The whole thing really kicked off with a massive, embarrassing security screw-up. Just a few days before Sony and Marvel finally dropped the official second trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a brutally-butchered clip somehow found its way online. First it was bootleg audio, apparently ripped directly from a YouTube stream. Then came a barrage of shaky, blurry cell-phone footage of a computer monitor circulating all over social media. Sony tried its best to shut down the leaking, spamming the internet with a ridiculous number of copyright takedowns, but by then it was too late. They couldn’t stop a constant stream of alternate trailer versions and unfiltered B-roll footage of Tom Holland and Zendaya wishing world leaders well.
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The problem with the whole debacle was that the content leaked was in its purest form. Reportedly, the visual effects department spent the entire previous weekend just trying to make something that was vaguely watchable. When the full quality official version was finally released in mid-March, fans pore over every frame. Many of them were decidedly not impressed, flooding the video with dislikes because a huge blockbuster just feels really rushed, and the production team didn’t seem to bother much about polishing their work.
Glaring Visual Mistakes
The leaked footage, unpolished and a complete visual nightmare as it was, still managed to look more complete than the officially released trailer. A good number of Marvel’s rabid fans are very perceptive, though. Within hours of the official trailer dropping, internet denizens had already picked it apart and found no shortage of errors. The most glaring problem can be seen on Peter Parker’s arms, where in one moment, the mechanical web-shooters are clearly present, only to inexplicably vanish a split-second later.
Furthermore, several action scenes reveal characters being duplicated within the same shot, in a very lazy, copy-and-paste style. The characters are clearly unaware that a version of themselves already exists in the same fight, and that it’s just been reproduced again, because they don’t even register a hit when the opponent seems to be throwing a punch or swinging a sword at thin air. There’s also an awkward change of mask when Spider-Man’s fabric face cover turns into his digital mask at the most inopportune times. The jump from one to the other is jarring and breaks the immersive spell that should be present at such moments.
Hiding Secrets With Sloppy Digital Paint
As any devoted fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will already tell you, the studios are very happy to deceive their fans with the promo footage and trailers. They’ve already done it numerous times, most notoriously with an altered Infinity War trailer and, more recently, the last two Spider-Man movies, all for the purposes of masking spoilers. It is more likely than not that the poorly rendered special effects and strange, clumsy action sequences are just another effort on Sony’s part to cover up potential major cameo appearances or storyline reveals.
When we observe the villain in the trailer throwing punches that impact no real physical object, it could possibly signify that one of Marvel’s many, many upcoming characters has had their likeness digitally edited out. These inconsistencies could be Sony using crude digital paint to remove major characters from the frame, leaving Peter looking awkward as his webs seem to connect to nothing or that he moves around strangely. It’s also not hard to see that the shot of Peter webs-ing up the Punisher’s gun doesn’t even cause the weapon to budge in the slightest way. To many, it feels deeply insulting that they should be fed this digital deception, knowing they are seeing things that weren’t what the producers originally intended.
Too Many Heavy Hitters in One Story
In another point of contention with the trailer, fans have blasted Marvel/Sony for overstuffing one movie with a disproportionate number of main characters. For anyone who sat through the tragic conclusion to No Way Home, the return to a solo, down-and-out Peter Parker has been a significant selling point. This film is, apparently, completely throwing that out of the window. With Marvel star Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner giving him a warning and showing an out-of-control, destructive Savage Hulk, and the inclusion of Jon Bernthal as the hard-nosed Punisher, Michael Mando’s long-awaited return as the Scorpion, not to mention a mystery character possibly being introduced played by Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink (widely speculated to be a mutant), it is safe to say that there are simply too many established characters, to the point of drowning Peter Parker himself out. The massive backlash from fans is due to feeling that they have been deceived out of a personal, grittier street-level crime story; instead, they are given another bloated team-up epic where Peter is treated as an afterthought for more famous Marvel heroes
The Organic Mutation Controversy
One of the stranger subplots hinted at in the new material, which has completely divided the fanbase down the middle, relates to a physical mutation Peter Parker apparently goes through as a result of his increasingly stressful, isolated life. The trailer, even just briefly, implies his eyes can turn black, that his demeanor becomes darker and more aggressive, and most disturbingly of all, he may gain the ability to grow organic webbing from his body rather than his web shooters. While this could come across as rather cool to those who simply watched the films as a kid or, to many others, looks like it belongs in an alternate sci-fi blockbuster. To long-time Marvel fans and comic purists, the thought of Peter Parker developing organic webbing is absolutely repellent. For years, his mechanical web-shooters have been integral to his identity, representing his intellect as a young prodigy who manufactured complex biochemical gadgets from the most readily available, scrap materials. If he’s now going to start sprouting them out of his arms, it’s effectively taking away his defining ingenuity, and turning him into a more generic science fiction character who happens to shoot glue out of his body.
International Runtime Cuts
The rage is by no means exclusively directed at the visuals, the characters, and the narrative plot. When the movie’s tickets went on sale in India, an immense wave of frustration washed over the fan base. Although the movie’s running time internationally has been capped at a total of 2 hours and 30 minutes, numerous theaters like PVR listed the film’s duration as precisely five minutes less than the official runtime. Fans quickly assumed that the Central Board of Film Certification had forced down the length of the movie by chopping away action-packed scenes or dialogues just to meet specific age rating restrictions. Losing five minutes from the overall film doesn’t sound like much to the casual film-goer but, to fans who are expected to shell out more cash for blockbusters, it makes a significant difference. Even with the outcry, there was still no response from the studio to confirm whether it was a mistake or actually imposed cuts.
