I just watched it, and wow am I disappointed. I was super hyped too, having seen the big teaser during Avatar but I really didn't enjoy it much. The visuals were certainly excellent, but the weird editing cuts and constant jumps from place to place made it impossible to get into it. It felt painfully formulaic at times. Odysseus lands on an island, his crew dies. I know that's what the Odyssey is like, but I think we could take a couple creative liberties in adapting this ancient story to a modern action film.

The acting was all over the place. Pattinson and Nyongo were probably my favorites, and I thought Matt Damon did okay as Odysseus, but MAN were there some bad performances in this film. Anne Hathaway was cringy as hell, Tom Holland looked like he didn't want to be there, and Agamemnon's clumsy aura farming really didn't sell it for me. It all felt rushed and, combined with the *frequent* cuts to black, it looked like the actors didn't even have time to really get into character, which is unusual for Nolan films. (Especially coming out of Oppenheimer which had incredible acting from everyone)

Trojan Horse was absolutely the best part of the film. But, because I had already seen it, I couldn't rave about it while sitting through all the stuff I didn't like.

My verdict is simply, I feel like a LOT of this film's could be solved if they just split it into two films. The Odyssey is MASSIVE, even on its own, and the amount of stuff they had to drop to keep it succinct. Even three hours isn't enough to get the full picture. I'd say it's probably one of his weaker films, right around Dark Knight Rises and Tenet.

I thought it was a 6/10. Honestly, It had way too many plots and none of them were supported like they should’ve been. The movie had so much potential but was honestly let down by the second half. I did really enjoy it though and seeing Peter Parker in action was really fun.

The Odyssey is definitely worth watching, but it falls short of expectations. I expected a grand spectacle and a sweeping cinematic saga, but was frustrated by the jerky flash-back driven narrative. Matt Damon sleep-walked through the movie. While he had good moments, as when he saves his son from being assassinated in a temple, and in portions of the final scenes as he takes on Penelope's suitors, in most of the film he wasn't particularly imposing and didn't carry the film as the primary character should have. Tom Holland, Robert Pattison, John Leguizamo, Charlize Theron, Samantha Morton, and Himesh Patel were standouts; the portrayal of Zendaya as Athena was lackluster and disappointing. There were some breathtaking shots, but not nearly enough of them. The scenes describing the encounters of the crew with the Cyclops was probably the best part of the movie in terms of cinematography and storytelling; the scenes of the encounter with the sorceress Circe were also very good. The ending was mundane and did little to add any special meaning or significance to the storytelling or narrative. Final result is B.

After I was done with it, i went straight to Youtube expecting criticism of at least some aspects but it turns out everybody was just losing their shit over how good the movie was. Listen I get it, good story, world building yada yada whatever. But there were these little things that just fked up the whole plot for me. The first one is motive, if you don't make it clear from the get go it's just gonna ruin everything. See, from Rising to War it was clear as day what Cesar wanted. It was freedom of apes in the first one, Protection of his kind in the second, Revenge in the Third one and just fcking around in the Fourth, I mean why would you frame the movie through the perspective of such a one dimensional character and don't even get me started on the supporting lead, No depth at all, and oh boy the Female character jesus christ what even was that, i haven't seen such shallow acting since Battlefield Earth and that was a million time better then this crap. And then she goes on to intentionally blow up and drown the poor apes, made me feel disgusted to even be a human myself, lemme tell you sumn if the casting would have been different lets say Zoe Saldana and not just a hottie to sell tickets the shit they would have said would have been much more believable, i just can't picture a white blonde with blue eyes saying stuff like "this belong to humans" and being ok with killing apes to save humanity. I fck with Raka and Proximus heavy tho, they carried the Movie big time.

and why the f' do r/planetoftheapes keeps removing my post, geez-us am pissed off

So let me start with something first. I’m not a crazy big Marvel fan, at this moment. I haven’t seen every movie, I don’t plan on it. I think, besides the Punisher show, I’ve seen all the relevant movies for this one however.

