I recently watched Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and to give it a short review: I loved it. It’s probably the best MCU Spider-Man film to date, but there is one detail in the film that troubled me. And the more I think about it, the more sinister it feels.
Near the final act of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, a desperate Batman resorts to extreme measures in order to track down the Joker who has been terrorising Gotham City. He uses a technology invented by Lucius Fox to turn every mobile phone in the city into a sonar, enabling him to create an image of the city. When he shows Lucius what he has done and asks for his help Lucius protests. He says, among other things:
- “Beautiful. Unethical. Dangerous.”
- “This is wrong.”
- “This is too much power for one person.”
- “Spying on 30 million people isn’t part of my job description.”
Batman justifies his actions, explaining how he needs to find the Joker. Lucius ultimately agrees to help Bruce, but also tenders his resignation. After the Joker is found and defeated, Lucius types his name into the console as Bruce told him to, and the technology destroys itself. Lucius smiles, happy to see Bruce Wayne doesn’t intend to keep this technology.
The film goes out of its way to inform us that both Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox know the technology is wrong. It justifies the use of the technology because the Joker is much too dangerous. It makes sure we know that these otherwise good characters are only doing this because they are out of options.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has Parker use a similar technology, and covers it very briefly. He mentions to Detective DeWolff that he has facial recognition running across the city to track down a criminal that has escaped. She doesn’t even blink an eye in response, just carries on with the conversation like Parker hadn’t just admitted to spying on everyone in the city.
It’s a stark contrast to how it was handled in a superhero movie 18 years earlier.
It seems like a small detail, but after I left the movie it bothered me that it wasn’t addressed. I’ve worked in tech my entire life, working on video game servers that contain a lot of personal information. Significant parts of my career have involved ensuring that data is stored securely, can only be accessed by those who have a right to it, and that it can be deleted if the owner of that information requests it.
A person’s privacy has been a fundamental part of my career, and it’s something I’ve always believed people have a right to. So when we have the most popular superhero on the planet use this kind of surveillance like it is no big deal, it kind of bugs me.
The right to privacy is, of course, a hot topic right now. AI-powered Flock cameras are filling the streets of the USA, cameras that supposedly only identify cars and nothing else. But people are concerned that these cameras can enable law enforcement to more easily spy on people. Some are even rebelling against them and cutting them down, but that doesn’t change the fact that the USA is covering itself with them.
So this normalisation of the surveillance state bugs me, because it seems to oppose the general zeitgeist of what people want. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. It’s not the first time superheroes have used such tech in their stories. Maybe it just bothers me right now because of our current political climate.
Then again, Disney are having Flock cameras installed at their resorts.
