REVIEW: ‘Brand New Day’ Lets Spider-Man Be Spider-Man

Sometimes sensory overload is a good thing. Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day may have pulled off the impossible, making the fourth installment of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies an inside-out origin story, a mature quarterlife crisis narrative, and an entertaining movie to boot.

Since we last saw him in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker (Holland) has been thwipping by as a friendly neighborhood New York-based hero while his friends, who don’t remember him, are at college. His best sounding board is a cop (Liza Colón-Zayas) who he primarily communicates with on the phone, like a heroic Frank Abegnale Jr. in Catch Me If You Can. Before he knows it, Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) are back in the city, Peter’s going through some spider evolution weirdness, and a mysterious villain type is causing chaos in a way that only he can see. Spider-Man in a funk is still better than nothing, but this series of events really kicks him up a few gears.

Brand New Day welcomes the Punisher back to the movies!

Jon Bernthal is having the time of his life bringing his Frank Castle to the big screen. He’s got booby traps surrounding his lair, a wooden beaded seat back on his vehicle, and grumpy grunts galore to satisfy the lack of cursing in a PG-13 film. If you think too hard about the implications of this franchise existing in the same world as Daredevil: Born Again, things do start to fall apart. What was Spider-Man doing when Mayor Fisk created an anti-vigilante task force? Would he not try to stop Bullseye? Would Daredevil not show up to fight Scorpion? Not to mention The Hand, who were defeated in The Defenders.

I don’t have answers to any of those things, but I do see why the Punisher is in Brand New Day. Because the MCU’s version of Spider-Man arrived without an Uncle Ben, each installment has felt the need to give him a different father figure from the Marvel rolodex. The most significant is Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) in Homecoming, and the more misguided were Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in Far From Home and No Way Home, respectively. As a street level hero and a notorious grieving loner, Frank is a father figure befitting of this particular arc in Peter’s story.

Overall, Brand New Day does a good job pulling from the Marvel toybox. I have less to say about Florence Pugh and Mark Ruffalo’s roles in the film, other than I was happy to see them. They serve the story first and the larger MCU second. It’s what this franchise does best, when they put their minds to it.

Brand New Day gives “back to basics” the ol’ Empire State University try.

It cannot be easy to come up with a Spider-Man story for this Peter Parker’s specific circumstances. As many fans have pointed out begrudgingly, he never got the classic Spidey origin story. Uncle Ben aside, we also never saw his transformation. He’s well funded. He has never been betrayed by a best friend. His secret identity was revealed to the world. Finally, this is a Spider-Man who we met whilst being recruited into half of the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War. He has always had a superhero community.

Brand New Day resets MCU Peter to at least some of those factory settings. Especially when it comes to the concept of superhero community and the film’s somewhat surprising choice of villain, played by Sadie Sink, who could certainly use a superhero community of her own. (Not only is Sink incredible in the “mystery” role, but it’s really really fun to see a dozen or more actors mimic her mannerisms as she possesses their characters too.) It’s kind of a fascinating way for the MCU to introduce the concept of young adult supeheroes in need of, umm, mentors and camaraderie.

This time around, Peter is isolated and behind a secret identity and sticking to what Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) considers “small potatoes” and not New Avengers-level threats. He’s also, in his cringe young adulthood, perfected the corny quibby sense of humor we’ve come to expect from the character. Holland is really funny in the film cracking jokes, putting on an exaggerated New York accent for full conversations to disguise his voice, and in one scene randomly doing a Columbo impression. Great stuff.

Brand New Day is grounded in its themes as well as its heroes.

For every moment of silliness, there are some interesting ideas at play. I unexpectedly wrote down a lot of lines in my notes: “Redirect destructive energy into something useful.” “What if you’re trying to control the expression of something that needs to be expressed?” “The only hands that will yield this power are mine.” That’s not all screenwriting is about, and I had some minor qualms with some of the logical leaps characters fail to make. Still, it’s nice to know that the folks who made this film were not asleep.

Sadly, returning Spider-Man to his roots seemingly also means that Brand New Day does what just about every Spider-Man movie up until the MCU did. It puts a woman in peril to motivate a man. (Between that and dead wife backstories, I am forever begging men to learn creativity. Alas.) It’s unfortunate, but does give me a segue to talk about how good Zendaya is in this movie. Her MJ is just as defiant and weird as the girl Peter fell in love with as a teenager, but she’s clearly grown up a bit. When the two finally get to talk, they broach another one of my least favorite superhero tropes–heroes who lie to and/or dump their love interests to protect them–with a lot of care and emotional intelligence. Has anyone ever noticed how good these two are together? Even memory loss plots can’t fizzle their chemistry and collective charm.

How many times does Peter Parker grow up? How many times have you grown up? We are always coming of age. The ages just change, that’s all. I’m very interested in how Holland’s Peter Parker will continue to show up in the MCU as a team player and a mentor. I’m obviously interested, and staying annoyingly mum, about where Sink’s character ends up after all of this. But for now, I’m happy to have watched yet another character-driven movie that represents the franchise’s best.

(featured image: Sony Pictures)

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