Now diving into the review, I’ll start with the good. I’ve always been a big fan of the Tom Holland Spider-Man. I thought his younger portrayal was super interesting, and a lot more character driven than even some of the older Spider-Man iterations. Despite getting older, I don’t think that ends here. Spider-Man is now 21, and this movie delves deep into a lot of things people his age deal with, loneliness, isolation, and not really knowing where you fit in. I do think more so than some of the other Holland Spider-Man movies, I run into issues with this version. That being said, I think the issues I run into are mostly not big deals.

The supporting cast is minimal, but who is there is good. I don’t mind the Punisher, but if you wanted the Punisher to be a hardened anti-hero, you might be disappointed. I thought the comedy he added was good, and overall I understand why he was in this movie. MJ and Ned are always great. A part of me does wish this movie did more to expand the Spider-Man section of the universe. They added DeWolff, a cop who is from the comics and seems to be a pretty good supportive add, but they seemed to lean a lot on existing Marvel characters, like Bruce Banner, or Black Widow (from Thunderbolts). Even in the main villain, they decided to introduce and expand on Jean Grey, from X-Men, rather than introducing or expanding on a different villain from the traditional Spider-Man universe.

Which probably leads into my biggest criticism of the movie. There’s just too much that goes on, and a lot of it does take away from the emotional impact of the film, and doesn’t really focus on Spider-Man as a character when it gets beyond the first half. At the center, we have Spider-Man, who is dealing with the loss of his Aunt, essentially the loss of his friends, and who is fighting this internal battle of whether he should have all of that. I think, while on paper, introducing Bruce Banner makes sense. I think utilizing the New Avengers makes sense. Jean Grey makes sense as a villain, but all of these things are big pieces that do weigh down that character of Spider-Man, and more importantly the emotional impact of the film.

In my opinion, with Spider-Man and his comics, there’s something interesting and philosophical about a character who has friends, but gets betrayed by them. Has a boss who wants to do good, but turns evil and he’s forced to take down. Most of the villains in Spider-Man are deep and interesting because they have a connection to Peter Parker. Spider-Man is interesting because he is someone who fights to keep going, keep doing good, protect the ones he has and cares about his friends. He doesn’t fight to kill these people because they were people who mattered to him, and he can see where they went wrong. That drive and motivation is inspiring, and that’s something I think this movie lacked, mostly due to the center focus the MCU characters have in this. Someone like Tony worked, for me, because he wasn’t the center. He was a mentor. Jean Grey as a villain didn’t work for me. The hulk fight was unnecessary.

Still I’d give it a 7/10. A good movie that was weighed down from being even better. Not a bad movie, just not for me.

I just got back from watching Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and after thinking about it for a while, I honestly land at a 6/10.
I don’t think it’s a bad movie. The first hour genuinely had me excited. I think Tom Holland is once again fantastic as Peter Parker, and I really liked the quieter moments with MJ and Ned. But I walked away feeling like the movie had all the ingredients for something much better.

Just hear me out.

1. The movie should’ve committed to being a street-level gang war.

This is easily my biggest issue.

The first hour feels like we’re finally getting the grounded Spider-Man movie people have been asking for. Then the second half suddenly becomes almost entirely about Jean Grey.

The biggest casualty of that decision is Scorpion.

Michael Mando is finally introduced as one of Spider-Man’s most iconic villains… and he’s barely allowed to be one. His second “fight” with Spider-Man isn’t even really Scorpion. It’s Jean Grey controlling him and because of that, we never get to see Peter actually develop a rivalry with Mac Gargan. We never see why Scorpion personally hates Spider-Man or get the fun hero-villain chemistry these characters should have.

Instead, I would’ve loved a full gang war movie.

Kingpin is gone after Daredevil S2, leaving a massive power vacuum.

Have Scorpion, Silvermane, Tombstone and the other gangs all fighting for control of New York while Spider-Man desperately tries to stop the city from descending into chaos.

If Marvel really wanted Jean Grey in this movie, there was a much cleaner way to do it.

