An advanced screening of the "brand-d-d new" Spider-Man movie

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a movie my younger son has been anticipating for months. Six months, he said, though it's probably longer than that. At age 12, he's not yet all that polished on estimating times.

You see, Spider-Man is officially his favorite superhero. He also loves the Flash, and last year's Halloween costume was the Flash's archenemy, Reverse Flash. But now that he's made it through the Flash TV series and is not interested in the 2023 film starring Ezra Miller, having been indoctrinated by the negative memes on the internet (I actually quite like that movie), Tom Holland's Spider-Man has claimed the largest percentage of his heart. 

In fact, he likes Holland and Zendaya so much that we considered whether maybe he would like The Odyssey, and since my wife and my older son missed their chance to see The Odyssey last night, that may still be on tap.

They chose Wednesday as Odyssey day, before ultimately missing out because there were only tickets remaining in the front row, because my younger son and I were attending an advanced screening of Brand New Day at the Hoyts Melbourne Central. I'd be working in the city, so he'd need to take the train in to meet me. And he was all set to do that by himself until he learned that the train ride was 30+ minutes and he thought he would get bored. So my wife accompanied him, which she'd always wanted to do anyway, before returning back home.

I jumped on these tickets as soon as I saw my email for the advanced screening through ReelGood. I know events like this tend to sell out quickly, and it so happened that I checked my email just at the right time to get them, knowing it would make my son delirious.

I've talked in the past about an advanced screening doesn't mean much to a kid, at least you wouldn't think. Playground bragging rights are likely not what they used to be, and seeing a movie for free is irrelevant for a kid because their parents pay for their tickets anyway. And really, this was only 24 hours before everyone else could see it -- less than that if they went straight after school. 

But with a Spider-Man movie, the appeal was more clear than for something like GOAT, which was the last advanced screening he and I attended at Melbourne Central. He was giddy for the Brand New Day advanced screening, and we made sure to get there plenty early to take in all of the festivities. 

In fact, it was almost not early enough. We got to Melbourne Central around 5:25 and weren't supposed to start queueing up until 5:45 for a 6:30 start, so I took my time eating two slices of pizza in the food court downstairs. He didn't opt for anything to eat, knowing there would be free popcorn and wanting to save his appetite for that. 

But when we did go up around 5:50, there was a huge line to get in. This is not something he usually experiences, so he likened it to the David Byrne concert we went to earlier this year, his only such previous memory. The line to check our QR codes was not so long that there was any danger of missing the start of the movie, but I did have enough time to panic slightly about the quality of the seats we would get. It turned out those fears were unwarranted, as they'd allocated two adjacent auditoriums, the fanciest two they had (more on that later), and there were plenty of optimal seats when we got in wearing our special Spider-Man wristbands and plopped down our jackets to claim our seats. (Remember, it's winter here.)

The lobby had most of the usual jazz you would expect. A number of Spider-Man displays where you could take photos, including a classic red carpet, though it does not appear there were any actually Hollywood dignitaries in attendance. Plus some classic comic book covers framed lovingly. In fact, the whole Melbourne Central was decked out in Spider-Man fanfare. Here are some pics:

There were other good pictures I took that capture the scene, but unfortunately, all of them have either my son or me in them, and you know I try to avoid posting photos that violate my family's privacy. 

The Takis? There was one on each seat. I was more charmed by this at the start of the movie than when I saw product placements for Takis about four times during the movie. 

We posed for photos on the red carpet and in front of another display, our wrists set in the classic Spider-Man web-slinging pose. It was good fun. 

In any case, we were excited enough by the lobby stuff that I forgot a crucial movie ingredient for my son: the lollies. When he worried about the size of the free popcorn, I told him we could probably get a second one on our return from the bathroom, which worked out just fine. He already had one drink, which was enough in that regard. 

But he didn't mention a bag of lollies, which we would always get in a situation like this because we wouldn't normally be getting free stuff, and sometime the free stuff would include something sweet, either lollies or an ice cream. It was only during the middle of the movie that I realized we'd forgotten about this, and it actually caused me about five minutes of anxiety as I worried my son would be having a somehow less perfect experience as a result. I even offered to run go get him some, but he told me in no uncertain terms that I should not do that. 

