Spider-Man: Brand New Day

A New Hope

After Phase 5 was dominated by duds or semi-duds (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, Captain America: Brave New World), assisted with one surprisingly good entry (Thunderbolts*) and redeemed with one mega-sensation (Deadpool & Wolverine), Phase 6 started rather humbly with a new-and-improved spin on the Fantastic Four that wasn’t all that fantastic at the box office. Now, Spider-Man’s latest standalone adventure, Brand New Day, isn’t wholly satisfying, but it certainly helps rekindle interest in this universe as Doomsday looms at the end of the year.

Beyond the apparent superhero and franchise fatigue and the pushback on AI-fueled artifice, Brand New Day also has to contend with a five-year gap since Spider-Man: No Way Home slung its way to a massive haul of $1.9 billion at the global box office. That was driven largely by the “three-fer” offer of seeing Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield each reprise their versions of Spider-Man.

On the plus side, with a new director, Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), replacing three-time Spidey director Jon Watts (who went on to smaller ventures with Wolfs and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew), Brand New Day is far less manic than the previous standalones, particularly compared to No Way Home. But, with the kids finally out of high school, that also means the zippy, light-hearted aspects of the previous three movies have also been largely left behind. This one’s consistently dark in tone, which is appreciated for how it helps build the characters while also making for a movie experience that at times is a bit sluggish.

On that downside, while the title Brand New Day conjures a sense of optimism, the ending is a bit of a letdown. There’s a bright note in the finale, for sure, but it’s a strangely quiet closeout (followed by a rather silly post-credits tease of Spidey’s inevitable return) that doesn’t serve much in building anticipation for the Avengers’ imminent date with doom.

Spoiled Damage Control

Writing about Brand New Day is a rather tricky proposition given some of the best parts of this installment are ensconced deep in spoiler material. The sanctity of the spoiler will be wholly observed here, even as this movie’s single biggest spoiler will go down in cinema history as one of the worst kept spoilers of all time. Regardless, here it’ll have to suffice to say the mere fact there are spoilers (really good spoilers!) in this one makes for the most exciting Marvel movie since Reynolds and Jackman hit it out of the park (and hit each other and hit everybody else). Granted, that was only two years ago, but it in turn capped a ho-hum, tumultuous run that started in the wake of Endgame’s release in 2019.

There are numerous threads in this movie’s narrative web. To understand it all, it certainly helps to revisit No Way Home first.

The primary thread involves Peter’s interest in restoring his friendships with MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon), his high school besties. The opening minutes of the movie are a montage contrasting MJ and Ned with annual social updates as they enter and eventually graduate from MIT (time flies) with Spider-Man spending his time as a supplemental member of the NYPD and facing off with crime syndicates like The Hand and villains including Scorpion and Tombstone.

Peter had to end those friendships with MJ and Ned during the climax of No Way Home, when Doctor Strange performed a spell to make the world forget all about poor Peter Parker. It was a sacrificial move to save Peter’s friends and the multiverse entire. It worked. Quite well.

MJ has no recollection of Peter. But MJ’s faculties are otherwise super-sharp, as she managed a swift transition from biochemical engineering to aerospace engineering while at Vassar. Even so, she most definitely no remembrance of him as her boyfriend. She has a new guy now. She should trade up, for sure. Peter’s a good kid. As for Ned, he’s created a goofy app that tracks the whereabouts of the webslinger, but he, too, has no memory of being friends with Peter. Now, Peter is nothing more than a “friendly neighbor.”

There’s plenty of dramatic heft in that storyline alone, as Peter is the sole being to contend with the loss of friends and a life no one else can recall. But another dark and somewhat parallel thread involves a mysterious force – a phantom menace – that’s wreaking havoc on Manhattan, including operations to break into police facilities and free some of the worst of the worst. Counter to that, Spidey has a “professional” love/hate relationship with a guy named Frank Castle, perhaps better known as The Punisher. He’s a vigilante acting in competition with Spider-Man. But now he’s one of those vigilantes with a heart of gold, albeit tarnished gold.

Punisher’s been circling around outside the MCU for a while. Dolph Lundgren played him in 1989 (shortly after he played He-Man in 1987); Thomas Jane gave it a run in 2004; Ray Stevenson took him on in 2008. But it’s been Jon Bernthal with the most screen time in the role, including a 2-season series on Netflix and a “special episode” this year.

Wow. Bernthal. Zendaya. Holland. All three co-star here and in The Odyssey. Quite a big year.

Tangled Web

All of these elements tie together rather slickly as Peter’s raging arachnid hormones drive him to seek guidance from Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). Peter’s starting to produce his own organic web matter for slinging, no device or button pushing required (like Maguire’s Peter Parker). Nothing like getting a sanity check from a guy who needs to wear an electronic inhibitor to keep his own rage and insanity in check.

It’s fun to have a story that once again draws the dots and then starts to connect them; it’s one of the charms – an ingredient in the secret sauce – that made the MCU a fascinating case study in narrative continuity across all the various movies, at least for 11 years of its 18 years. With Spider-Man, that’s in part thanks to returning scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. It’s an unusually long tenure, with the duo spelling out all four of Tom Holland’s headlining adventures while maintaining a decent amount of quality control.

For her part, Florence Pugh seems to be having the most fun with her cameo as Yelena Belova, the new Black Widow (hey, Pugh’s attended the film’s London premiere, so that serves as a notice of spoiler recission). “I’m just happy the sad man has friends,” Yelena says. And she’s part of a new tangled web that’s starting to put the pieces in place for the next run of the MCU.

There are also plenty of Easter eggs and sundry references, including a distracting amount of Star Wars material. One “cute” spoiler-free item is seeing Peter in a convenience store reach for what appears to be a coffee creamer sitting right next to six-packs of Bero, a non-alcoholic beer brand co-owned by none other than Tom Holland. Having gone that far in the name of shameless cross-promotion, it’s a shame Peter doesn’t go for the gusto and grab the beer.

As a whole, Brand New Day can be seen as a return to form for the MCU, but even as it mines new observations about the world at large (including an ominous comment about how in threats, some see danger while others see opportunity), it feels like a more distant world, a different multiverse, from its glory days.