Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Writers: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
Stars: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink
Synopsis: A forgotten Peter Parker lives alone as a full-time Spider-Man until mounting pressure triggers a dangerous change and a powerful new enemy emerges.
I’ll just say it: The problem with Spider-Man: Brand New Day is that the iconic Marvel character is no one’s second fiddle. Coming off Spider-Man: No Way Home, one of the MCU’s most satisfying, nostalgic, and ultimately heartbreaking entries, the executives used their Spidey senses to do something beneath a character they had worked so hard to bring back home.
And that’s not to say you will not be entertained by the fourth Spider-Man film since making Sony Marvel back creative control of the Web-Slinger. It’s the fact they used Peter Parker and Spider-Man: Brand New Day to set up another budding entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that was thrown on top of the scrap heap less than a decade ago.
The choice feels cheap—not even sleight of hand, but a heavy-handed maneuver that undercuts the emotional storytelling this chapter is trying to achieve. And that is a shame because the film squanders a darker turn from Tom Holland—has anyone had a bigger summer?—who brings the demons haunting Stan Lee’s iconic creation to the surface. The result is an emotionally mature Spider-Man film that was earned, only to be sacrificed to Marvel’s franchise-building machinery.
Doctor Strange used Peter Parker (Holland) to help save the multiverse from collapsing in on itself, not the worst idea in the world, but doing so caused everyone Peter loves, and everyone who loves him in return, to forget he ever existed. Now, Peter lives a life of isolation and loneliness. This gives Holland plenty to sink his teeth into during the film’s best first-act scenes.
Peter sticks to a routine: fight crime, leaves flowers at Aunt May’s grave, and maintains his only real contact with the outside world through Detective Jean DeWolff (The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas), with whom he coordinates crime-fighting strategies. Or, more accurately, becoming a crime-fighting rideshare, delivering bad guys like Scorpion (72 Hour’s Michael Mando) directly to her feet.
However, Peter is hanging onto the past, preventing himself from moving forward. He keeps track of his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon), and the love of his life, MJ (Zendaya), as they go off to college and graduate from MIT together. You could say his only human contact is with Frank Castle (Origin’s Jon Bernthal), whom we last saw in Punisher: One Last Kill, as his healthiest relationship.
That’s the cinematic carrot. Now let’s give you the stick, though the plot tends to get tangled in its own web. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers’s script borrows a plot device reminiscent of the 1998 Denzel Washington film Fallen and the modern horror classic It Follows: a villain takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens, leaping from person to person to create chaos.
And, mind you, not the controlled kind. That is where director Destin Daniel Cretton, who has found success in independent film (Short Term 12) and one of Marvel’s most refreshing films of the decade (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), struggles, barely managing to keep Spidey and another top-secret character separate but on equal footing.
The main complaint is that the Stranger Things alum Sadie Sink’s character, who is electric here, becomes the most relevant part of the third act, which takes away from, well, the homecoming, bringing MJ and Ned back together with Peter. The movie is still entertaining, but it is a recycled MCU effort that we have seen time and time again. The action is fun, the special effects are good, and I’ll admit that a frame-flip technique used during one fight scene is awe-inspiring.
There was no need to dedicate the entire third act to setting up a new franchise, especially when it could have been handled with greater nuance and a deft touch. Why should Spider-Man serve as a stepping stone for another franchise? The script should have concentrated on Holland, who delivers a wonderful performance as Peter, who only scratches the surface, as Holland explores the darkest corners of Parker’s psyche.
The themes of grief, loneliness, and isolation are capable of turning even the strongest of men into someone they no longer recognize. Then, on the verge of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, that is scrap, for a third act that feels like a different film. The fact is, Sink’s character and Holland’s mirror each other, but so much clutters the emotional connection between the two and the power that it could have solved the script’s second-half emotional arrested development.
The movie has some good humor, Bernthal and Holland share strong chemistry, and the intricate web-slinging action makes the second act exciting. Ironically, Spider-Man: Brand New Day becomes the same old entry in the MCU machine when it had the chance to delve into the darkness of a hero’s isolation. Parker’s story deserved to come full circle with a complete emotional trajectory, not be used as a launching pad for whatever franchise comes next.