In any case, I really liked the movie, and here is a link to my review, just posted.

Oh, I have to explain the subject of this post. 

You may recall from this post that the radio ads for our streaming service Stan include a try-hard broadcasting school grad who insists on pronouncing the D in the phrase "brand new." Most normal people say it the way Jason Hervey says it in Back to the Future -- if you know you know -- which is "bran new." It flows off the tongue more easily and everyone understands what you are saying, even though you have excised one of the letters.

But no, the true broadcasting school style would be to include the D, so the announcer says, as I've written it and as my family jokes about it, "brand-d-d new." Just try saying it with a D. You'll hear it and you'll notice how ridiculous it sounds.

Well, apparently the woman who introduced the movie to us had also had this broadcasting school education, because she also announced it as "Spider-Man: Brand-d-d New Day." My son and I looked at each other and laughed.

And here are some other related thoughts (no spoilers):

Apex in Apex

No, in this case, the Charlize Theron vehicle on Netflix from earlier this year is not actually involved, though I did think it would be funny if you saw the movie Apex in the Apex screen format.

I mentioned earlier that this was one of Hoyts' fanciest two screens, both of them relatively new, carved out of an existing space. (If you knew the layout of Melbourne Central, you'd know there is no space for new building.) The other screen is one I talked about in my post about seeing The Odyssey on opening day, the "LieMAX" theater that passes itself off as a true IMAX screen. 

This one? It's called Apex, though it was not immediately clear to me what that meant. 

Well, here's an explanation for you from the internet:

HOYTS APEX is a premium cinema format featuring super-sized curved LED screens, high brightness, and Dolby Atmos sound. It replaces traditional projectors with direct-view LED technology for a sharper and more immersive picture. [1, 2, 3]

And here's a picture that shows what it looks like:

As you might guess from me having written a post about "LieMAX," I'm somewhat skeptical of this theater's tendency to be honest with me about the experience it's providing, and specifically, its justification for charging more for that experience. (Under ordinary circumstances. Obviously I wasn't being charged anything here.) But I have to say, I did find the curvature of the screen to be cool in the way I found the original curved TVs appealing, and the picture did look quite good.

Ret-conning May Parker's death date

This is as close to a spoiler as we'll get here -- well, maybe one other -- but it's a spoiler for Spider-Man: No Way Home, not for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. And, well, I guess it's too late to warn you now that I've included the spoiler in the sub-heading.

Anyway, you've seen No Way Home so you know that Marisa Tomei's Aunt May buys it in that movie. R.I.P. Marisa. You are still as beautiful as you were in My Cousin Vinny.

That movie came out in 2021, so by the general logic that these movies take place in our present tense, that would have been the year Aunt May died. Yet there are several pointed shots of Aunt May's gravestone in this movie that list the year of her death as 2024. 

This is confusing to say the least. 

My first thought was that they were trying to establish a sense of the recency of the event. They want it to have occurred more recently in the story than five years ago, so they are ret-conning it so it was only two years ago, if we take the present day to be 2026.

But I just looked it up, and the present tense of the MCU is supposed to be 2027 -- a little confusing as that is only one year (or really, five months) away. Wouldn't it be easier just to make it align exactly with the release date of the movie?

But let's say it is 2027. That makes her death three years ago. Fine. 

But in the movie, we're supposed to believe that at least four years have passed since she died. Because in this movie, we see (very mild spoiler, don't worry about it) the entire college careers of MJ and Ned pass at MIT. Last time I checked, an undergraduate college career is four years. Meaning that either the death should have been 2023, or the present tense should be 2028. 

It's confusing enough that the easiest solution would have been just to deemphasize the death year. You can shoot a gravestone in such a way that you can see the name but the years of the lifespan are out of the shot. Instead, the camera focuses on it so much that you'd almost think it was an intentional instance of getting us to think about the years. 

One thing I will say is that the birth year is listed as 1964, so that means May was 60, or about to turn 60, when she died. Tomei is only just now 61, so in 2021, when May's death was actually shot (it was really probably 2020), Tomei would have been only 56, because her birthday is in December. The rare case of aging an actor up rather than down. 

