When we last left Peter Parker (Tom Holland) in 2021’s “No Way Home,” our hero was down in the proverbial dumps (at Christmas time!). Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) is dead. In the space of his unrelenting sense of sacrifice, Dr. Strange casts a spell to make it as though he (not Spider-Man) has never existed. That certainly puts the kibosh on any MIT attendance plans Peter has with his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his love MJ (Zendaya). All that’s left for him is a box of his belongings, a sparse New York apartment, and a police scanner ordering his alter-ego’s next steps.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “married to the job,” that’s exactly what Peter Parker is in Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” He’s mostly all web-slinger, all the time – talking to his AI counterpart about suit and web cartridge improvements or literally being everywhere all at once when the city needs a hand. Sure, New York is grateful, and crime is down. But Peter himself is in this state of watching his former friends’ lives progress through social media while sticking to the life behind a mask. His detective compatriot Jean DeWolf (Liza Colón-Zayas) might be right; maybe it’s time to take a break.
Photo Credit: Jay Maidment/Marvel/Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
“Brand New Day” at its best centers on the epitome of Blink-182’s song, “Damnit,” and channels the exasperation of bassist Mark Hoppus repeating “Well, I guess this is growing up.” Why be a person with superpowers if there’s nobody to share it with? It’s this consistent state of melancholy Holland exhibits as an older, guarded Peter Parker, teetering between being proud of being a hero and resenting it at the same time. The film’s real antagonist is discomfort: both Peter’s back-and-forth wondering whether he could rekindle something with MJ and Ned and his battle with a series of stressful physical mutations. They weigh him down so much that his superhero effectiveness is compromised.
For years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has settled into a cadence of teeing up the next story on the horizon. In recent years, the forward-looking decree has taken away from the effectiveness of stories. Writer Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers try to deter that to a degree, making the Big Apple landscape we return to feel lived in. It’s not just some fleeting overtures to “The Battle of New York”; the cameos within “Brand New Day” are used in a meaningful, fun way. Every time Frank Castle / The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) appears, the banter he has with Peter is believable in a manner where the audience can buy into this tense partnership. Bernthal’s “move fast and break things,” vulgar demeanor bounces off Holland’s “let’s do the right thing” credo well. As Peter struggles with both leads on where to go next and his biological changes, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) appear in their own particular manners.
Photo Credit: Jay Maidment/Marvel/Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
Too much stuff has happened in the MCU over the years to see all this activity and shrug. It’s nice to have a film that acknowledges all these people not only go about their business but also interact with one another. Cretton and cinematographer Brett Pawlak go out of their way to make colors pop and style shots as if they were seen through the eyes of a comic book frame. The main story exists in a shade of grey, but it doesn’t mean the look of the film has to. When we fly through New York with Spider-Man, it’s in a different variety of perspectives, giving it freshness.
As I mentioned before, these projects exist in a self-contained vacuum (although “Brand New Day” could on some level). There’s another growing space of danger which exists as a mixed bag. For the sake of spoilers, I won’t speak about them in depth, but there’s a government entity named Damage Control and a mysterious empath wreaking havoc as they body jump from person to person. Cretton depicts this in a fast-moving, possession-style way. Ultimately, Peter is caught in the middle of this battle, which attempts to tie in most of the themes of community and loneliness shown in the first half. The film has a space in which it becomes someone else’s film in a short period of time.
One of the knocks on the original MCU trilogy was that Spider-Man often felt like a co-star in his own story. The end of the second act almost feels as if “Brand New Day” is beginning to lose its grip on this story of a young man in the uncomfortable space of balancing two halves of himself at the altar of a grand plan. But the film recenters itself, remembering whose story it is. Much of what makes this film successful is the audience’s investment in seeing Tom Holland grow in this character since his first inclusion in the MCU in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War.” He’s no longer the gleeful kid who has a fanboy side fighting alongside the likes of Iron Man and Captain America – he’s frayed by everything he’s witnessed. If you aren’t as familiar with the three previous films, Cretton reminds you of how tight-knit Peter, MJ, and Ned are.
Hopefully this is, in fact, a brand new day for this iteration of Spider-Man on the big screen. The fourth standalone film within the MCU pantheon leads up to the highest point of the personal highs and lows of its titular character. I find myself more interested in where Peter Parker goes from here than in him being a chess piece on a bigger board in an event film.
