There is a reason why Spider-Man reigns supreme among superheroes, why Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies continue to stay with us.
It isn’t just him shooting webs from his wrists or gadgets, or swinging across the city. It is the person behind the mask, the nerd in the suit, that makes people connect with him.
A good Spider-Man movie only has to get the Peter Parker aspect right, and the rest falls into place. That’s where Spider-Man: Brand New Day is not just a winner, but also the best Spider-Man movie made in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Peter Parker’s Brand New Chapter
The last time we saw him, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) had Doctor Strange cast a spell that made everyone forget who Peter Parker was, in order to protect the universe and his loved ones from the multiversal chaos he had accidentally unleashed. Even though you already know the sacrifices Peter has made, the movie still spoon-feeds you with scenes from the previous film to hammer home the point.
Now the entire world has forgotten Peter Parker, including his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), who have gone to MIT as originally planned.
Peter, meanwhile, continues as Spider-Man, protecting New York from ordinary criminals and super-powered threats alike. We see him battling various villains like The Hand, Scorpion (Michael Mando) and Tombstone (Marvin Jones III). Some of those cool action scenes from the trailer are actually cool shots in a montage.
The thing is, now that they no longer have a reason to hate Peter Parker, people love Spider-Man and what he is doing to protect the city. Interestingly, there is no J Jonah Jameson ranting against him through online podcasts. So did JJJ only hate Peter Parker in this universe, unlike the Sam Raimi one where he was obsessed with hating Spider-Man?
Spider-Man is also on friendly terms with police detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas) and Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), the new head of Damage Control. And since you can’t have the hero being friends with two authority figures, one of them has to be shady while the other becomes redundant to the plot.
I won’t tell you who is who, though it isn’t too hard to guess.
In short, the web-crawler is comfortably in his element as the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, happier chasing criminals on the city streets than fighting purple aliens in space. As a Marvel cameo in the film points out, he is dealing with smaller ‘potatoes’ while the ‘New Avengers’ are handling the bigger ones.
The Lonely Hero’s Journey
While Spider-Man is more in his element catching criminals and wisecracking more than ever, Peter Parker exists on a much gloomier plane. That’s where the character arc becomes so interesting.
The MCU’s Peter Parker never operated alone. He had friends, and he had superhero friends. People close to him knew his identity, and while he believed that came at a terrible cost for them, especially Aunt May, they also gave him the emotional support he needed. Ned also gave him technical support; he was Peter’s man in the chair.
But the Peter we meet in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is lonely and sad. He has been living like this for years, and it is now affecting him not just mentally but physically, especially when his friends return to the city after college and remain completely unaware of who he is. To make matters worse, MJ is now dating someone else.
Gone are the fun high-school vibes of Jon Watts’ movies; Parker is now more ‘career’-focussed because that takes him away from his emotional crisis. Destin Daniel Cretton’s take feels colder and more mature, particularly in how it portrays the protagonist coping with isolation.
Evolving Powers and New Challenges
In a sense, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a reboot, shown quite literally by having Peter shed his old physical self and emerge reborn from a cocoon with strange new changes in his DNA.
His spider characteristics are becoming stronger. He can now shoot webs organically, and his senses have become even more heightened. To make that reboot angle even more interesting, Peter now has to go back into ‘training’, learning how to control, or even suppress, these new powers.
As one character later points out, the spider in Spider-Man is trying to overpower the ‘man’ in him.
This is where Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes closest to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies.
We now have a Peter struggling to find his place, with no friends to speak of and forced to watch the love of his life move on with someone else. He is battling his evolving powers while trying to understand them.
If Spider-Man 3 had Peter figuring out how the alien symbiote was changing him, even seeking advice from a college professor, here Peter is trying to understand a new mutation that is making him both stronger and more aggressive. And yes, he also ends up consulting a professor, who just happens to be Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo).
Banner later returns in Hulk form, something the trailers really shouldn’t have spoiled, and together they deliver perhaps the best action sequence in the film. It honestly felt like we were back in the good old days.
Direction and Emotional Resonance
Destin Daniel Cretton had already shown in Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings that he has a terrific eye for action, and that skill is on full display here. Spider-Man: Brand New Day boasts some of the best action choreography in the franchise.
The blend of practical stunt work and visual effects works beautifully in both the fight scenes and the web-swinging sequences, making the film look far more polished than many recent superhero outings.
We can now feel that there is someone physically in a suit in the scenes, and not a VFX addition.
But Cretton has also shown, through Short Term 12 and Wonder Man, that he has a stronger grip on drama. That becomes one of the biggest reasons why Spider-Man: Brand New Day lands emotionally, making Peter’s growing distance from his old life genuinely heartbreaking.
There is a conversation between Peter and MJ that unfolds without any background score, relying entirely on the actors and the writing. The way that scene is performed and executed leaves a lump in your throat.
There is another sequence in the latter half that will leave you smiling because, for the first time in a long while, you see the old Peter Parker again. By then, you fully realise just how gloomy his existence had become.
Marvel Repeating Itself?
Strangely, now that I think about it, the better movies from this rather uneven phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have all centred around protagonists dealing with trauma or deep emotional scars. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Thunderbolts all did the same.
Which brings me to one issue here. Marvel also seems to be repeating itself. The finale of Spider-Man: Brand New Day strongly reminded me of the climax of Thunderbolts in its cathartic beats, even if it is executed neatly here.
Beyond its trauma-driven protagonist, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is genuinely funny without going overboard with the typical MCU humour, although I did wish there was more Ned Leeds.
Thankfully, the film gives MJ far more to do, and Tom Holland and Zendaya let their chemistry flow effortlessly. Both are outstanding performers. Holland arguably delivers his finest performance as the emotionally broken Peter while bringing back more of the wisecracking energy fans associate with the character.
The Punisher And The Shifter
Oh, I almost forgot the two other major characters.
Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, finally makes his big-screen debut, punishing those who skipped Marvel’s television offerings and don’t know what his deal is.
I know Spider-Man and Punisher have crossed paths several times in the comics, but I was curious to see how Spider-Man’s no-kill philosophy would clash with Punisher’s trigger-happy methods. Thankfully, Cretton finds the sweet spot. Their scenes together are easily among the film’s most entertaining moments.
It is also nice to see Castle soften ever so slightly because of Peter’s fundamentally good nature, while Bernthal once again delivers a terrific performance.
Then there is Sadie Sink’s supposedly mysterious character, who turns out to be the film’s primary antagonist. Let’s just say the internet had a very popular theory about her identity, and they were absolutely right.
She possesses the ability to inhabit anyone’s body, one person at a time, and can switch between hosts within seconds, much like the demonic Azazel in the 1998 film Fallen. There is one genuinely shocking sequence where she catches Peter completely off guard by manipulating him using what she knows about his past, making her an intriguing antagonist.
That said, it wasn’t particularly difficult to predict where the movie would eventually take her. More importantly, I am excited to see how she fits into the franchise’s larger plans. Loved her performance in the second half of the film.
So, all in all, I really liked Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It is a very good Spider-Man movie, but an even better Peter Parker movie, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the first two films in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy or the Spider-Verse movies.
More importantly, it brings back a sense of wonder that the Marvel Cinematic Universe had been gradually losing, something that Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps had also begun to restore.