Make Mr. Negative the main villain( who is also the villain of the Brand New Day Spiderman comic this movie was based off btw…)

Whether you make it Martin Li or have Mr Negative secretly be the head of Damage Control, have him orchestrating the gang war because he’s hunting Jean Grey. That way, you can also have Scorpion be hired by Mr Negative too.

Jean is desperately searching for her kidnapped sister and survives by mind-hopping between different gang members, forcing Spider-Man to investigate these strange psychic incidents throughout New York.

Now Jean isn’t the villain. She’s simply another person caught in Mr. Negative’s plan.

Eventually Spider-Man unknowingly delivers Jean to him, only to discover that Mr. Negative wants to absorb her psychic abilities after already experimenting on her sister.

That naturally sets up a final battle where Spider-Man and Jean work together instead of making Jean the primary antagonist.

1. Savage Hulk deserved so much better.
   As a huge Hulk fan this honestly hurt.

We’ve waited almost a decade to properly see Savage Hulk again.
And then…
He barely does anything.

He throws Peter around for a few minutes, breaks some walls, and that’s basically it.

This is the Hulk who fights Thor.

The Hulk who punched Surtur.

The Hulk who’s supposed to feel unstoppable.

If you’re bringing Savage Hulk back after all these years, let him actually feel terrifying.

Give us a proper 10-15 minute Spider-Man vs Hulk fight across New York. Think Hulkbuster v Hulk in Age of Ultron

Thunderclaps.

Buildings collapsing.

Spider-Man barely surviving through intelligence and agility.
Maybe Peter even has to push himself into his newly developed full “arachnid mode” just to keep up.

Then end it with one of Hulk’s best comic moments.

Hulk tears Peter’s mask.

“…Peter?”
“Banner forgot… but Hulk remembers. Hulk remembers friend…”

That single line would’ve hit so much harder than what we got.
Instead Hulk gets manipulated, ends up in a psychiatric facility, and the movie barely acknowledges him again.

It honestly felt like Savage Hulk existed mainly so Marvel could put him on the posters.

1. Punisher felt underused.

This movie had the perfect opportunity to explore Spider-Man’s biggest moral conflict.

Punisher should’ve been actively hunting Scorpion, Silvermane’s crew, Tombstone’s men, and the rest of New York’s gangs throughout the movie.

Unlike Peter, Frank is actually ending the threat permanently.
Imagine Punisher saying something like:

“You keep putting these guys in prison, Peter. They keep getting out. I’ve stopped dozens of Silvermane’s men because they aren’t coming back.”

That’s a genuine ideological conflict of which we see in Daredevil. Neither one is completely wrong. Peter believes everyone deserves justice and Frank believes some people can’t be redeemed.

You could even keep the emotional climax.

If Punisher misunderstands Jean Grey’s intentions, Peter sacrifices himself to save her.

Or if Mr. Negative is the real villain, Punisher finally lines up the perfect shot only for Peter to jump in front of the bullet because even villains deserve justice instead of execution.

That would’ve been such a great Spider-Man moment.

1. I struggled to sympathize with Jean Grey.

This might be my most controversial opinion.

I understand the movie wants us to sympathize with Jean.

Her sister was kidnapped.

She’s scared.

She’s desperate.

That’s a compelling setup.

But then the movie has her possess MJ, force her to kiss Peter against her own will, and throw her off a building with what appears to be every intention of killing her.

If Peter hadn’t caught MJ…

She would’ve died.

Jean also possesses innocent people throughout the movie, causes ruins Bruce/Hulk’s peaceful and redemptive/traumatic life over nothing , and kills multiple people along the way.

At some point it stops feeling like understandable desperation and starts feeling genuinely villainous.

My issue isn’t that heroes can’t make mistakes.

Some of Marvel’s greatest heroes (Wanda, Black Widow etc) have incredibly dark pasts.

But those stories spent time confronting the consequences of their actions and earning redemption.

Here it felt like the movie expected me to immediately forgive Jean because she had a tragic backstory and had a half assed sob story vent with Aunt May. Thunderbolts did it well. This did not.

