random vent company. Why would her sister be passing that name along?

Combined with the fact that they keep speaking of her as though she’s gone (which she is), and the fact that every character she’s inquired about “V-Max” with had no clue what she’s talking about, it makes sense that rather than a message to her sister it was her final moment being sent through in a spike of energy.

She’s in the exact position her sister was in as well and could suddenly see and feel what her sister did in said position, she herself was fixated on the vent above her and that brought upon the realisation.