The first portion of Spider-Man: Brand New Day features a montage that helps do two things. First, it establishes how ingrained Spidey has become in his daily crime-fighting, showing Tom Holland’s version of the character doing things he hasn’t been seen doing so much since he’s been fighting with the Avengers a lot.
Second, it allows Marvel to show off some of Spider-Man’s more unheralded and underutilized rogues. Throughout the MCU, we’ve seen Vulture, Electro, Lizard, Doc Ock, Mysterio, Sandman, and Green Goblin face off with the webhead.
The training montage in question showed off Boomerang, Scorpion, Tarantula, Ramrod, Tombstone, and The Hand. At various points, Spidey takes down all of those rogues, even recreating some amazing comic covers in the process. While some of them are pretty familiar, such as Scorpion and Tombstone, the rest are pretty out-there.
According to a new report, director Destin Daniel Cretton revealed another unheralded villain that nearly got included, and it’s even more out there than Tarantula, Ramrod, and the others.
The Wacky Marvel Villain That Nearly Made a Cameo in Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Spider-Man does have an impressive rogues gallery, arguably rivaling anyone in comics, even Batman. But through four MCU movies with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a lot of them have been used. Admittedly, Marvel is running low on top-tier villains to throw at the webhead at this point, which may be why they got creative with the villain in this movie.
Low-tier villains can’t really carry their own movies, but they do serve a purpose in accurately representing the comics and making New York feel real, alive, and lived-in. If Spider-Man fights crime every single day, which is all he does in Brand New Day, then why wouldn’t he come into contact with some of these forgotten villains?
Still, Marvel has used so many that they almost had to really scrape the bottom of the barrel for that montage. You may not have heard of some of the ones that did make the cut. You probably have not heard of the one who did not: Paste-Pot Pete.
“We played around with a lot of villains who didn’t make it into the final cut in the end,” Cretton said via OutNow. “We looked at the different [comic book] covers and considered which ones could help us tell our story.” Some of them made it in, and others did not, and the result is pretty flawless, so it’s hard to argue with the logic Cretton and company used.
“We wanted to show how Spider-Man cleans up the city, meaning beating up enemies,” Cretton continued. “But on many covers, Spider-Man is currently getting a beating himself – so for the most part, we couldn’t use those. Many classic Spidey pose covers were also unusable for us. One character we had a lot of fun with and wanted to include in the film was Paste-Pot Pete, but he didn’t quite make it in.”
If Cretton continues on with the character in subsequent films, which seems likely given the immense praise he is deservedly earning for his work on this film, then Paste-Pot Pete and other ridiculous, forgotten villains might make the cut, especially if they maintain a commitment to keeping things street-level. If Spider-Man keeps cleaning up the streets, he’s going to have to face off with these silly, unheard-of characters.
Spider-Man may be running out of top-tier rogues to play with in movies, but Brand New Day introduced a fantastic way to include some of the lesser-known villains that comic book fans love and would feel like they were ripped right out of the books themselves. Paste-Pot Pete and others might have a use one day.
