How to beat the Marvel slump (and other life lessons)

Last week I saw Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and afterward, I couldn't stop thinking about what exactly made this film succeed when so many other superhero films have flopped lately. Especially since this is the fourth film in a franchise, which often feels more like a money grab than a meaningful addition to a story. Somehow, this film feels like the best film in the franchise against all odds.

This essay is about to get pretty nerdy. If that's your cup of tea, then let's dive in. [Warning: spoilers ahead]

Let's get nerdy with story structure

If you were to summarize what your favorite superhero movie is about, it's probably going to go something like this:

[Bad guy] is [doing something really bad], and [Superhero] has to try to stop them before [really bad thing happens].

Yes, superhero movies have a formula (as most genre films do), and in the scripting process, this piece becomes known as the A plot.

Films typically have an A, B, and C plot, with A being the most critical and taking up the most amount of time, while B and C add dimension and complexity to the story while also supporting the A plot.

So if we look at Brand New Day with this in mind, the A plot is Jean Grey mind-controlling people to break into detention centers to find out where V Max is, and the B plot is Peter Parker isolating himself so hard that all of the emotional toil he's pushing down starts come up in the form of Scary Spider-Man. (The C plot is Ned's and MJ's adventures without Peter, but that's less relevant to today's topic).

And this prioritization makes sense. The Jean Grey story is the mystery that draws us in and leaves us wondering if the good guys will win (or if Peter will figure out who the good guys are). The movie can't be resolved without this climax.

But if I were to actually describe to someone what the movie is about, I would describe it like this:

Is Peter ever going to tell MJ and Ned who he is???

Everything in this film revolves around around this. The whole movie is filled with people telling Peter to get some friends, Peter stalking his friends as he debates whether to tell them who he is, and Peter trying to shut down his emotions in an attempt to protect his friends (and suffering the consequences). You could almost take the Jean Grey storyline out and we would still want to watch this film (almost). If you go back and watch the trailers, the Jean Grey storyline is barely even mentioned, and so many people still wanted to go see this film.

So is Jean Grey's storyline the A story, as we would typically see, or is it Peter's emotional journey? To me, that blurring between which storyline is more important to the movie is the reason for this movie's success.

Bigger is not always better

It's undeniable that action films, especially superhero films, make up the majority of box office intake over the last 10-15 years. The cost (in money and energy) to go see a film in a movie theater has gone up significantly and so for many of us, we're not going to leave our homes to see a movie unless it feels worth it.

Action sequences happen to be one of the things that make it feel worth it. And the result of that has been a shift toward the question, "How big can we go???" As in, what cool gadget or superpower can we introduce? How long can this fight sequence be? Can we throw in cooler moves? Does the bad guy feel unstoppable enough? If the superhero saved the city last movie, can they save the world this movie???

There's nothing wrong with these questions. They are the things that make the genre, after all. People who love these types of movies love them because of these elements.

But "go bigger" can become a trap that ruins a movie. Because on their own, none of these elements have any substance. They're eye candy. And if a movie is lacking in substance, then it can have the most undefeatable supervillain and the biggest stakes and people are still not going to go see it. Just ask Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Where does that substance come from? What really keeps us on the edge of our seats? It's how much we care about the protagonist, how personal the stakes are to us, and how relatable the journey to save the world (or whatever is at stake) is on an emotional level.

In other words, the action might encourage us to come the movie theater, but a relatable, human story is what makes us watch the movie in the first place. Even when the protagonist has superpowers.

The reason why superhero movies have had a slump is because we've had too many movies that have a weak story but go big with the superhero elements to compensate. That trick only works so many times before people get bored. Audiences are wary of being burned again.

So a superhero movie's story really has to shine if it's going to bring people to the theater. This is what the creators of Brand New Day understood, and exactly why the emotional plot is way more central to this movie than in most superhero movies. Because they knew this is what we care about.

We care about these characters and we hate to see them apart! We know what it feels like to be lonely and to lose people we love and how much it sucks. We want to see that it's possible for things to work out, even when the odds are very much stacked against Peter having friends ever again.

And this is why Brand New Day is smashing box office records left and right. Because the creators focused on giving audiences the most satisfying story possible instead of going bigger. In fact, as many people have noted, this movie feels smaller because it's so personal to Peter and his emotional journey. There are still cool fight scenes and fun gadgets and a hard-to-defeat antagonist and all of that. But they are the small touches that make the meal more delightful, not the actual meal itself.

Practical applications

This experience isn't isolated to the movies. Over the past few decades, companies, politicians, etc. have been slowly shifting their focus from what provides real substance to what produces higher profits for them. They've been replacing parts of the meal with decorative items, and in some cases inedible plastic replicas in the hopes we wouldn't notice.

And for awhile, they were able to get away with these swaps for a variety of reasons. We didn't notice. We didn't really have alternatives. The convenience outweighed the costs so we just accepted them.

But now, so many companies and politicians are so out of touch with not just what people want, but what they actually need, that we're starting to see a shift.

Large number of people aren't spending money with companies that are hurting shoppers, employees, and/or people around the world. More and more democratic socialists are getting elected to office – despite huge amounts of money being spent against them – because they're actually willing to get things done in office. Data centers and government surveillance systems are getting rejected in city after city because people aren't willing to have their communities ruined by these systems anymore. Gig workers are forming their own co-ops so they collectively take home 90% of the money for the work they do instead 9% of it. Employees are leaving big companies or choosing not to re-enter the chaotic mess they were laid off from because they realize they can build something on their own that will have far more impact than anything they could have built at a large company.

All over the place, we're seeing people choose substance – and in this case, substance means putting everyday humans first. It means creating real impact rather than convincing people that a subpar substitute is somehow better because it's better for the company or politician. It means having people and companies do what they say they're going to do. It means protecting the earth and everyone in it and creating more equality all around.

We have a long way to go before we get everything we want, but in my opinion, this is where the world is already going. The companies, politicians, and more who put humans first will be rewarded as they blaze a path forward, and the ones who put profit first will slowly see their significance (and their profits) fade like a dying ember on the wind. We just have to continue to recognize the power we have and, like the creators of Brand New Day, intentionally shape the story until it's the one that everyone wants to see.