After months of waiting, the first trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day was finally released in mid-March. Fans were quite excited to get a look at the upcoming Marvel film, as the trailer broke viewership records during its first day online. Clocking in at two and a half minutes, there’s a lot packed into the preview, and viewers wasted no time in dissecting the footage as they searched for clues about the movie’s story. Considering how anticipated Brand New Day is, the trailer unsurprisingly spawned a new wave of fan theories, especially after some people suspected Sony was repeating a marketing trick from the Spider-Man: No Way Home marketing campaign.
Towards the end of the trailer, there’s a shot of Spider-Man leaping into action as he takes on various members of The Hand. The shot is framed in a way that there’s plenty of space within the frame for other characters to appear, causing some to speculate that Sony digitally altered the footage to preserve a surprise team-up (much like how they removed Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield from a similar shot in the No Way Home trailer). Some people, including Andrew Garfield, believe fans are reading too much into things, but there’s now proof the Brand New Day trailers are hiding major twists.
An International Version of the Brand New Day Trailer is Different
Image Courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing
When a studio uploads a new movie trailer to YouTube, it’s standard practice for it to be published on several channels simultaneously. In addition to the domestic channel, there are also others catered towards international markets. So, it isn’t unusual that the Brand New Day trailer made its way to the Sony Pictures Brasil channel in March. What some fans might find unusual is that it isn’t exactly the same trailer that was posted to the main U.S. Sony Pictures channel. The shot of Spider-Man slamming against a bus window is slightly different. In the Brazilian version, Peter Parker doesn’t have his web shooters; in the American edition, the web shooters are clearly visible. Check out a side-by-side comparison posted on X:
The main takeaway is that this essentially confirms what people have suspected since the trailer came out. Sony is tweaking footage in an effort to throw fans off the scent. Cleverly, rather than uploading a single, uniform trailer to all of its channels, the studio made slight differences in the various versions to specifics shots, which will only raise questions about what’s truly in store. The Brazilian trailer leans into the storyline of Peter Parker’s mutating DNA, as it looks like he will develop organic webbing in this new film. The domestic version makes it look like he still has his trusty web shooters. Without any context of how this shot fits into the overall film, it’s difficult to say which one is actually accurate.
Changing whether or not Peter Parker has web shooters seems innocuous enough, but this communicates to the audience that they have to keep their guard up and not completely trust any subsequent marketing materials. We won’t know what’s been altered and what hasn’t until the movie comes out in July. On one hand, some could find this a bit frustrating; trailers are meant to be fun events for fans as they pore over the footage and try to parse out all the details. Purposely misdirecting viewers in advertising could be interpreted as a bad move on the studio’s part. However, part of the fun of the pre-release build-up is all of the speculating and theorizing that goes on. In a way, Sony is getting in on the fun by sparking conversations.
It’s sneaky, and one could probably make the case that it’s misleading, but there isn’t anything malicious going on here. If, after Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes out, the film’s story is entirely different than what’s being advertised, the studio could find itself in hot water. But there isn’t any harm in making tiny adjustments to shots — ones that don’t really impact how the shot plays out in the trailer. Whether or not Spider-Man has web shooters in that specific scene doesn’t matter for the purposes of the trailer. Its placement (shortly after Punisher’s “You’re losing it, kid!” line) is meant to illustrate how overwhelmed Spider-Man is. Sony didn’t even call attention to the fact that the shots are different in the two trailers. It’s something for the die-hards to discover as they do their deep dives into the footage.
Image Courtesy of Marvel
Seeing the Brazilian and U.S. versions of the trailer side by side will obviously raise the question of what other shots have been edited. This development will only add fuel to the fire regarding speculation over the Hand sequence. It also raises the question of why Sony is doing this, promoting their major summer blockbuster in a manner that isn’t 100% completely honest. Communicating that you can’t fully trust marketing materials seems counterintuitive, particularly when it comes to casual viewers (the ones who don’t follow movie updates daily and get most of their information about films from trailers).
Sony has been distributing live-action Spider-Man movies since 2002, and they’ve all been hits (even the “underwhelming” Amazing Spider-Man 2 grossed $716.9 million worldwide). Simply put, the studio has plenty of experience promoting these movies, and after seeing what worked so well during the No Way Home campaign, they’re pulling pages from that playbook. The first No Way Home trailer arrived four months before the film’s release and had that famously altered shot of Spider-Man battling villains. The movie grossed $1.9 billion at the worldwide box office. Brand New Day likely won’t reach that figure, but all signs are pointing to it being a massive hit — and that’s a testament to a well-run marketing campaign.
When dealing with major franchise films, studios have to walk a tightrope. You need to release trailers to promote the movie and raise awareness, but you have to be careful about how much is revealed. These types of movies are often built around twists, surprises, and reveals that the studio wants to preserve for opening weekend. So, editing trailers becomes a bit of a balancing act. The image of Spider-Man in mid-air heading towards a wave of enemies is a splashy money shot to end a trailer on, but if he’s teaming up with heroes who haven’t been officially confirmed, you have no choice but to make alterations so certain things remain under wraps. Audiences are savvy enough these days to understand that; the aforementioned No Way Home shot became something fun to debate, not a source of complaints.
There’s a limit to how much a studio is willing to share ahead of time. Brand New Day toys have seemingly confirmed Savage Hulk, but Marvel has yet to formally announce the identity of Sadie Sink’s character, for instance. Marvel obviously likes to be in control of information rollout, so as we get closer to the Brand New Day release date, it wouldn’t be a shock if subsequent trailers and TV spots had digitally altered shots of their own. Which shots have been changed will be left to the internet sleuths to deduce.
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