Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives in theaters days after the debut of the trailer for Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday. The trailer confirms that the movie contains heroes from at least three different fictional universes, and suggests that the fate of the entire Marvel multiverse hangs in the balance of the battle between Doctor Doom and the members of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.
One of the most pleasant surprises about Brand New Day is that it not only has nothing to do with any of that, it’s a surprisingly small-scale blockbuster about its title character. (Spidey got all of his multiversal drama out of his system with his last film, 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home.) While Brand New Day is a little overcrowded with supporting characters — a couple of which feel like vestigial appendages from earlier script drafts where they probably made more sense — Brand New Day does understand, and remains laser-focused on, Spidey’s central appeal. Its main narrative is all about the same core dilemma at the heart of every great Spider-Man story: His internal struggle over his double life and how he can never reconcile what he wants to do with what he feels has to do.
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The whole premise of Brand New Day grows from that conflict. At the end of No Way Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) saved the multiverse by allowing Doctor Strange to cast a spell that would make the entire world forget him. Several years later, Peter almost literally doesn’t exist. He spends every waking hour patrolling New York City as Spider-Man. He has no friends. He has no hobbies. When people ask his name, he offers a series of aliases instead of Peter Parker.
That doesn’t mean he’s forgotten his old life, even if his old life has forgotten him. When Peter crosses paths with his old buddy Ned (Jacob Batalon), he follows him back to his apartment and reconnects with MJ (Zendaya), the old flame he still carries a torch for. Peter can’t bring himself to admit who he is, and afterwards he begins to experience strange fluctuations in his spider powers, including shooting webs from spinnerets that sprout out of his wrists.
Clearly, Peter’s private life (or lack of one) is affecting his powers. But they also seem to be affected by his encounter with a mysterious new villain who is terrorizing New York, and repeatedly breaking into the offices of the Department of Damage Control, a government agency that supports superheroes and is run by Spidey fan Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman). This unseen presence seems to be able to possess almost anyone, and to control their actions, puppeteering them to steal tanks or cause mayhem.
Every good Spider-Man villain exists in counterpoint to Spider-Man himself. They are all dark shadows of his origin, his morality, his powers. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created them to help define who Spider-Man was by showing the ways he was different from his adversaries.
Marvel and Sony have built a lot of secrecy around the one in Brand New Day (most of it unnecessary, in my opinion), but beneath all of that this mystery character still functions in much the same way. Their ability to invisibly move through New York mirrors the way Peter Parker has closed himself off from the people he loves and the world around him at the start of the film. Their eventual motivations for their mind-controlling escapades, when eventually revealed, jive surprisingly well with the same ones that keep Spider-Man swinging around the city, saving the lives of as many people as he possibly can.
His swinging in Brand New Day is achieved with a surprising amount of visual flair. Director Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) brings a more tactile feel to Spidey’s movements than his last couple movies. He’s got acrobatic fighting moves and slick action choreography, and his beautiful swoops and leaps as he traverses New York City will feel familiar to fans of the PlayStation Spider-Man games. Cretton also does a nice job of incorporating several Marvel characters into Peter’s story, all of whom, again, serve to highlight or contrast the character’s self-imposed isolation.
The most effective of the bunch is Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, here used less as the R-rated spirit of vengeance of his Netflix TV series than a deadpan sidekick and a surprisingly wise dispenser of hard-won life lessons. (If anyone knows about the agony of the life of an isolated vigilante, it’s the Punisher.) Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk also shows up for a few scenes, mostly to help launch a key subplot about Peter’s attempts to control his new powers.
Just in terms of the sheer number of popular villains and classic Spider-Men, No Way Home was going to be an almost-impossible film to top. Brand New Day doesn’t even try. Yes, it does have a bunch of Marvel cameos, and a couple of times it feels like it can’t quite reconcile what its creators want with what they have to do to appease their corporate overlords and the needs of the broader MCU. But that’s not enough to ruin what’s otherwise a good story about a friendly Spider-Man and his neighborhood.
Additional Thoughts:
-It is a little surreal seeing Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal sharing scenes together as the wise-cracking Peter Parker and the gruff Frank Castle just a week or so after they shared scenes together as the slightly naive Telemachus and the grizzled King Menelaus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. They’re such different roles for both of them — and they are both outstanding in both films.
RATING: 7/10
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We would not mind if these Marvel costumes went up, up, and away forever. (Oh wait, that’s a DC pun. Nevermind.)