A traveling troupe of 2026 collaborators

I thought about making this last one its own post, but might as well just squeeze it in here and totally abuse today's word count, not to mention your patience as you read. It'll save me from having to do two consecutive Spider-Man: Brand New Day posts, in any case. 

The other spoiler that I think is not actually a spoiler is that the Punisher is in this movie. Everyone already knows that, right? At least I think they do. He's played by Jon Bernthal, and interestingly, I don't think he is ever once called the Punisher. In fact, he's only ever called Frank. His last name, Castle, never even makes it in.

Bernthal has something in common with Holland and Zendaya, which is that all three of them appear in The Odyssey.

That got me thinking about the weird coincidence of how many actors appear in the same movies as each other in 2026. If it is just a coincidence. Who knows, there are so many of them that maybe they formally aligned their schedules so they could all be available for the same projects.

We wouldn't necessarily be surprised if that were the case for Holland and Zendaya. They are married, after all. But how about these others?

1) Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are in three of the same movies in 2026: The Drama, The Odyssey and Dune: Part 3. I don't think I'd be worried just yet if I were Holland, but it might raise an eyebrow.

2) Florence Pugh and Zendaya are together in two movies, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Dune: Part 3. Oops, is it a spoiler that Pugh is in Brand New Day? Maybe I should stop telling you I'm avoiding spoilers while continuing to include spoilers. 

3) Anne Hathaway is in everything. But I'm not really sure that fits the exercise.

I thought I had more. I guess it's good I didn't make a separate post of it.

Okay you can go now. 

A seemingly unnecessary defense of The Odyssey

Neither of the first two people I spoke to about The Odyssey actually liked it.

One of those impressions was more middling. I know on Letterboxd he gave it three stars, but the words he wrote in his Letterboxd review were more indicative of his true dissatisfaction with the film.

The other guy? He quoted me two stars, but his words, in our Facebook chat, read more like a one. 

So does this make them the only two who didn't like it?

Surely not, but the overwhelming general consensus on The Odyssey is that it's great. Still, having those be the first two opinions I encountered personally tended to shake my own feelings of love for the film. 

I've since spoken personally to one other guy who loved it, though maybe not as much as I did. Many of the others with whom I regularly discuss film haven't yet seen it for one reason or another. 

A Christopher Nolan film is usually a safe film to like. The last one won best picture, the one from 2017 was praised through the roof, the one from 2014 is considered a modern sci-fi classic in some groups, and before that you get to Inception and the Batman movies. Only the one from 2020 (Tenet) is a bit of a head scratcher and enjoys less general appreciation among critics and fans alike. 

So why do I feel as though liking The Odyssey makes me a less discerning cinephile? Maybe even a bit of a bimbo?

It's because the way I like it reminds me of another film that I and a lot of people cherish, but that true film snobs trashed from the start: Titanic.

I think if you told Nolan he'd made a film that operates on a person in a similar way to Titanic, he'd respond by saying "Fuck you." But I think it's true, and I mean it as a compliment. Titanic was, after all, my #1 movie of 1997, and it remains in my top 100 on Flickchart. 

But I don't think Nolan would want to have his work compared to anything made by James Cameron, just because I imagine Nolan was one of those snobs who didn't like Titanic either. (And if you, dear reader, are also one of those "snobs," please don't take my phrasing personally. My own wife does not like Titanic and I obviously think quite highly of her.)

But wait, maybe I shouldn't be so quick to assume I know what Nolan thinks of Titanic. Here is what AI tells me about Nolan's thoughts on the movie:

Christopher Nolan deeply respects Titanic and frequently praises director James Cameron's ability to pull audiences into a different world, even when the audience's foreknowledge of the ending (the ship sinking) is absolute. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Nolan has pointed to Titanic as a masterclass in how a film can build emotional suspense and create a powerful sense of wonder within its own narrative text, contrasting it with his own approach to historical suspense in movies like Dunkirk. [1]

If I am to believe this -- and we know AI is never wrong -- then maybe he did set out to make The Odyssey have a similar emotional impact on a viewer as Titanic. 

It occurs to me that I haven't even told you yet why The Odyssey gives me Titanic vibes.

