A staple of Marvel Studios' three Spider-Man movies was Peter Parker having a mentor. In Homecoming, it was Iron Man; Far From Home saw Mysterio and Nick Fury fill that void; then, in No Way Home, it was Doctor Strange and, to a lesser extent, Peter #2 and Peter #3.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day bucks the trend by removing a mentor from the web-slinger's life. Many fans had expected that void to be filled by Bruce Banner, but that wasn't the case, and Peter ended up being Jean Grey's guiding light.
In an interview with The Wrap, Spider-Man: Brand New Day writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers—who worked on the previous MCU movies—revealed why it was important to them to move on from Spidey needing someone to point him in the right direction.
"We’ve seen that he’s going to these mentors. He’s a younger character. He has people he looks up to, and sometimes it goes well. Sometimes it doesn’t. But let’s not do that anymore. We want to tell a story about him growing up," Sommers explained. "Part of growing up is that he needs to start addressing things on his own. He needs to start coming up with answers on his own and not looking to others."
"It would be fun to see him interact with people as more of an equal and an adult. His relationship with Punisher, even his relationship with [Damage Control member] Metzger or his relationship with Jean DeWolff, these are more mature relationships," the writer continued, "as a coworker, as a colleague, as a fellow adult, as opposed to he’s that kid coming to ask the older person for counsel or guidance."
McKenna and Sommers have already revealed why Yelena Belova was featured in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but why was Bruce there?
According to McKenna, they wanted to give Peter a "spider-problem," and Bruce was "perfect for that story, that he would go to learn about that would be Bruce Banner."
He added, "Hulk would be a great legacy character for our villain to be able to mind control, and then we can get a great Spider-Man-versus-Hulk fight. So that was one of those things that lined up in a way, and we were really, really happy and lucky that Marvel allowed us to use Hulk in the movie because I think he just worked in so many ways."
The bigger surprise in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is Jean Grey's inclusion, of course, and McKenna told the trade that, while mind control was part of the story from the start, they "didn't have the right character for that story."
"Now we can tell a story that with a really great character that can mirror Peter’s in a really great way and we can get to a place," he said. "Because obviously she’s such an important character in the MCU. We will have even more leeway to humanise this character and redeem her by the end."
The decision to put the spotlight on a Marvel "villain" rather than a Spider-Man one certainly didn't hurt Brand New Day, and for McKenna, it was all about cementing Spidey's place in the wider MCU. "We really needed the right character playing that role," McKenna noted. "We were exploring other characters, and it just wasn’t... It was Jean really helped unlock it. She was the missing piece."
Spider-Man's link to the X-Men could be a major factor in Marvel Studios' Mutant Saga, especially as he's essentially responsible for creating an inhibitor chip that the Department of Damage Control could eventually use to capture and depower mutants.
However, heading into Spider-Man 5, it seems fair to say that most fans would like the spotlight to shift back to a member of the wall-crawler's iconic rogues' gallery.
Kevin Feige, for his part, has already weighed in on Spider-Man 5 and Sadie Sink's secret role.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.