Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige discussed how Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's comebacks made it tougher for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. No Way Home shattered box office records and audiences' minds in bringing back Maguire and Garfield's Spider-Men for a Multiversal crossover with Tom Holland. The movie's $1.92 billion box office gross had many, including Marvel Studios, debating where to go with Spider-Man 4; a question that took five years to answer. After conflicting rumors about whether the MCU sequel would go Multiversal or street-level, the result was a more grounded affair, focused entirely on Holland's Peter Parker and No Way Home's ramifications (with a little X-Men setup).
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige recently held a talk at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (via @iamme.nog) and addressed how Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's returns raised complications for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The MCU architect noted that it is easy to be "paralyzed by success" after No Way Home's immense popularity, making it impossible to "top it" for Spider-Man 4.
"You can get paralyzed by success, and that has happened a little bit on a lot of things. But on this one in particular, just a little of trying to go, ‘How can you top this? Where can you go from there?’ And you very quickly have to realize, ‘Oh, you can't top it.’"
The result of Marvel Studios being "paralyzed" trying to Maguire and Garfield's returns is that Brand New Day has taken five years to finally release, toppling the two-year gaps between the previous three movies. However, that has clearly done no harm to the No Way Home sequel, as it is set to cross $2 billion worldwide.
Feige pointed out how simply adding more Spider-Men to the pot wouldn't be valuable either, because "Spider-Verse has that" and it works "incredibly well:"
"You can't top three Spider-Men from different dimensions all coming together and making almost $2 billion. That's where you're paralyzed. [jokingly] Four Spider-Men, five Spider-Men... 10. I mean, and by the way, 'Spider-Verse' has that. They got 100 Spider-Men. That works incredibly well."
Ultimately, when it came to Brand New Day, they decided "we're not gonna go bigger, we're gonna go deeper" after avoiding certain familiar elements in Spider-Man's first trilogy (Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home):
"So, it came down to, we're not gonna go bigger, we're gonna go deeper, and for the first time… There were lots of things we avoided in the 'Homecoming' trilogy, because there had been 'Spider-Man 3' and then very quickly after that, 'The Amazing Spider-Man', very quickly after that 'Amazing Spider-Man' 2, all of which had very well done scenes of Spidey swinging through the canyons of New York, and dodging police cars that are thrown at him, and all of that great classic Spider-Man stuff."
Clearly, Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures were aligned in that vision, as the latter's chairwoman, Amy Pascal, explained earlier in the summer that Maguire and Garfield didn't return for a second time in Brand New Day because "the bigness of it is emotional, not worlds exploding."
The Brand New Day executive producer how their goals with Peter Parker in the MCU were to explore "other classic Spider-Man stuff," citing Harry Potter as an inspiration, and to "take him to places" that were totally fresh:
"We said, ‘There's other classic Spider-Man stuff we want to explore in these movies.’ I said, like in each Harry Potter film or book is the next year in school. That's what we wanted to do with our 'Homecoming' series. And also take him to places. That's why in 'Homecoming', he gets left out in the suburbs and has to run across the golf course, because there's nowhere to swing. And in ['Far From Home'], he goes to Europe, and in the 'Avengers' movies, he goes to space, and in 'No Way Home', there was a little bit more in New York, but it's on top of the Statue of Liberty in that big finale."
Feige has echoed that sentiment of his first Spider-Man trilogy being inspired by Harry Potter for several years now, indicating that the comparison was not a whim in his talk, but a thought-out comparison that goes back to development.
The MCU boss made clear that, for the first time yet, "the archetype of Spider-Man has finally come" in Brand New Day after they had "danced around for three movies," effectively making the Home trilogy an extended origin story:
"In this one, and the promise at the end of 'No Way Home', is the archetype of Spider-Man has finally come. Tom Holland is finally that archetype that we danced around for three movies, where nobody knows his identity, and in this case, nobody knows him, period. And he just sits in a very small apartment and listens to the police scanner."
Concluding his statement, Feige explained how the four-year time jump and the question of "what effect does that have on somebody?" became the basis for Brand New Day's narrative, which centers around Peter's ongoing mutation:
"And that's where we wanted to pick up, is that it had been four years, and what effect does that have on somebody? And really going deeper into Peter and beginning that transformation with the arachnid DNA, that is what we start to hook into and become, after two or three other ideas, the heart of what turned into this movie."
Swerving Tobey & Andrew Was the Right Decision for Spider-Man: Brand New Day
There's no doubt that, at some point in development, Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios considered whether Spider-Man 4 simply had to raise the scale again. Perhaps the only way that could have been done is to throw Holland, Maguire, and Garfield into the larger Spider-Verse, meeting Variants of Miles Morales, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Woman, and Gwen Stacy, like in Sony's animated movies.
Clearly, the studio made the right decision in going "deeper," instead of trying to go "bigger," only further proving the value of Spider-Man. Of course, Brand New Day threw in other Marvel characters like Hulk and Punisher, neither of whom has proven to be a box-office draw before, solidifying that it truly is an interest in Holland's Peter Parker that has created one of just eight $2 billion movies ever.
Only time will tell what lessons Marvel and Sony learn from Brand New Day's success for future MCU movies, particularly Spider-Man 5. Fans should expect something similar to what they got this year, with a new story that drives Peter Parker forward in new and interesting ways, but done so as a pseudo-event movie that pulls in other superheroes and connects to other corners of MCU lore.
Avoiding turning Brand New Day into another Multiverse movie ought to do Avengers: Doomsday some favors, as Maguire is already expected to return again in the Phase 6 crossover event. If Marvel and Sony had also brought back the beloved wall-crawler for Spider-Man 4, it could appear that the studio is leaning too heavily on nostalgia, not its current main characters, to build its movies.
