“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” lives up to its title by ushering the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a striking new chapter. The film has been smashing box office milestones and earning mostly strong reactions from critics, including our own review at Looper. Still, one scene stands out for reasons that are hard to ignore — and not necessarily in a good way. The video above breaks down why this moment has become such a strange talking point.
In the film, Jean Grey (Sadie Sink) demonstrates the ability to enter other people’s minds and take control of their bodies. During a confrontation with Peter Parker (Tom Holland), she provokes him into pursuing her while she is occupying the body of an elderly man. The chase ends in disturbing fashion when she guides the unwilling host into the street, where he is hit by a car. The sequence is jarring for a couple of reasons. For one, it pushes Jean into surprisingly dark territory very early in the story. We later discover that the Department of Damage Control abducted her sister, which helps explain her anger, but targeting a random bystander — whether he is killed or badly injured — is far harder to justify.
Peter’s response makes the scene even more unsettling. Rather than stopping to help the man who has just been struck, he continues after Jean, who is heading toward MJ (Zendaya). To be fair, Peter is dealing with a terrifying set of problems, from Jean’s threat to MJ to the changes happening to his own body. Even so, Spider-Man abandoning an injured civilian without so much as checking on him feels sharply out of step with the hero audiences know and love.
Fans have theories to justify the odd Spider-Man: Brand New Day scene
Marvel Studios/Sony Pictures
Anyone who watched Looper’s Jean Grey explainer before seeing “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” already knows that Jean has a complicated history in Marvel Comics. She is certainly capable of becoming dangerous, though that usually happens when she is under the sway of the cosmic entity known as the Dark Phoenix. In “Brand New Day,” however, her turn toward violence comes while she is still more or less an ordinary young mutant — albeit one desperately trying to save her sister. That choice may be shocking, but it could also set up major consequences for the MCU’s eventual X-Men story.
Redditor u/bigwreck94 argues that Jean is not truly evil in this moment so much as dangerously untrained: “This is a Jean Grey without the guidance of Charles Xavier. Not only does she not have the pacifist morals of Xavier’s teachings, but she also doesn’t have the full understanding and control of her abilities that his teachings provide.” From that perspective, Jean’s actions may stem from fear, immaturity, and a lack of control rather than outright malice. She sees Spider-Man cooperating with Damage Control and decides he is an obstacle standing between her and her sister.
That incident, along with Jean freezing a massive portion of New York during the movie’s climax, could become important groundwork for a future X-Men film. In many versions of the X-Men mythos, humanity fears mutants even when they are trying to do the right thing. If one of the MCU’s future X-Men has already harmed civilians on this scale, the public’s fear would have a clear and personal foundation. Jean Grey may need a serious redemption arc when the X-Men finally take center stage, proving that she has grown beyond the frightened and reckless person introduced in “Brand New Day.” Watch Looper’s video above for more reactions to this controversial Spider-Man moment.
