Peter Parker has been erased from the world’s memory in “Brand New Day.” Behind him sit 25 years, 14 films and a genre that owes him its existence.
The premise of Spider-Man: Brand New Day is that nobody remembers Spider-Man. Audiences, on the other hand, have been following him since 2002. Here’s how one wall-crawler became Hollywood’s most reliable earner and dragged an entire genre up with him.
2002: the film that restarted everything
Spider-Man introduced Tobey Maguire as a quiet high-school kid who gains spider powers and learns that great power brings great responsibility.
Two things made it matter. Critics took it seriously, which was not a given for the genre in 2002, and it became the first film to clear $100 million in a single opening weekend in the United States. Coming five years after the wreckage of Batman & Robin in 1997, it put superhero movies back in business.
Sam Raimi’s trilogy, running from 2002 to 2007, set up the 25-year wave that followed. Marvel’s ability to launch its cinematic universe with Iron Man in 2008 owes something to Raimi, as does Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
Peak, then punchline
Plenty of critics still name Spider-Man 2 from 2004 as the best superhero film ever made. It has the runaway subway train, and it has Peter trying to hold his relationship with Mary-Jane (Kirsten Dunst) together against the demands of the mask.
Spider-Man 3 in 2007 went the other way. It out-grossed both predecessors and is widely regarded as the franchise’s low point, mocked above all for the scenes where Peter emo-dances and fires off finger guns.
A reboot, and a hack
Marc Webb — a director whose surname was too good to pass up — took over for The Amazing Spider-Man, with Andrew Garfield in the suit.
The two films, from 2012 and 2014, were poorly reviewed, and the second underperformed financially for Sony. Then in 2014 North Korea hacked the studio, which owns the character’s film rights, and the leaked emails included Sony chief Amy Pascal voicing serious misgivings about the direction of the series. Not long after, Sony began working with Marvel Studios to fold Spider-Man into the larger Marvel universe.
Tom Holland became the third live-action Peter Parker, with three solo films plus supporting turns across Avengers and Captain America.
The multiverse, and the point of fatigue
Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 used a multiverse to put Maguire, Garfield and Holland on screen together, a nod to the meme of three animated Spider-Men pointing at each other, lifted from the 1967 television series.
The scene landed. It also made the sprawl visible. Some fans were starting to tire of it.
Which is presumably the thinking behind Brand New Day, where the world has forgotten Spider-Man entirely. A clean slate, arriving in theatres on July 29.
Where the character came from
Spider-Man was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, debuting in Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962. He was popular enough to get his own title the following year.
A genetically modified spider bites teenage Peter Parker, who gains superhuman strength, speed, agility, wall-climbing and a spider-sense. What set him apart from earlier superheroes was the ordinariness of everything else: bullies, homework, girls, all of it running alongside the job of saving people. That combination made him one of Marvel’s most enduring characters.
Fourteen films in 25 years
- Spider-Man (2002) — Tobey Maguire
- Spider-Man 2 (2004) — Tobey Maguire
- Spider-Man 3 (2007) — Tobey Maguire
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) — Andrew Garfield
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) — Andrew Garfield
- Captain America: Civil War (2016) — Tom Holland
- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) — Tom Holland
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) — Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018) — Tom Holland
- Avengers: Endgame (2019) — Tom Holland
- Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) — Tom Holland
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) — Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) — Miles Morales, voiced by Shameik Moore
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) — Tom Holland
Between them, the films have taken tens of billions of kronor at the global box office, putting them among the highest-grossing superhero movies ever made.
Into the Spider-Verse changed the mask
The 2018 animated film swapped out more than the actor. Peter Parker gave way to Miles Morales, a Black teenager from Brooklyn. Its comic-book styling and animation won an Oscar, and the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, was another commercial hit.
Sony’s parallel universe, quietly shelved
Sony wanted a film universe of its own, but with Marvel Studios already using Spider-Man, it built around the supporting characters and villains it still held rights to: Venom, Madame Web, Morbius. The long-term plan was to eventually put those characters in front of Spider-Man himself. Several weak receptions later, the plan was dropped, and the universe was effectively finished after Kraven the Hunter in 2024.
