With great power comes great responsibility, and likely no one felt that more than Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, who was tasked with following up a really strong, really popular third entry in Tom Holland’s Spider-Man franchise with something of a clean start. In case you didn’t see the last film, the big twist is that Peter Parker gets Doctor Strange to cast a spell that makes everyone forget who Peter Parker is, including the people closest to him. Theoretically, this means those he cares about will be safe. The fourth entry in the franchise returns some familiar faces, notably the main trio of Tom Holland as Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man, Zendaya as MJ, and Jacob Batalon as Ned. Basically, all of the other actors who had drifted through the first three films are reduced to Easter eggs or brief cameos, like seeing Marisa Tomei playing Aunt May in a flashback. J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson is nowhere to be found. Instead, the city now seems to love Spider-Man, as he has been working to keep the streets safe, tackling everything from run-of-the-mill crime to supervillains like Scorpion, played by Michael Mando. However, if you came here for a Spider-Man versus Scorpion movie, you will be sorely disappointed, because he is very much not the main villain of this film. As a matter of fact, the question of who the villain actually is remains open for debate.
We see that Peter has been checking in on MJ and Ned without directly introducing himself or injecting himself back into their lives, trying to keep his promise. However, he is incredibly lonely. The only person he seems to have to talk to is a new detective played by The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas, who serves as something of his inside woman in the police force. He also has a new AI that powers his suit, giving him someone else to talk to, but mostly he’s a loner. He hasn’t picked up a new set of friends, so if you were looking for a Gwen Stacy distraction, this is not that film. Instead, while out fighting his normal crime, Peter ends up running into some entity that seems to be able to jump from body to body, meaning that when he catches a villain, it turns out that person isn’t actually the villain. They were just being temporarily possessed by whatever it is that Peter is chasing down. It takes him a little while to figure this out, as the entity taunts Peter with an ability to read his mind without actually invading it. Even though this force is able to possess everyone else, it can’t seem to possess Spider-Man. That doesn’t mean Spidey isn’t going through some changes of his own. He starts to notice that he’s feeling a little bit more like an arachnid recently, and it’s not exactly helping his battle skills. So Peter heads to the university to seek guidance from someone who has created an inhibitor, that being Dr. Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the Incredible Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo. Banner is surprised at how much Peter knows and understands, and Peter is just looking for that missing link in the development of his own inhibitor to block out certain aspects of his spider transformation that he would rather not have.
This will allow him to take on the mysterious force, which becomes the world’s worst-kept secret: Jean Grey, played by Sadie Sink. Her powers here are being used to an overly complicated maximum effect, given her character’s trajectory from the X-Men comics. While Jean certainly does have abilities, most of them are enhanced after the Phoenix Force enters the picture. Before then, she’s not necessarily more powerful in this area than Charles Xavier, and notably, Charles would need Cerebro to do the kind of thing she’s doing here. So we’re going to start off our new X-Men franchise with an overpowered Jean Grey. God help us all when she does get the Phoenix Force, because this is no shrinking violet. This is not someone who doesn’t understand her powers. Peter figures out that she can only leap 33 feet from person to person, so in an effort to keep MJ and Ned clear, he has to try to keep them 33 feet away from anyone else, particularly MJ, whom Jean seems to have targeted as Peter’s weak spot. He entrusts her to the Punisher, played here by Jon Bernthal, bringing his character onto the big screen. MJ, of course, is still struggling with why Spider-Man seems to be in her life so much. As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that what Jean is trying to do is break into Damage Control because they took her sister, and she is determined to get her back. This gives Jean an empathetic character arc, but Spider-Man is friendly with Damage Control, putting him at odds as he has to navigate whose side he’s on, where exactly the line is between good and evil, and whether perhaps the people he’s been assisting this whole time are more of the problem than he initially realized. And while the film probably could have done without her, it’s important to note that our new Black Widow, Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, does pop into the movie briefly. It has no real impact on the story, but she is present, and considering that she’s appeared in multiple MCU projects already, pretending she isn’t here doesn’t help either.
So, what did I actually think about Spider-Man: Brand New Day? I think it’s worth noting that the previous film, No Way Home, was my favorite Spider-Man movie. I’m also a really big fan of Spider-Man: Homecoming. So the Tom Holland series has two fantastic knockouts in it already. The bar was impossibly high for Brand New Day, and it didn’t quite clear it. I think it’s an odd choice to bring Jean Grey in. It’s the kind of bamboozlement that’s obviously going to catch people’s attention, for the same reason that if you were to watch the upcoming sequel to The Batman with Robert Pattinson and discover that the main villain he’s fighting is Lobo, I feel like you would have a lot of questions. Sure, people would be surprised, but they’d be more surprised because he doesn’t belong in that universe. I realize that the Marvel Cinematic Universe means everybody belongs everywhere, but Spider-Man has a slew of villains he has yet to interact with, some of whom have never been brought to the big screen, or were adapted poorly, like the brief interaction we got with Paul Giamatti’s Rhino. We very much could have taken another stab at a Spider-Man villain instead of using his film to help set up the X-Men franchise. And I understand that Jean Grey is an important character in the larger Marvel universe, but I don’t know that Peter Parker’s fourth solo outing needed to be the launching pad for her journey, particularly when his own story is still trying to recover from the emotional devastation of No Way Home.