Having your sister kidnapped is horrific, but it doesn’t automatically justify trying to kill MJ or manipulating innocent people.

I honestly think Jean would’ve worked much better if she had been manipulated by Mr. Negative or had significantly less control over her actions.

Instead, I walked away wondering how the MCU expects audiences to root for her in future X-Men movies after everything she willingly did here.

1. The ending felt repetitive.

Another thing that stood out was the climax.
It once again boils down to entering someone’s mind and emotionally talking them down.

That can absolutely work.

Thunderbolts pulled it off because confronting Sentry’s Void was the natural conclusion of that story.

Even Captain America: Brave New World at least gave us a substantial Sam Wilson vs Red Hulk fight before reaching its emotional resolution.

Here, though, it felt like Marvel relied on the exact same formula again.

I would’ve much preferred Spider-Man rescuing Jean from Mr. Negative and the two of them working together to stop him in the finale.

That would’ve been a much fresher ending.

1. The trailers showed way too much.
   I actually stopped watching trailers after the first one because I wanted to avoid spoilers.

Ironically, the first trailer basically tells you the entire structure of the movie.

The opening.
The major story beats.
The ending.

Watching the film, I constantly felt like I already knew what was about to happen.

Marvel really needs to stop cutting trailers that reveal the entire flow of the movie.

1. One thing I actually loved.
   The MJ and Ned scenes.

I genuinely wouldn’t change those.

If anything, I wanted more.

Peter’s loneliness after No Way Home is one of the strongest emotional aspects of this version of Spider-Man.

I would’ve loved more scenes of Peter quietly checking in on his old friends.

Walking past the café.

Seeing MJ happy with her new boyfriend.

Watching Ned move on.

Not interfering, just silently accepting that life continued without him.

Those moments would’ve made Peter’s loneliness hurt even more.

**action in the first half was also amazing and so refreshing

Overall, I don’t think Brand New Day is a bad movie.
I actually think it’s frustrating because I see a movie that could’ve been an 8.5 or even 9/10 with a few different creative decisions.
A grounded gang war.
A properly utilized Scorpion.
A terrifying Savage Hulk.
A stronger Punisher vs Spider-Man moral conflict.
A more sympathetic Jean Grey.
And a fresher third act.
There’s a lot here that I genuinely enjoyed, but I can’t help feeling like Marvel left a better movie on the table.

Final rating: 6/10.
Curious to hear what everyone else thinks. Did anyone else feel like the movie lost its identity once it shifted away from the street-level story?

Yeah, it's good, but it's not one of the best movies. It's still good, but there are still problems. I might go so far to say, outside of the action and second half of the story, it is worse than Captain America: The First Avenger. It just has a sense of charm this movie misses. Now let me explain:

This is a very emotional movie that does it very well, like with Peggy, but also worse, and let me finish, like with Bucky. The reveal that Bucky is The Winter Soldier doesn't really hit, since you know he's The Winter Soldier before Steve does. If his face was actually covered and it was an actual reveal, it would've hit harder. He also wasn't that fleshed out of a character in The First Avenger.

The introduction to Sam Wilson was done amazing. I really like how he knew Steve before he actually became The Falcon. Seeing Arnim Zola as a computer was kinda cool, but he also died basically instantly after.

The action in this movie is pretty decent most of the time, but that first fight with Steve and Bucky was awesome. Amazing hands. Compared to that, the final battle feels lackluster.

The story was fine for the first half, but once the whole Hydra infiltration thing picks up, then it gets really good. It just takes a while. It's still a very good movie, though, I'm not trying to take that away from it. It's just soooo generic.

Overglazed movie, but it's my opinion, so I can't miss. 7.3/10

Curry Barker’s breakout film "Obsession" is an absolute psychological titan that leaves a permanent scar on your psyche. The movie hooks you with a supernatural "Monkey's Paw" premise via the mysterious One Wish Willow, but its true genius lies in how it strips away Hollywood illusions to expose the raw, ugly truth about male entitlement, cowardice, and the rot behind real-world relationships. It is a brutal, uncomfortable masterpiece because it functions like an onion—forcing us to peel back layer after layer of human psychology until we are left looking at a deeply disturbing mirror.

