On a normal day, this would be a movie review. But since Spider-Man: Brand New Day is dominating at the box office, let’s talk about one small bit of it that exposes a bigger problem running through all four MCU live-action Spider-Man movies: the scene where Peter Parker leaves flowers at Aunt May’s grave.
Aunt May died in Spider-Man: No Way Home during a confrontation with the Green Goblin. Four years later, Brand New Day finds Peter all alone and fully committed to a life as Spider-Man, with everyone having forgotten his identity. Meanwhile, the woman who raised him, May Parker, is little more than a name on a gravestone.
A moment like this, especially in a superhero movie, is supposed to hit hard. Peter has lost the person who raised him, and the flowers should remind us of what she meant to him. Instead, the scene plays out like any other.
The problem here is not Marisa Tomei’s performance; it is how the MCU wrote Aunt May across the four Spider-Man films. Grief works best when the audience knows the person who is gone, yet May was rarely given a life beyond Peter.
Unlike Rosemary Harris’s Aunt May in Sam Raimi’s trilogy or Sally Field’s version in The Amazing Spider-Man films, Tomei’s May has little in the way of personal struggles, relationships or ambitions. She mostly exists to look after Peter, provide exposition, deliver jokes and occasionally push the plot forward.
This is why her death struggles to carry the emotional weight the films expect; it’s difficult to feel what Peter lost. How am I supposed to mourn Aunt May, who, across four films spanning more than 9 hours, had around 20 minutes of screen time that barely gave us enough time to know her?
The same problem extends to Peter’s friends. MJ and Ned are among the most important people in his life, yet their stories largely revolve around him. MJ is Peter’s love interest, while Ned is his best friend and comic relief. Beyond that, nothing!
Compare that with Harry Osborn in Raimi’s trilogy. Harry has his own relationship with his father, his own ambitions and even resentment towards Spider-Man. When Norman Osborn dies, Harry blames Spider-Man, and that resentment pushes him to become the New Goblin.
Harry Osborn’s transformation grows from conflicts the films had already established. That is exactly what the MCU Spider-Man films lack: supporting characters with lives and conflicts of their own.
May, MJ, and Ned matter to Peter, but the films barely make them matter independently of him. So, when Peter visits May’s grave, Spider-Man: Brand New Day asks us to feel the absence of a character previous MCU films never gave us enough reason to know.
