Later this month, the next MCU Spider-Man movie, Brand New Day, is arriving in theaters. But following the ending of the last one, No Way Home, Peter Parker has been completely erased from the minds of (almost) everyone on Earth. But does that also mean pictures of Peter are gone, too? Or anytime he was mentioned in print? Well, according to the director, the answers to those questions are uh… well.. uh…I don’t know.
In a new interview with IndieWire, Spider-Man: Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton talked about working with Peter Parker actor Tom Holland and how he got a chance to make this movie following the cancellation of his planned Avengers film. He was also asked some questions about the “rules” of Dr. Strange’s memory-erasing spell and how that affected photos and other parts of the universe.
“We did have way too many conversations about how it works,” said Cretton. “And I honestly don’t think it fully matters. But the movie does follow some strict rules.”
When asked what those strict rules are, the director declined to share them or “get into it.” Next, Cretton was asked if Parker’s photo can still be found in his high school yearbook.
“We believe… gosh, we went back and forth. But we believe no,” said Cretton. And when asked if that meant photos containing Peter were gone or just had him missing, the director said he didn’t have an answer and that’s why the film is avoiding old photos.
“There’s a reason why you don’t see any photos in our movie. Because I don’t fully know how to answer that,” the director told the outlet.
“But what we definitely want to believe is that we didn’t actually go back in time and delete somebody so that everything changed from that point on. It’s really just a memory erasure of everybody’s brains. But! What happens to print or names? I can’t even start.”
Cretton says he didn’t want his characters “thinking about stuff that has nothing to do with our movie,” But as for the director himself: “I thought about it for a few days. But it has nothing to do with our movie. Well, that part doesn’t.”
I appreciate that Cretton didn’t try to just go, “You’ll have to watch to find out,” or dodge the question. Instead, he just admitted that, yeah, comic book movies are weird and some of this stuff will drive you bonkers if you think about it for too long, which is totally fair. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is out July 31 in theaters.