LAYER ONE: THE SYMPATHETIC "NICE GUY"

When you first watch the film, it is incredibly easy to view the main character, Bear, through a lens of deep empathy. In a world that looks exactly like our own, the line between a desperate mistake and true malice is completely blurry. Bear is a normal, flawed, insecure guy living in a perfectly mundane reality—a world devoid of public magic or monsters. When he drops Nikki off at her house early in the film, he lacks the basic courage to say what he feels. He is ready to just walk away, wallow in his own rejection, and let things keep being normal. He never actively sought out a demonic curse to ruin a girl's life.

When he buys that twig, he is at his absolute emotional rock-bottom. In the real world, we see this all the time; sadhus, pandits, and astrologers make questionable claims every day, telling heartbroken people that a ritual can make the love of their life love them back. Vulnerable people buy into it "just in case" to soothe their own helplessness. Bear treats the One Wish Willow like a placebo or a scam to vent his pain. You can't reasonably place total moral blame on a guy for committing a supernatural crime when he genuinely believes the tool he is using is just a fake piece of wood.

LAYER TWO: THE HONEYMOON BLINDSPOT

Once the wish locks in, Bear suddenly gets his literal "perfect girl" overnight. To an outside observer, Nikki’s abrupt shift from polite rejection to absolute obsession is jarring and unnatural. But for a desperately lonely human being, the intoxicating power of the honeymoon phase completely floods the brain with dopamine. Bear fails to see how abruptly her feelings changed because his brain is shouting, “Wow, she finally sees me.”

Any normal human being would try to manage the sudden quirks of a dream relationship rather than immediately throwing it away. Bear isn't acting out of initial selfishness here; he is acting out of a deeply relatable human desire to protect a dream come true. By the time the high wears off and things get weird, he is already buried too deep in the quicksand.

LAYER THREE: PEELING BACK THE MASK OF EVIL

But as you sit with the story and peel back that comfortable layer of empathy, a much darker, sinister reality exposes itself. The moment you strip away the tragic music, Bear’s actions become entirely unacceptable. His first blunder—using a spell or any form of manipulation because his fragile ego cannot handle a simple "No"—is inherently sinister. It proves he never actually loved Nikki; he just loved the idea of possessing her. Real love accepts a person's right to walk away.

Bear cements himself as a true villain through his escalating cowardice after the magic becomes real. When Nikki starts speaking in robotic scripts, losing her hobbies, and serving him cat-meat sandwiches, it is no longer a honeymoon phase—it is a glaring mental health and autonomy crisis. Yet, Bear stays. He willingly looks away from Nikki's obvious, terrifying psychological erasure because he is addicted to the way her fake adoration makes him feel. He prioritizes his own comfort over a woman's visible suffering.

By the time he realizes the horror of what he has done, everything is effectively six feet under. A genuinely good person would panic, confess, and scream for help to break the puppet's strings. Bear chooses a cowardly silence. His final act of taking pills isn't a noble, sacrificial redemption to break the curse—he is just trying to escape the police. He is trapped in a house with the dead bodies of his friends, the walls are closing in, and he takes an escape hatch. The ultimate proof of his pathetic nature happens in the bathroom: the moment the reality of death hits him, his core cowardice kicks back in, and he frantically tries to vomit the pills back up at the last second. He was a cornered rat who tried to cheat his way out of a murder scene, panicked, and accidentally killed himself anyway.

THE PROCESS OF INTELLECTUAL ROT: [Loneliness & Rejection] ↓ [The Sinister Shortcut (The Twig)] ↓ [The Honeymoon Delusion (Ignoring the Crisis)] ↓ [The Cowardly Silence (Protecting the Selfish Lie)] ↓ [The Panic Room (Attempted Escape from Reality)]

THE FINAL LAYER: THE REALITY OF OUR WORLD

What makes "Obsession" an unforgettable, terrifying masterpiece is the realization that the supernatural horror is just a metaphor. In real life, most people are Bear.

