Brand New Day is only the latest version of the Marvel webslinger taking Hollywood by storm. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

Film & TV

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Broke Box Office Records. Why Can’t People get Enough of the Webslinger?

BU expert on why the film is a hit at a time when other superheroes are struggling at the box office

Spider-Man might have started as a friendly neighborhood superhero, but these days he’s a bonafide global phenomenon.

The Marvel character has been webslinging for decades—and audiences still can’t get enough of him. At a time when other comic book heroes are struggling at the box office and superhero fatigue has fully set in, Spider-Man’s most recent big screen outing, Brand New Day, catapulted to record-breaking success. Only seven films in Hollywood history have crossed the $2 billion mark, and Brand New Day is projected to swing into that rarified air within a month of its release. 

From his initial 1962 comics appearance to the recent cinematic iterations that made him a household name, Spider-Man has maintained an enduring appeal. It goes well beyond his iconic red and blue costume, seemingly tailor-made for merch, and high-flying antics. On the big screen, where most fans are now accustomed to seeing him, the draw of Spider-Man is less about his superheroics and more about his aspirational yet deeply relatable humanity.

“There is a lot of metaphorical significance in the fact that he is literally a character where all he does is go high and go low,” says Francis “Frankie” Vanaria, a College of Arts & Sciences writing lecturer who has taught a class on superheroes in film for a decade. “Audiences can connect with Spider-Man because everyone goes through these highs and lows. There’s a vulnerability that Spider-Man is in touch with that a lot of the other superheroes don’t have.”

While Spider-Man can swing up a skyscraper or lift a car, he also has timeless down-to-earth qualities that Vanaria has seen his students connect with over the years.

At the core of the character is a basic goodness that Vanaria says is both specific to Spider-Man but also generic enough that “we get to project our best desires onto him.”

It also helps that Peter Parker, the person beneath the mask, is, other than his arachnid-inspired powers, a relatively normal teenager. He fights supervillains and saves New York City, but his greatest challenges are often the regular trials and tribulations of adolescence. He has to make it to school on time, navigate young love, combat self-doubt and, most important, find his purpose.

“Whether you’re younger or older, wanting to rediscover yourself or feel like that purpose is still out there for you…that is very understandably appealing when a purposelessness is circulating in the culture—not just now but back in the 60s when the character was introduced,” Vanaria says.

In setting those universal coming-of-age experiences in a world of superheroes and supervillains, the stakes for the characters and the audience become deeply personal and existential, he adds.

The tension between Peter Parker and Spider-Man are a hallmark of the character. (The idea of superheroes living double lives is common in the genre.) But the Spider-Man films, particularly Brand New Day, have gone out of their way to test Peter’s ability to balance the two sides of his life in ways that ring true for anyone who has struggled with work-life balance, Vanaria says.

“In my class, I talk about this as this trope of heroes not just living double lives and double identities but feeling like they’re pulled in different directions or having different ethical commitments,” Vanaria says.  

In the initial trilogy of Sam Raimi–directed Spider-Man films, the character is constantly juggling the demands of his job working for the fictional Daily Bugle newspaper and his superhero duties. In Brand New Day, Peter is working overtime to cope with the loneliness he feels in the aftermath of a magic spell that erased him from the memories of everyone he knows and loves. 

“People are drawn to the idea of losing your identity or losing yourself,” Vanaria says. “If you are going to lose your identity, it means you have something in you that’s worth holding onto, something that’s worthwhile.”

Spider-Man has remained a staple of pop culture for decades because of his steadfast qualities that speak to audiences regardless of what real-world struggles they’re facing. Raimi’s films were set against the backdrop of September 11 and the War on Terror. The Marc Webb–directed Amazing Spider-Man films, starring Andrew Garfield, came out starting in 2012, a time of growing cynicism. Holland’s most recent series of films (the latest is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton), have taken cues from a period of mass misinformation and pandemic-infused isolation.

Yet despite the darkness that surrounds both Spider-Man and the audience, the character maintains an earnestness that somehow pierces through cynicism and inspires, Vanaria explains.

“When you live in these times of economic uncertainty, political uncertainty, there’s a lot to connect with in a character where everything is unpredictable for him,” Vanaria says. The goal is you constantly get knocked down, but you just have to pick yourself back up again.”