Aside from them both being high-budget epic period pieces, I actually think the drawing of characters as good or evil has a sort of epic quality on the level of myth. And that may be a strange thing to say about a lead character (Odysseus) who demonstrates numerous flawed moments and moments of poor judgment. But I think where we land with Odysseus is to feel great investment in his journey home and to love him, warts and all. That's especially the case when contrasted with Penelope's suitors, who are so nasty that you might even say the portrayal approaches camp. 

And I think that might be where I get my most notable similarity to Titanic. Robert Pattinson's lead suitor is such a hissable villain, such a poor match for our leading lady, that it put me in mind of the campy but great performance of Billy Zane in Titanic. 

The people who don't like The Odyssey seem to focus on nitpicks about the story (the sacking of Troy is barely mentioned in the poem, and yet it's a primary focus here!) or the accuracy of the costumes (those uniforms are from the wrong century!). They seem to want a purely intellectual Odyssey, the kind designed as a History Channel series rather than a rousing cinematic epic.

Me? I want the rousing epic. Always have. Always will.

And it's not that I don't want good verisimilitude, or moral complexity, or knotty storytelling that doesn't easily resolve itself. I do want those things, sometimes. 

But if a filmmaker sets out to make a movie that will leave me quivering with adrenaline in the finale, and near tears on several occasions -- maybe even more than near -- then that is more valuable to me than a perfectly historically accurate Odyssey as a professor of antiquity would have commissioned it. 

We go to movies to feel, I say. And people who lose their love of movies over time often do so because the movies cease to accomplish that for them. 

Because it is increasingly unusual to really feel scared in a horror movie, or really laugh at a comedy, we really remember and appreciate new movies that makes us do those things.

And so it is with sitting in a movie theater, watching a giant epic play out on the biggest screen possible, and feeling your fists unconsciously ball with rage, your heart unconsciously increase to a fever pitch in time with the score, and your eyes start to press tears through the ducts that usually keep them dammed up in reserve. 

That kind of movie is worth celebrating. 

And if your mileage varies on The Odyssey, well, maybe you didn't like Titanic either. 

You snob. 

The Odyssey in LieMAX

This is the subject I thought of for this post before watching The Odyssey. That is to say, before The Odyssey leapt to the front of the line among my favorite films of 2026, meaning a different sort of subject might be warranted. 

But I'm going to go with it anyway because I love this new term a friend introduced to me yesterday.

"LieMAX" of course refers to a screening auditorium that calls itself IMAX but isn't really. 

I'm by no means an expert on what makes an IMAX screen an IMAX screen, though I do know that the aspect ratio is significantly taller than your normal theater. And I also know that the entire space is usually custom built with a much taller seating area and higher ceiling overall, to accommodate the massive size of the screen.

Which means you should not be able to just convert an auditorium that had previously not been an IMAX auditorium into an IMAX auditorium, even if you do change the dimensions of the screen.

At least I'm assuming the screen dimensions were changed for the new "IMAX" screen at Melbourne Central, which has just become the second option for IMAX movies in the Melbourne central business district. I don't know how recently it's happened, but since I've last been there, anyway. (That's not saying much. They don't take my critics card there so I don't usually go there.) Without changing the screen size well then you really aren't doing anything but changing the name. 

The first and best option remains the Melbourne Museum, which houses what was once the third largest IMAX screen in the world. I was aware of this designation back when I saw Gravity in 2013, so I'm sure that at least three IMAX screens in Dubai alone have since surpassed it. But a different friend of mine told me yesterday that this is the only screen in the southern hemisphere -- could that really be? -- capable of showing the full height of what Christopher Nolan filmed with The Odyssey.

So why didn't I go to that one, if I wanted to see it yesterday in time to get up a review today? 

Well I was naive enough to rock up to their website earlier this week and try to get tickets, only to see all the sessions reading SOLD OUT for Thursday. That's not entirely true. I could have gotten one at 12:01 a.m., but yeah, I'm not going to ruin my next four days with something like that. The movie is 172 minutes long, after all.

When I told the original other friend, an American (the second is Australian), that I was going to see The Odyssey in three hours, I said the good one was sold out so I was going to the one that was probably IMAX in name only.

