Finally, Marvel is giving us what we want…

A collage of marvel related images (Rheya Bushan / The Puma Prensa)

By Rheya Bushan, editor

One of the biggest franchises on the planet, with too many movies and TV shows. And somehow, not enough feeling.

That’s been the problem with Marvel lately.

There was a time when every new release felt like an event—something you had to see or risk being left out of the conversation. People cared about the characters, argued about the endings, and actually remembered what happened months later.

Now it’s different. Movies and TV shows drop, people watch them (or don’t), and within a week the conversation is gone. Not because they’re terrible, but because they’re just…fine.

And “fine” is a weird place to be for a franchise that used to dominate the industry.

Which is why Spider Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday feel important, even before they’ve come out. Not because they’re guaranteed hits, but because they seem like Marvel is at least trying to adjust. Trying to make people care again.

Starting with Spider-Man.

The ending of No Way Home left Peter Parker in a place Marvel has never left a character: completely alone (I guess except for Loki). No friends, no family, no one who even remembers him. It wasn’t a cliffhanger or a tease, it was just sad.

And more importantly, it stayed that way.

Brand New Day looks like it’s picking up right there instead of undoing it immediately. Peter’s not balancing school and superhero life anymore. He’s just trying to get by. Small apartment, no support system, still going out every day to help people who don’t even know who he is.

That’s a much quieter story than what Marvel usually goes for, but it fits Spider-Man better than most of the big spectacle stuff.

Because at his core, Spider-Man isn’t really about saving the world; at least, that’s what I think for this movie. It’s more about showing up even when your own life is falling apart.

The risk, though, is that Marvel gets nervous about sitting in that tone for too long. There’s always that temptation to lighten things up, bring in new characters, rebuild Peter’s world as quickly as possible. And if that happens, it defeats the whole purpose of where his story left off.

Letting him struggle isn’t a bad thing. It’s the whole point.

At the same time, while Spider-Man seems to be going smaller and more personal, Avengers: Doomsday is doing the exact opposite.

It’s big, it’s dramatic, and it’s bringing back some of the biggest names the franchise has ever had. I, for one, never thought we were going to see them again after Avengers: Endgame.

Robert Downey Jr. returning as Doctor Doom is easily the headline here. It’s the kind of casting choice that instantly gets attention, whether people love it or hate it.

On one hand, it makes sense. He’s one of the main reasons Marvel became what it is. Bringing him back in a completely different role could be a way to do something new while still tapping into that history.

On the other hand, it also raises some questions.

Will people actually see him as Doctor Doom, or will it just feel like Tony Stark in a different suit? Is this a creative decision, or just a safe way to get audiences interested again?

It really depends on how far the movie is willing to go with it.

If it leans into the former—if it actually uses that familiarity to make the character more unsettling or unpredictable—then it could work really well. If not, it risks feeling like a gimmick that wears off quickly.

Chris Evans coming back adds to that tension.

For a lot of fans, he is Captain America, and will always be. Bringing him back at all is going to come with expectations, whether the movie wants that or not. So the question becomes: is Marvel doing something new with him, or just reminding people of what they used to like?

Because that’s the bigger issue here.

Marvel isn’t struggling because it ran out of characters or ideas. It’s struggling because it hasn’t fully figured out how to move forward without constantly looking back. And Doomsday feels like it’s walking that line. It could either be a smart way to explore legacy and change, or it could just lean too heavily on nostalgia.

Right now, it’s hard to tell which way it’ll go.

What’s interesting is how different these two projects feel, even though they’re coming from the same studio.

One is smaller, more grounded, and focused on a single character dealing with the consequences of his choices. The other is huge, complicated, and pulling from the franchise’s past in a very obvious way.

Whether these movies pull it off or not is still up in the air, but at least they feel like an amazing step away from the franchise's current situation, one that everybody is excited about.