Spider-Man: Brand New Day Proves Video Games Can Be Action Movie Storyboards

Marvel sucks at following its comic source material. Even if that’s not always a problem, it is a commonly acknowledged fact amongst the fandom who have mourned the design and quick dispatching of Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder or the introduction of Star-Lord as Ego’s son storyline in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Marvel’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox has now allowed for the MCU to include many key figures that were missing from some of the most important story adaptations that it took from the comics. The introduction of Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey, along with the origins of the mutant inhibitors, shows that Marvel is now on a new trajectory that includes a full roster of fan-favorite characters. But what if the studio didn’t need to follow comic sources at all? What if there’s another medium that can provide a stronger blueprint?

Spider-Man: Brand New Day has broken the $2 billion mark at the box office — making it the highest-grossing film of this year and the 4th highest-grossing movie of all time. It has been arguably the biggest success that the MCU has seen yet, outperforming Avengers: Endgame’s $357 million box-office domestic debut with $360 million. The MCU and Sony’s fourth Spidey joint venture succeeded in something that Hollywood has been trying to do with varying results – using games as effective source material, or more accurately: the storyboard. 

Mr. Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, has been an active gamer for years, having spoken to ScreenRant in 2022 about playing Uncharted while filming Spider-Man: Homecoming. Holland would go on to play Nathan Drake, Uncharted’s main protagonist in the film adaptation. He has also been vocal about using Insomniac Games’ 2018 video game Marvel’s Spider-Man, available on Steam and PlayStation, as inspiration for the action scenes of the newest web-slinger’s film.

“For me, a lot of those finishing moves, a lot of our stuff was influenced by that stuff,” he told IGN. However, it wasn’t just him who was inspired by the games during the filming process — Holland explained in further detail how the action designers are also gamers.  

“A lot of the action designers and stunt people we had were huge gamers,” he explained. “They were able to experience things in those games that made them excited, and they would just screengrab the moves they really liked and bring them into the writers’ room and show it to me. And then we’d be like, ‘Yeah, that’s sick. Let’s try to figure out how to do that for real.’” 

While the film took elements from the game, it didn’t use it as a bible for the storyline. Trying to use any other iteration of a Peter Parker adaptation would have backfired. One, because Holland’s Peter was erased from the memories of everyone he’s encountered, and two, because his Peter had strayed far from the street-level supe initially depicted by Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Marvel’s Spider-Man actor Yuri Lowenthal.

This movie proved that Marvel can make street-level superheroes and be successful. The video games proved it first by giving fans what they want — immersive action. 

Immersive storytelling is now becoming a necessity to capture the attention of younger audience members. For film, that means drawing people in — making characters feel like real people. Spider-Man is a character that has always felt more human than superhero, with Parker’s empathy leading every action in both his day job and web-slinging side hustle. Marvel’s Spider-Man balanced Parker and Spider-Man extremely well. There is the understanding that both Parker and Miles Morales understand their impact on their communities and their responsibility to protect those they live alongside as public servants. 

A connection between Spider-Man and the audience is built through conversations between Miles and Peter as the former inquires about the latter’s experiences as Spider-Man. Players get to see Spider-Man’s combat intellect and his ability to improve as a fighter as the game progresses and he goes from a rookie to an experienced hero. Seeing Spider-Man as an experienced fighter versus the bumbling kid that neatly grafts onto the character’s evolution in Brand New Day. Bringing in the video games’ action moves gave Spider-Man a fighting style that Holland previously didn’t deploy. Now, his Spidey is agile, gritty, and feels like a true arachnid. 

The popularity of gaming has changed the franchising formula. Movies once acted as the light bulb to create games, furthering lore, or allowing players to make the choices they wish their favorite characters would. Now, games act as the catalyst for action movie ideals — many wishing that films would add the choreography, motifs, and dialogue that has made gaming the newest hit in immersive fan culture. 

The current Hollywood wave of game adaptations has given us HBO’s The Last of Us, Netflix’s Arcane, and Prime Video’s Fallout – all projects whose aesthetic and visual language are massively influenced by the games themselves. Next up is Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil film, which looks to really use its gaming inspiration as a storyboard. The Mary Sue reported on a Q&A panel in which Cregger spoke in-depth about bringing the Resident Evil games visuals to his upcoming film:

“I feel like people my age and younger who are raised playing a lot of video games, we have kind of inherited this visual language from the game. So this is kind of third-person perspective where you’re following the character, but you’re seeing the world around them. And as they turn and look right, we swing and we look right. When Austin [Abrams] looks up, we drop the camera down. We have to make sure that everyone is choreographed together, the operator and the actor so that so that we’re shifting our attention at the right time. That’s something that the games do so well, you know, this sort of third person visual language. It’s really effective at immersing you in a location and in a place.” 

Cregger is correct. There is a visual language to games like Resident Evil that makes their on-screen adaptations so enticing because the creators put in so much effort to become fluent in that language. From new cinematography methods to incredible special effects, games are challenging films to step their game up. And Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a hopeful step in the right direction towards a brand new day in gaming as inspiration.