Caution: Spoilers for "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" ahead.
With great power comes great responsibility — that's the iconic mantra that's been at the heart of Spider-Man since his introduction in 1962.
But in 2026, should that great power include the ability to run a mass surveillance program on the people of New York City, with nothing more than a quip to explain it?
If you go by the events of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," in theaters now, in which Spider-Man (Tom Holland) uses illegal facial recognition technology to identify both Scorpion (Michael Mando), a criminal, and Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), a telepathic mutant running amok in NYC, the answer is yes.
The technology is remarkably similar to what Batman uses at the end of "The Dark Knight," released in 2008. Except in that film, using it was presented as a huge ethical dilemma, and it's ultimately destroyed.
It's been 18 years since "The Dark Knight." What does the treatment of surveillance in "Brand New Day" say about our attitudes toward it? They've changed.
Spider-Man reveals the technology when looking for Scorpion, telling Detective DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas) that he has "every camera in New York running a facial recognition scan."
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"That sounds super illegal, Spider-Man," she responds. "I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."
Some Spider-Man fans were upset about Spidey's relaxed attitude toward the surveillance technology. On X and Reddit, they used nicknames like "Peter Thiel Parker" and "Palantir Parker" to describe the character.
Peter Thiel Parker deadass used mass surveillance and they justified it using a crap gag one liner.. then you search up who made the movie and it all makes sense lmao
Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies provides government agencies, including ICE and the Department of Defense, with software such as Gotham. It "supports soldiers with an AI-powered kill chain" by integrating target identification and target effector pairing, among other capabilities, according to the company.
Source: Read the original article on www.businessinsider.com
