Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review - Slinging A New Tune

Spider-Man Brand New Day has had a lot riding on it – not only does it need to continue Spider-Man’s story from a very difficult place, but it needs to reinvigorate the plateaued interest the public has in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before Avengers Doomsday hits this December. This is a tall order, because many MCU movies have in the past sacrificed telling a complete story about their protagonist in favor of setting up future movies and TV shows, especially post-Endgame (Doctor Strange 2 and Ant-Man 3 both come to mind). To that end, Brand New Day is visibly fighting with itself throughout to tell a story about Peter Parker while also setting up several other films. Can it walk that tightrope without falling? There have been a few things Marvel and Sony have kept close to the chest during the marketing for Brand New Day that I will have to spoil to even discuss the film, such as who Sadie Sink is playing, so if you haven’t seen it yet and want to go in blind turn back now.

I have a very long, but very simple relationship with Spider-Man. As a young kid in the early 90s, I think I was first exposed to him by way of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, known now as 90s Spider-Man. Even at the age of five, I resonated strongly with the college student Peter Parker featured in the show. I would dip into the comics here and there, and beg my mom for Spidey merch (I had Spider-Man tennis shoes in grade school that did make me run faster!), toys, school supplies, and Spider-Man themed birthday parties. By the time the first Sam Raimi film rolled around in 2002, I was nine years old and the webslinger’s biggest fan.

As Spider-Man expanded out into live-action cinema, I kept watching the TV shows like the excellent Spectacular Spider-Man and the very misguided CGI show Spider-Man: The New Animated Series featuring Neil Patrick Harris. I dove back into the old catalog to watch the original 60s Spider-Man, the 80s Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and even some episodes of the Japanese live-action tokusatsu show Supaidaman where he fights aliens and giant robots. Not to mention every single game that came to both console and handheld, including the life-changing Spider-Man 2 for GameCube. I say all this to both reminisce and relay to you what I believe Spider-Man means to us fans.

I have thoroughly enjoyed Tom Holland’s performance as Spider-Man since Captain America: Civil War. Even when his movies are poorly written (looking at you No Way Home), the character himself never loses that simple balance of just being a regular guy. Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker was comically bullied, hated by everyone, had no friends, and such a dork he couldn’t even sit with the dorks at lunch. It was a very early 2000s Hollywood approach to the character, which was great back then, but people like that just don’t really exist. Meanwhile, Holland’s Peter Parker has one very close friend, gets along well with most people, is part of the Academic Decathlon club, and has a single bully. You know, like a real person might.

Watching Peter grow over the course of not just his own movies but the MCU saga has been a roller coaster of ups and downs. Spider-Man: Homecoming remains one of my favorite MCU movies to this day, especially because of Peter’s decision at the end to turn down being an Avenger because he knew he wasn’t ready. Some of that decision to be a “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” goes out the window in Far From Home, No Way Home, and Infinity War, which has our so-called street-level hero fighting intergalactic world-ending threats.

I was a little upset with this along the way, but in the grand scheme it works – Peter has control of his life wrested from him by battles beyond his comprehension, is sucked into a war across time and space, and at the end of No Way Home returns to being a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man by making a very hard choice. The entire Home trilogy is this Peter’s origin story. It’s sloppy getting there, but looking back at the end it works – much like Brand New Day.

At the beginning of Brand New Day, we set up with Peter four years after the ending of No Way Home. As Doctor Strange’s spell made it so everyone forgot about him, and his Aunt May is dead, he very definitively has no one and nothing. Peter finds a new apartment in the storage attic of an apartment building for a theoretically low price, but I am a little bothered that the movie never even attempts to explain how he’s making money. One consistent trait of Spider-Man is that Peter is always struggling financially, whether it’s typical lower-middle-class life in Queens or abject poverty. Typically, he makes ends meet as a photographer for the Daily Bugle, but the Holland Spider-Man never exhibits this talent. Normally I’m not worried in a superhero movie about how Clark Kent or Hawkeye is earning a living, but for this character it is kind of important. Regardless, rather than a study in poverty, Brand New Day elects to be a study in loneliness.

With Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) having gone through four years at MIT without him, living the dream he believed they’d share, Peter has retreated into his persona as Spider-Man. In fact, beyond his landlord and the bodega clerk, it doesn’t seem like he really interacts with anyone at all as Peter. Absent friends, even the allies he’s made like The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Black Widow (Florence Pugh) don’t know his identity. His life is imbalanced, which expresses itself later in the film. I suppose it makes sense; Peter Parker has lost everything. I wouldn’t want to be Peter Parker either.

