For generation after generation, folks have loved Spider-Man. That’s no secret after the O.G. Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire was the first movie, period, to gross over $100 million in a single weekend back in 2002. And before there was Top Gun: Maverick, there was Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 bringing audiences back to multiplexes at the tail-end of the pandemic with its $260 million opening.Still, nothing could quite prepare us for how big Spider-Man: Brand New Day turned out to be this past weekend. The superhero epic marked Tom Holland’s return to the webs after nearly five years and it absolutely dominated multiplexes around the world. In the U.S. alone, the film opened at an astonishing $355 million, the best record since Avengers: Endgame’s still unbeaten $357 million in the long ago times of 2019. More difficult to fathom is that Brand New Day also grossed $927 million worldwide, a bigger global bow than any movie in history, sans again Endgame. For context, Christopher Nolan’s wildly successful The Odyssey, which also features Holland, has grossed “only” $911 million total to date after three weekends. And that was with the precious IMAX screens in its camp.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});So Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a massive hit, and one that probably could not come at a better time for Marvel Studios. While the film’s production and rewards are shared with Sony Pictures, this is in the ballpark of the mega-blockbuster event that Marvel Studios at its peak in the late 2010s was churning out a few times a year (if BND is obviously at the upper end of that scale). Clearly every once in a while they still can, as gleaned by Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024, which grossed $1.3 billion in its total run. More often, though, Marvel Studios has recently seen a couple of valleys like Thunderbolts* ($382.4 million) and The Marvels ($206.1 million), as well as films somewhere in the middle Fantastic Four: First Steps ($521.9 million).So another almost instantaneous billion-dollar grosser is a big deal and can do nothing but rekindle fond memories of Marvel heroes ahead of what might be the brand’s most important film of the decade, Avengers: Doomsday, due out in December. While Spidey is still flying high, the sum of Avengers’ many parts could use some of that high-flying Spidey love which hasn’t abated at all in the last seven years. In fact, it seems bigger than ever.One of the few characters out of Marvel’s 1960s golden age not partially or largely created by Jack Kirby, Spider-Man was purely the idea of Stan Lee and then given eventual shape and crucial detail by Steve Ditko. He’s a superhero who rather than being a golden boy like the DC archetype, or even Marvel’s own Captain America, was closer in age to their kid sidekicks. Save he was just a kid. And an unpopular, self-pitying one at that.The universal appeal of the underdog, adolescent spirit trying to find their way in the world, even with spectacular powers that let them soar through the canyons of Manhattan like Tarzan, has proven to have eternal appeal as long as every generation has more young people struggling to find their tribe, their love, and/or their careers in a world that will leave us all feeling battered and broken at some point. As pivotal Spider-Man artist John Romita Sr. surmised, the secret of Spider-Man is he offers a soap opera where every once in a while a fight breaks out.Spider-Man: Brand New Day pinpoints that perhaps better than any MCU Spidey flick to date. And more impressive, the audience seems to prefer it, at least right now. Five years ago, No Way Home was the biggest show in town anywhere in the world because it had the novelty of bringing back all the old villains from the 2000s and 2010s, as well as previous Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Conversely, even with the Hulk, Punisher, and a secret surprise villain (that probably surprised few hardcore fans), No Way Home is a one-man show hyped up purely on the excitement audiences still have for this character and this interpretation. They didn’t even mind the film was essentially marketed without a villain, which has long been one of the selling points of every Spider-Man movie since 2002. It says something about this moment in the ongoing saga of “superhero fatigue.” This phenomenon is definitely present. In the 2010s, almost any superhero movie with a decent marketing budget and some splash page worthy imagery could be a hit. Spider-Man and Batman movies, sure, but also Guardians of the Galaxy with its talking tree and raccoon, or “B-tier” heroes like Ant-Man and Aquaman. Even the not-great first Venom movie grossed over $850 million worldwide. Compare this to Venom: The Last Dance doing barely better than half that in 2024 with $479 million, which is still a lot better than this summer’s other major superhero release, the much maligned Supergirl—a movie we might add also was unceremoniously dropped on PVOD last week.Audiences seem to be tiring of obscure or middling superhero movies. Luckily, Brand New Day is neither. Instead it proves that even in an era of “fatigue,” some superheroes’ popularity remain bulletproof. And perhaps not surprisingly, swinging to the top of the heap seems to be Spider-Man. Makes you wonder which other heroes might join him there as the genre’s salvation?The post Spider-Man: Brand New Day Box Office Puts Wallcrawler in League of His Own Among Superheroes appeared first on Den of Geek.