I think what’s kind of frustrating about this film is that it’s doing exactly what I’ve wanted Marvel films to do for a long time, which is dial things back and create more personal stories that aren’t consistently tied to an apocalyptic event. We’ve had so many Marvel projects where the fate of the world is at stake, and even though we have some 50-odd heroes in play, thanks to all the various film and television shows, we can actually have a movie where the world might end, tied to one hero’s film, and nobody shows up to help. I understand that when you make a film specifically centered around a character, you don’t necessarily want to throw more characters in there from other films. But when the stuff that’s happening feels above and beyond normal, it does make me wonder where everyone else is. It’s the problem we’ve had with the Defenders and the first Avengers movie, since the television shows heavily implied that the Defenders were in New York during that time, but we’re never really sure how they were able to contribute, if at all. Likely Marvel would be better served by moving some of its characters out of the same city, so at least when things hit the fan, there’s a reasonable explanation for why nobody else is showing up. But I digress. Finally, we have a film that feels local, that feels exactly like the kind of thing Spider-Man can handle on his own. He doesn’t need team-ups. And yet, here’s the Hulk. Here’s the Punisher. Here’s Black Widow. And this is not an all-hands-on-deck effort. This very much feels like the kind of problem that not just Spider-Man, but any hero could tackle. Jean’s problem is localized. It doesn’t feel like she’s threatening people outside of her limited range, so it would make sense that Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood superhero, would be the one to follow her and either take her down or rescue her, depending on the trajectory of the film. It’s almost amusing that Marvel has finally figured out how to tell a smaller story, but apparently hasn’t figured out that a smaller story doesn’t require inviting half the neighborhood over.
Tom Holland continues to prove himself an invaluable part of the franchise. He’s effortlessly likable, and even when the material isn’t quite reaching the heights of his previous adventures, he gives Peter Parker the emotional foundation that makes this version of Spider-Man so easy to root for. Jon Bernthal is the perfect Punisher, surpassing anybody who has ever played the role before him, and Marvel should lock him into a contract. I don’t know what’s happening with the Daredevil: Born Again gang, but they should not lose Jon Bernthal. I also continue to enjoy Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, and I thought that even though their contributions are limited compared to previous films, both Zendaya and Jacob Batalon were fun to have around. Sadie Sink turns in a memorable performance as Jean Grey. It’s a very different Jean Grey, but they’re manipulating her character a little bit to start her in a different place, and Sink certainly makes an impression. I know the score is composed by Michael Giacchino, who has previously worked on Spider-Man films, but this score didn’t really stand out to me. There is a little bit of Destin Daniel Cretton’s direction, particularly in the way Spider-Man maneuvers around buildings, that sounds really cool, and the audio description by Deluxe, narrated by Roy Samuelson, is more than worth your time, as it actually describes as much as it can of these crazy shots. But it’s not just the crazy shots. It’s also the mechanics of how Jean Grey moves from person to person as the film progresses. That’s something that would be difficult to communicate from the beginning, and Roy and the team at Deluxe did a lovely job of following that pattern and making sure the audience can understand what’s happening. It’s a particularly important part of the film to get right, because the entire mystery depends on understanding how her powers work, and the audio description rises to that challenge.
It’s weird to see a film that finally feels like a smaller, more personal story, and yet here are all these team-ups, in a universe where Marvel will also swing for the fences with a potentially world-ending threat and nobody shows up to help. Those are the films where somebody needs to show up, if only accidentally. Here, it just seems like we’re being reminded of how many superheroes live in New York. I wanted to love Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and I walked away just kind of liking it. It’s definitely not the worst Spider-Man film, and I don’t even think it’s the worst of the Tom Holland franchise, but even though this film has become the number one film at the domestic box office and one of the highest-grossing films internationally, I don’t think it actually surpasses its predecessor creatively. No Way Home had bigger stakes and more of an emotional gut punch, and Brand New Day is trying to build its way out of that. But instead of supporting Peter Parker’s journey, we end up launching Jean Grey’s, and Sadie Sink kind of takes over. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for the future of the MCU, but it does leave me wondering whether Spider-Man was actually the priority in his own movie. There’s a compelling story here about a young man who has sacrificed everything to protect the people he loves, only to discover that being a hero doesn’t necessarily make the loneliness any easier. I would have loved to spend more time with that story, rather than watching the franchise prepare for its next big thing.
Ultimately, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a good movie that had the unfortunate responsibility of following a great one. There’s plenty to enjoy, from Holland’s continued command of the character to the impressive action sequences, strong supporting performances, and an audio description track that does justice to the film’s visual ambitions. I certainly don’t regret spending time with this version of Spider-Man, and I’m looking forward to seeing where his story goes next. But I also can’t shake the feeling that Marvel had an opportunity to give Peter Parker a genuinely fresh start and couldn’t quite resist turning that fresh start into another piece of its increasingly complicated puzzle. For a movie about a superhero who has been forgotten by everyone he loves, it’s a little frustrating that the filmmakers occasionally seem to forget whose movie they’re making. Spider-Man doesn’t need to save the entire universe to make a great film. He doesn’t even need to save the entire city. Sometimes saving one person, or figuring out how to save himself, is more than enough. Brand New Day understands that in theory, but doesn’t always trust it in practice. It’s a perfectly enjoyable new chapter, just not the spectacular one I was hoping for.
Fresh: 8.2/10
