Spider-Man: Brand New Day is out and the Barstool crew is picking it apart. Project Big Screen used their latest episode to dig into two of the biggest talking points around the movie: does it actually feel like New York, and did the twists work.
The Project Big Screen hosts debate whether shooting Spider-Man in NYC actually matters, or if it's just tourism.
That's not a throwaway question either. Reports on the production have made clear that despite the film being set in New York, most of the actual shooting happened across the pond, with Glasgow and Pinewood Studios standing in for Queens and Manhattan. Tom Holland himself has said the reasoning came down to logistics: you can shut down a street in London for a full day of filming in a way you just can't in NYC. That's exactly the debate Project Big Screen is wading into — whether all that gets sold as authentic New York actually plays as authentic New York on screen.
The crew also tackled the movie's plot twists in a separate episode, asking fans directly whether they got fooled by any of the big reveals in Brand New Day.
The hosts break down the movie's biggest twists and whether they saw them coming.
Not everyone in the building was focused on nitpicking, though. Robbie Fox used his platform to zoom out and just appreciate what the Spider-Man franchise has built over the years, calling out how consistent it's been across multiple actors, directors and eras of the MCU.
Robbie Fox praises the Spider-Man franchise's track record, cutting to clips of the character swinging through the city.
It's a fair point given the alternative. Superhero franchises rise and fall on quality control, and Spider-Man movies — whether Sam Raimi's original trilogy, the Andrew Garfield reboot, or Holland's MCU run — have largely avoided the truly disastrous entries that have sunk other properties. Brand New Day landing in theaters as another reviewed, debated, dissected release just continues that streak, NYC authenticity questions and all.