**SPOILER WARNING** Before we go any further, the following article goes into spoiler territory for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” so if you don’t want Sadie Sink‘s character spoiled, you might want to bookmark it and come back later. For those who want to know what is going on there, keep on reading. Anywho, director Destin Daniel Cretton was able to use a handful of Marvel Studios/Disney-owned characters in his Spidey sequel (such as Hulk and The Punisher), and there is one that specifically got into the mix that was a shocker for most of us: the one played by Sink.
In a new interview with Deadline, Cretton is directly addressing how Sink’s villaness version of Jean Grey (the first major “X-Men” character from Jake Schreier‘s reboot to grace the MCU) factored into the film and origanically they wanted to use a telepath, they had to ultmately check with Kevin Feige about getting the abilitiy to use the character (sounds like mutants weren’t exactly on the table from the jump, until they asked). He also revealed he had previously worked with Sink on the Brie Larson film “The Glass Castle,” so it was a bit of a reunion.
“We wanted to get away from having a villain who just felt typical because this was really Peter Parker’s journey. We wanted a villain who reflected what he was going through. Even before Jean Grey came up, the idea was that the reveal would be that she was just a young telepath. At the time, we didn’t fully know who we could use because we hadn’t talked to Kevin yet. We were going through different options, and Jean Grey was clearly a very good one,” Cretton said of the complexities of their take on Jean starting out as a conflicted bad guy, only to be revealed to be misusing her powers (being able to hop into bodies and control them) for revenge.
“Then we started digging into the different versions of Jean’s backstory in the comics, finding runs that talked about her sister. We were trying to mine something that really helped us create this mirror of Peter Parker. To us, both characters experienced very clear trauma and had loved ones taken from them. The difference is that Jean really had one person as her community, and that person was taken away. Peter, on the other hand, had a community that rallied around him after Aunt May was killed. Aunt May herself embraced him when he first realized he was different and had these powers. She was there for him. That became our north star too later on for: How do we build that throughout the movie, and how does it culminate in a scene that’s really just two people sitting on a bed talking?”
Some of the new things they’ve done are introducing a sibling for Jean with similar powers, which is a new angle, and we can’t help but be grateful that Cretton has infused the character with a new, compelling backstory before the reboot.
Another interesting element in the movie is the mutant suppression technology that Tom Holland‘s Peter Parker and Mark Ruffalo‘s Dr. Bruce Banner inadvertly develop themselves to keep their own mutated DNA at bay (Parker and Banner are defined as mutates, mutantations through technically not inherented from the mutant gene, but likely won’t be seen as any different as the genetic brothern by anti-mutant groups), which could involve the mutant suppression collars that have been used in previous media to prevent all mutants (dangerous or not) from using their powers (“Deadpool 2” had a mutant prison that had them). It certainly feels like that plot point was designed to plant seeds into the human response to mutants in the MCU (Sentinels are confirmed to be showing up in “Avengers: Doomsday“).
We’ll be curious to see if Sink’s Jean Grey shows up in “Avengers: Secret Wars” (some internet rumblings have suggested as much), and while they’ve explored a bit of her darker side, we’ll be a tad hopefully they’ll save The Dark Phoenix Saga (Jean is pocessed by an evil cosmic entit and attracts a group of aliens to Earth in an attempt to defeat her before destroying the galaxy) for down the road after the Fox-era tried to do it twice, both times never living up to the comic book or animated series iterations. Sink will have some company in “X-Men” as Samara Weaving was announced by trades as Emma Frost, the female villain member of The Hellfire Club (a group of mutants who help the anti-mutant factions) and becomes involved in a bit of a love triangle with Scott Summers/Cyclops (Cooper Hoffman has denied to The Playlist his rumored casting) when she flips to the side of the good guys.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” has been a MASSIVE hit for Sony Pictures, and we cannot wait to see what happens next with the franchise as we’re sure early talks for “Spider-Man 5” are already starting.
