Should Superhero Movies Be Allowed to Kill Off Core Concepts Permanently?

Buried near the end of RogerEbert.com's review is a line that reads less like film criticism and more like a verdict on the whole modern franchise-movie era: “the truth is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't exactly embrace change.” Tallerico isn't condemning Brand New Day for it — he goes on to say the film's “baby steps” toward a more mature, permanent-feeling status quo “should be celebrated.” But “baby steps... should be celebrated” is a low bar for a franchise seventeen years and dozens of films into its own existence.

The Case That Marvel Never Really Risks Anything

The pattern is well documented at this point: major character deaths get walked back through time travel, alternate universes or convenient resurrections; status-quo-altering choices (secret identities revealed, teams broken up, powers lost) tend to reset within a film or two. Our own coverage of Marvel's 2025 box-office correction covers part of why — a franchise this large has enormous financial incentive to protect its most bankable elements rather than risk them permanently. No Way Home itself is a case study: it erased a relationship, and Brand New Day spends its entire runtime working to rebuild exactly what got erased.

The Case That Brand New Day Is Actually a Counterexample

Here's the tension in Tallerico's own review: he's making the “Marvel avoids change” complaint about a film whose entire premise is a permanent, unresolved consequence. Peter chose the memory wipe. Nobody's undone it by the credits, according to any review published so far. MJ and Ned still don't remember. That's not nothing — plenty of blockbuster franchises would have found a plot device to reverse the spell by act three rather than build a whole sequel around living with it unreversed.

Where MarvelGossips Lands

The honest read is that Tallerico's complaint is really about scale, not direction. Brand New Day accepts a real, permanent-feeling consequence — it just keeps that consequence contained to relationships and emotional stakes rather than extending it to plot mechanics like character deaths or franchise-level status quo. That's genuine progress by the MCU's own historical standard, even if it's nowhere near the risk tolerance of, say, a comics run that's willing to kill a character for a decade. Whether “meaningful emotional consequence, but nothing structurally permanent” counts as real change is a fair thing to keep arguing about.