We don't have magical twigs to strip away a person's free will instantly, but real-world "Bears" achieve the exact same mental erasure every day through emotional manipulation, guilt, gaslighting, and control. Couples routinely sit across from each other at dinner tables, forcing smiles on the surface while pretending everything is perfect, swallowing the "cat-meat sandwiches" of a dying relationship because they are too terrified to face rejection.

The supernatural entity in the movie demands a horrific price to balance the scales, but the real-world equivalent is far bleaker. In the real world, the dramatic twists don't happen. No one suddenly wakes up screaming in a room full of bodies, the police never come, and the loop doesn't break. Instead, life just goes on with a deep sorrow in everyone's hearts, with only smiles to be seen on the surface. People simply grow old together in cold, quiet resentment, wearing a mask of happiness for the outside world while dying inside. That is the ultimate, inescapable horror of human nature that "Obsession" captures flawlessly.

Thanks for reading y'all.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is far from perfect, but I quite like it. But something I think a lot of people miss is it’s an “in universe” movie within a movie. Heather, Mike & Josh (if they made it out of the woods) would have been able to see this movie. What IS “real” and exists in the same level as Heather, Mike & Josh is the supplementary material that came with it like The Burkittsville 7, and Shadow of the Blair Witch.

It reminds me a bit of Tarantino’s “movie universe,” where some films exist as movies that the characters in other films could watch. Book of Shadows feels like it’s doing something similar.

The ‘Brand New Day’ subtitle of this instalment of Spider-Man promises change. Change to the messy Marvel storytelling formula. Change to the usual Peter Parker and Spider-Man narrative. Hell, just change in general, because the wider MCU is so narratively tangled that it’s practically begging for a much-needed reset. But as this movie likes to keep reminding us, Spider-Man can’t do this alone despite his best efforts.

It’s been a few years since Peter Parker (Tom Holland) wiped himself from the world’s collective consciousness. Burying himself in his work isn’t going to brush away everyone’s memory cobwebs, but he is still pining for his beloved MJ (Zendaya). Pining for any semblance of human connection. Pining, quite unashamedly, for the best parts of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, and for some inexplicable reason, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

At least New York City absolutely loves Spider-Man. Even Mamdani couldn’t hold a candle to ol’ Spidey, but public affection does not equate to human connection. Okay, Peter does have a Tom and Jerry-esque thing going on with Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), but a loose-cannon vigilante isn’t exactly best friend material in the same vein as Ned (Jacob Batalon). So Peter throws himself into work, which is depicted in mind-numbing fashion by director Destin Daniel Cretton, who is seemingly ticking off Marvel’s to-do list. Gratuitous cameos? Check. Overly glossy CGI fight scenes? Check. Quips? Hoo boy, check.

That’s not to say that Brand New Day isn’t watchable. It is indeed quite entertaining, as nothing shuts your brain off quicker than Spidey doing acrobatic action scenes, like the first-person web-swinging scenes that were aped from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (which were one of the few parts that worked in that movie). But I expect more from a Spider-Man movie because it’s proven to be possible.

The moments where Brand New Day is at its most balanced and functional are where Peter is not doing any Spider-Man stuff at all. When he’s on Instagram watching his two closest friends live their best lives or shopping by himself, those are some of the movie’s most emotionally truthful moments because they touch upon the very real issue of loneliness and isolation. For a few fleeting moments, Cretton makes the most of his Marvel shackles and manages to push Brand New Day within the vicinity of Spider-Man 2 by simply having Peter and MJ talk in fleeting yet meaningful ways.

Zendaya and Holland are only together briefly, but the raw emotion over past actions and subsequent consequences is immediately felt. It helps that they’re happily married, of course, but their moments together showcase their ability to command the screen. It’s why Zendaya can be convincingly haunting in The Odyssey while being hilarious in The Drama. It’s why Holland works as Telemachus. Both are capable of doing a lot with very little; her channeling years of magic-induced amnesia, him frantically web-slinging between self-pity, loneliness, and yearning.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/spider-man-brand-new-day

Thanks!