SPDIER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY Cover of TIME Honors the Comics as Director Explains Recreating Iconic Spider-Man Poses
Spider-Man fans have plenty to get excited about as Spider-Man: Brand New Day gets closer to its theatrical release, and Marvel and Sony have started turning up the hype in a big way.
A newly released TIME Special is giving readers an inside look at the highly anticipated movie, and the cover alone is enough to catch the attention of longtime comic book fans. It features Tom Holland striking another iconic Spider-Man pose that looks like it was pulled straight from the pages of Marvel Comics, continuing the movie's effort to celebrate the character's comic book roots.
With the film arriving later this month, excitement continues to build. Industry analysts are already predicting a massive box office debut, while fans are counting down the days to see Peter Parker return to a more street-level style of storytelling after the universe-changing events of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Add in the mystery surrounding Sadie Sink's undisclosed character, and there are still plenty of questions waiting to be answered.
There were also several interesting details from the TIME Special, including comments from director Destin Daniel Cretton, who explained how much care went into recreating famous Spider-Man comic book imagery.
"We have these scenes-you saw pieces of them in the trailer [where we're doing these] super slow-mo shots that are replicating some of our favourite comic book covers. When Tom was doing some of them, he has to do a backflip or something, and it happens in one and a half seconds."
Getting those poses exactly right wasn't as simple as asking Holland to jump into the air. "We [would] watch it in slow-mo together to analyze [his position, and I would ask him], 'Could you try to get your knee a little bit higher or be a little bit straighter or turn a little bit to match the pose of the cover?' To me, it seemed impossible. I felt almost ridiculous asking him to try it. And he would just do it."
It sounds like the production wasn't just focused on honoring the comics visually. Cretton also wanted the action itself to feel more physical and believable.
"We brought a lot of our stunt team from Shang Chi onto the project [including] Peng Zhang, and we had an incredible stunt team in London. The goal was to try to get as much in camera as we possibly could."
He went on to explain why that approach was so important for this version of Spider-Man. "One of the draws to doing this Spider-Man movie was that we are seeing Spider-Man go back to basics.
“We're seeing a street-level Spider-Man, and we wanted that to be across the board," he continued. "We kept talking about this idea of a 'grounded movie.' We were taking that mentality into the stunts, into the action design, to see Spider-Man doing things that feel almost possible and not to rely as heavily on VFX."
That philosophy is good news for fans who have wanted to see Spider-Man return to the smaller-scale adventures that helped define many of his best comic book stories.
From what Marvel has shown so far, Brand New Day looks determined to put Peter Parker back where he belongs, protecting the streets of New York while dealing with problems that hit much closer to home.
In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it's a Brand New Day for Peter Parker. Fighting crime full-time as Spider-Man in a world that doesn’t remember him—and the pressure of seeing his old friends move on without him—sparks a change in Peter he may not have the power to control.
But that transformation might also be the only thing that can stop a shocking new threat to the city and those he loves - a powerful villain no one can even see. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker, but he hasn’t forgotten them.
The cast includes Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando, and Mark Ruffalo.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31.