Some very misleading marketing led us to believe that the primary villain for the film would be The Scorpion, where Michael Mando finally returns from his cameo in Homecoming. This is very much not the case, as The Scorpion is dispatched quickly at the beginning and we meet the mysterious hooded figure that is controlling people’s minds: Jean Grey. Sadie Sink, one of the few actors to escape Stranger Things purgatory, puts in a good performance here as the villainous first X-Men to appear in the MCU. This is a film in which no one is giving an award-worthy performance, but all of the actors – including Holland, Batalon, Sink, Zendaya, and Bernthal – have such good chemistry and are so clearly comfortable together. The performances are genuinely elevated, especially by the real best-friendship between Holland and Bernthal.

That aside, this movie’s structure really posed a quandary. It genuinely feels like a comic book, both in ways that benefit it and ways that hurt it. Spider-Man runs into a mind control enemy and says to himself, “Mind control! Egads! Perhaps my friend Black Widow will know more about this!” and goes to meet her. “Aha! We’ll need to suppress my spider genes that are out of control! And who knows more about genetics than Dr. Banner? Or should I say, The Incredible Hulk?!” Then he needs to hide MJ somewhere safe. “Somewhere safe, eh? Nowhere is safe with that Mind Control lunatic on the loose! We’ll have to go off the grid… I think The Punisher still owes me a favor!” I think during the film, I felt like we were getting tossed around New York like a pizza; looking back on it after seeing how it all ties up, this comic book-style story actually feels refreshing. It is sloppy, but it works.

My biggest issue with this movie stems from an issue with the MCU at large, which is that I don’t know what the status of many of our side characters is right now because I haven’t seen every movie and TV show. Who could? Last I saw, Bruce Banner had completely gained control of the Hulk and was living as Professor Hulk in his giant green body with his human mind. Now he’s a human again, using an inhibitor to keep the Hulk from showing up? When did that happen? I also haven’t seen the Punisher since the Daredevil TV show, so when he was talking about “what happened on Staten Island,” I was unsure whether that was a reference to something that happened off-screen or if I missed something. Am I supposed to already be familiar with the Department of Damage Control? If someone had missed Thunderbolts* (which you absolutely should not), how would they understand that Natasha Romanoff’s younger sister is Black Widow now and leads The New Avengers? This is a chronic problem with the MCU, especially with the TV shows, and I feel that it’s the main thing hampering this movie.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy, Shang-Chi) manages to bring new energy to Spider-Man after the departure of Jon Watts, who made the first three films. I loved what Watts did with Homecoming, and any problems I have with Far From Home and No Way Home are entirely script-based. Despite that, I’m very glad we have this new injection of fresh blood, which is apparent from beginning to end. This film, like the Sam Raimi movies back in the 2000s, genuinely feels like it takes place in New York City. I know people joke about how New York is a character in its own right in many films, but imagine me saying that same thing in a less cringey way. I feel in this movie that we have returned truly to being a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I also love that Cretton has brought his martial arts prowess displayed in Shang-Chi to this movie; every fight with Spider-Man feels real and visceral, with the notable highlight being his battle against The Hand towards the end.

There are some really, really impressive shots in Brand New Day, particularly during the fight scenes. I thought it was interesting that while Tom Holland famously is wearing a practical suit for this movie, he kind of looks less like a superhero now and more like a guy in a high-quality Halloween costume. Maybe this is Marvel’s fault – they have desensitized me so thoroughly to practical work that when I see it, it doesn’t feel like a superhero suit anymore. Regardless, the visuals are incredible. I love the design of Jean’s outfit to refer to her X-Men suit, as well as the “frozen” visual effects towards the end. I also really liked the goofiness of how it looked when Jean jumped between people. I will confess I don’t think composer Michael Giacchino is at the top of his game here, as opposed to his excellent work in Fantastic Four: First Steps last year (despite me not liking the film overall). I think a second watch with better sound is in order.

Despite running off the rails a few times on what feels like a series of side quests, Brand New Day manages to beautifully tie together Peter’s story with Jean’s at the end. I really almost shed a tear during the Aunt May flashback, when Jean sees through Peter what it would have been like to have an actual Mother. The lesson being that neither of them is a monster – they are just them. Towards the end, Jean challenges Peter to choose whether he’s Peter Parker or Spider-Man. He declares he will be both. I think back to the 2002 Spider-Man, when Green Goblin makes him choose between saving a bus or saving Mary Jane, and he declares he will do both. Or in Across the Spider-Verse, when Miguel insists that Spider-Man must choose to either save his father’s life or save his entire timeline. Again, he says he will do both. Is this movie a complete story about Peter Parker, or is it a setup for the X-Men and the Sentinel program and Doomsday? We already know: Spider-Man always does both.

Score: 8/10 – Excellent

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