"Ah ... the LieMAX!" he responded.

Well, it didn't make a goddamn bit of difference.

I was plenty floored by what I saw even on this smaller IMAX screen, and whatever they don't have in size of screen, the Hoyts at Melbourne Central is compensating for in size of sound. That theater shook, rattled and rolled for nearly three hours of the ominous rumbling and up-tempo chaos of Ludwig Goransson's score, and feeling it in my bones was combining with the sense of adrenaline that increases as this movie reaches its fever pitch. This movie builds from a very good film to a great film as it enters its final section, and I don't think I could have loved it any more, even if I'd been seeing it on the best screen for it in the southern hemisphere.

Which I may still do. When I texted my wife how much I loved it, she said she couldn't wait to see it as she had read the original poem more than once. I guess I never had that discussion with her to determine exactly how important it was to her. As usual, my film critic's schedule won out, as I even left work a little early to catch this showing, just so I could write the review last night before I went to bed. (I ended up writing the whole thing on the train ride home and only just tweaking it a bit this morning before posting it. Link here.)

So yeah, when I said I would see it again with her, she suggested bringing my older son as well. Heck I think it would be fine for the younger one too, especially since he loves Tom Holland. 

You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, but my first impression was pretty damn great even on a less than ideal screen, so the second one can only be better.

And that's no Lie. 

Black is beautiful

There, how's that for a subject line that will get your attention?

I don't do anything on my blog to acknowledge Black History Month, which is a bit of a shame. I certainly could. I mean, it's only February 3rd, so I could even do it this year. If we are looking for precedent with other themed months, look no further than Pride Month in June, when I watch one pride-themed movie each week.

Why don't I do this in February to celebrate Black creatives and films with Black subject matter? I mean, this is certainly something in my thoughts, at least as much as issues related to pride. 

I think part of it is that I've just recovered from my big end-of-year push, and I don't really want to be getting myself back into a big month-long project -- even just one viewing per week -- right after I've freed myself from watching the films from the previous year. I want February to be a bit loosey goosey, where I watch whatever I want, whenever I want, both new (to me) movies and rewatches. Heck I'll watch a few actual new movies as well. Gotta start 2026 sometime.

But I thought the least I could do was use a spot at the beginning of February to address the latest controversy regarding race-related casting, sparked this time by that douche-nozzle Elon Musk.

I'm only going off a headline here because I don't want to dignify Musk's comments by actually reading the article. But apparently the thing is that Musk thinks Christopher Nolan has "lost his integrity" by casting a Black woman -- Lupita N'yongo, to be specific -- as Helen of Troy in July's The Odyssey.

Please.

What he thinks he's saying, or at least wants us to think he thinks he's saying, is that Helen of Troy was blonde and that any representation of her should acknowledge that.

What he's really saying is much more sinister:

A woman known as essentially the most beautiful woman of all time could not possibly be Black.

Please.

I don't know why these people want to keep coming out against any form of "woke" casting. It's the same people who said that Ariel in The Little Mermaid couldn't be Black and that there was no such thing as a Black Targeryan in the Game of Thrones spinoff.

Can't we just, like, stop?

And when I say "we," I certainly don't include myself in that group.

I'm not going to dignify Musk's comments any further by actually offering him an explanation about why Helen could have dark skin. I understand some people have dignified him in this way. 

It's not even worth it to do that, even if you have a "good" argument. The argument doesn't need to be "good." The only argument needed for race-blind casting is that people in any audience want the opportunity to see themselves in characters they see on screen. We got over a long time ago the idea that there might be Black people in the upper crust society of a show like Bridgerton, when of course we know that is not historically accurate, and to keep having this argument about any new character who comes up for cinematic representation, maybe for the first time in our modern era, just sullies us all. 

There are only a few characters I think it does not make sense to have played by a Black woman, or not without the very casting being part of whatever your confrontational, satirical aims are with the film. Just a few off the top of my head:

1) A slave owner! Probably not a good idea to have a Black character owning Black slaves. 

2) Eva Braun! We don't have to pretend there's a world where Hitler would have been married to a Black woman.

End of list.

As if we needed any more reasons to talk about what a complete and utter piece of shit Musk is.