I went with my three youngest grandsons to see the new Spiderman movie; “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” And shockingly, I actually enjoyed it. We got there early enough to pick out good seats and let the kids buy mass quantities of popcorn and sugary drinks. So reinforced by these provisions we took our seats and watched the half hour of advertisements and coming attractions for all kinds of useless products and awful movies. Now it’s been a few years since we went to this theater and in the meantime, it went out of business and been refurbished by its new owners. And they installed luxury pleather powered recliners instead of the usual crappy movie seats of yesteryear. So far, so good!
So, I missed the previous Spiderman installment but I was told that in it another MCU character (Doctor Strange) performed some kind of magic-adjacent activity which eliminated knowledge of Peter Parker’s existence completely from the human race including all his friends and the girl (MJ) that he loves. Now this seems particularly stupid but that is the situation. So, one of the plots of this movie is Parker getting up the courage to tell MJ that she has forgotten that they were once in love. Okay, that’s an even stupider plot element but let’s give the writers some slack to try and make that work. Then there’s a plot element where Peter is having major problems with his spider powers. His ability to shoot webs and other skills seems to come and go. Okay, this is more of a standard superhero plot element so full speed ahead.
And finally, some telepath is able to take control of human minds and force them to attack a shadowy government agency called the Department of Damage Control (DODC) for some unknown reason. I won’t give away any spoilers by saying that DODC isn’t a benign organization and the telepath controlling minds isn’t completely unjustified in these actions.
Well, before the end we have a whole sequence where Bruce Banner is telepathically controlled and forced to turn into the Hulk with predictable cataclysmic results and we find out that Spiderman has a quasi-working relationship with the comic book character “The Punisher” an Italian American New Yorker whose real name is Frank Castle. Castle is a vigilante who doesn’t have as many scruples as Spiderman when it comes to using firearms to thwart criminals. As an Italian American native New Yorker myself, I especially relished Castle’s extremely accurate Bensonhurst accent and vocabulary. It felt like coming home.
Well, anyway, the plot moves along in a reasonably superhero-ish manner and naturally our hero comes out the other side with some progress in his personal problems but no permanent solutions so he can be just as conflicted in the next Spiderman movie sometime in 2028. And that is all that can ever be said for a Spiderman movie. Also, the special effects were especially deft and fun to watch. So, the movie was quite entertaining and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly. Or maybe it was the snacks.
Anyway, mission accomplished. We returned home and Camera Girl loaded down a table with spaghetti and meatballs along with some biscuits that these grandsons especially love to dunk in a meat sauce. What more could I ask for?
Not my taste in movies, but so few are these days. Glad you and the grandkids had a good time. The dinner sounds like one my Aunt June used to make, only she did lasagna instead of spaghetti!