Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is the most “comic-bookey” movie that the modern Marvel media machine has produced, and that is a compliment. The seventh film in ten years to feature Tom Holland’s wide-eyed version of the famed wall crawler, “Brand New Day” largely sidesteps the multi-versal hamstringing that often bogged down earlier attempts at enmeshing Spider-Man into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) hydra-like conglomerate. When Holland showed up in “Captain America: Civil War” in 2016, it felt like an event; a long-sought-after bridging of characters previously divided by the most dastardly of foes: contractual rights issues. From the fore, Holland was a standout as a Peter Parker who was both eager and optimistic, the character for the first time actually played by a kid who was an appropriate age for the teenage hero. That boyishness has proved a blessing and a curse for the talented, if perpetually baby-faced Holland, who often faces criticism for our collective inability to see the now thirty-year-old actor for the grown man he is. While a hindrance to his overall movie stardom, it is, however, a testament to his pitch-perfect portrayal. In “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”, Holland is allowed to fully embody the mantle that was thrust upon him so many years ago; taking on not only the suit but also the pathos that makes Peter Parker one of the most enduring figures in fiction. If Spider-Man can’t keep his life together, what hope do the rest of us have? That hope, as “Brand New Day” deftly explores, can’t be found in powers or genetic mutations but in a life lived openly, of community and love, where falling isn’t so scary if there is someone by your side to help pick you back up.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” opens a few years after the memory-erasing events of “No Way Home”, which saw everyone in the universe not only forgetting that Peter Parker is Spider-Man but that Peter Parker even exists. Huddled in his dingy apartment with only an AI assistant and a leaning tower of Little Caesars pizza boxes for company, Peter devotes himself monastically to the life of a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man; taking down criminals, both petty and meta-human, when not foiling the gun-toting exploits of his fellow street-level “hero” and frenemy Frank Castle, The Punisher (Jon Bernthal). While he spends his days swinging through the streets to the adulation of all of New York, he spends his nights doomscrolling the exploits of his former friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and the love of his life MJ (Zendaya) as they attend MIT and lead a happy, fulfilled life without any memory of Peter’s existence. While all is not well, things are steady until a new threat emerges: a superhuman being that can leap telepathically between host bodies. Entrusted with finding and stopping this ghostly menace, Peter’s anxiety and isolation overload inside of himself, causing his genetic mutations to spiral out of control in unforeseeable and hobbling ways. As his rage and confusion bubble over, Peter is forced to confront the idea that this might be a problem he can’t web-sling his way out of and that perhaps even the scariest of changes might be necessary if he is to grow into the man he was always meant to be.
What Holland’s performance has always exemplified, if the previous movies have sometimes left its importance by the wayside, is that Spider-Man is a tragic character, textually Sisyphean, always losing three steps back for every one gained. Peter Parker is a loner by personal sacrifice, a boy instilled with the values of doing good at all personal costs, no matter the happiness he might have to abandon to achieve it. Because of the length of his tenure as Spider-Man, Holland has been able to adapt with the character to far greater lengths than his predecessors; to grow, shift, change, and, most notably in “Brand New Day”, evolve. Since the character’s creation by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the 1960s, Peter has always been the most melancholy of heroes, a yearning dreamer, hopeful to a fault; the kind of person who always gets back up when knocked down. It’s his greatest power and his most damnable burden. It’s the kind of personality perfectly suited to serialized storytelling; where a fight with Doc Ock can get in the way of a date with his girlfriend Mary Jane, causing bruises that linger far longer than any punch ever could. While the movies have previously attempted to lean into this aspect of his personality, most attempts have felt tepid; ill-formed and forcibly distorted in an attempt to fit a comic book narrative into a movie-shaped hole. While past Spider-Mans have focused on this inherent contradiction; most notably Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man Trilogy” and, the greatest super hero film of all time “Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse”, we always forced by the constraints of cinematic structure to fast forward through the everyday stressors that are often more crushing to him than any criminal enterprise; making rent on time, losing the woman he loves, being an anonymous face in a crowd that loves Spider-Man but never even notices or cares for Peter Parker. Through the grand, if flawed, experiment of the MCU, Holland has been allowed to develop, to fail, to deepen into his own version of the character that is as faithful to the comic book origins as it is unique to his own skills as a performer. Yet, to this point, his rendition often felt like the bright spots of otherwise sludgy productions; overwhelmed by world-building edicts and cross-promotional masters, but perhaps most constrained by the limitations of the movie itself. Comic book stories are unending, infinite; their form dictated by the monthly necessities and timelines of their publication. In that sense, having a story where Spider-Man has a firm conclusion to his emotional state feels incongruous; imperfect and unfair to the dogged persistence that defines the character. “Brand New Day” wisely seems to care little for the three-act structure of filmmaking in favor of something more elongated, with acts that feel more akin to chapters of a long-running comic book series with mini-arcs of incremental growth that season the characters without irrevocably changing them. Throughout the film, set pieces are imaginatively staged and meaningful, furthering Peter’s descent into the drudges of self-pity, while feeling like cliffhangers to be expanded upon in the next issue. Peter Parker is at his best when he is beaten down and abandoned, forced to muddy through the life of both a man and a spider; a choice that “Brand New Day” offers him overtly as if it were a binary. There’s always a third option, though, often the most painful and enriching one; that’s the path that Spider-Man will always take and that is why we will always cheer for him.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton showcases a confidence of movement and style that the previous director, Jon Watts, could never quite grasp. It’s a minor miracle that Holland’s portrayal has retained its stickiness in the face of films that have been largely forgettable; quippy without being funny, satisfying without being thrilling, cinema as paint-by-numbers whose colors were vibrant enough to be worthy of consideration. Bringing in Cretton, the Director of the independent classic “Short Term 12” and Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, allows “Brand New Day” to feel like a gulp of fresh morning air; a comforting blend of high flying action, clear visual comedy, and earnest emotional connection that coalesces the whole package of what a modern Spider-Man movie could and should be. Cretton brings just as much dynamic heft to a fight with a rampaging tank as he does to a quieter scene where Peter has to stop himself from confessing his honest love for the woman who doesn’t remember the life they shared. There were several moments, the softer sequences with Holland and Zendaya playing off each other, where I got a little teary. It’s hard not to want the best for Holland’s Spider-Man and Zendaya’s MJ; the pair are clearly meant for one another but hamstrung by circumstance and the burden of power unjustly bequeathed. It’s these tender moments where “Brand New Day” finds a maturity largely absent from its predecessors; an understanding that we come to Spider-Man stories as much for the action as the soap opera, that we are desperate for Peter to be happy even if we know that can never happen. It’s in that contradiction, the want for better while the world does everything in its power to crush that hope into dust, where Spider-Man shines the brightest.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” feels fresh and soothing, a balm in the afterglow of Marvel’s perpetual promotional machine. Does it have a lot of the issues that late-era Marvel movies have, i.e., plot lines that go nowhere and the introduction of characters from the comics whose importance won’t be known for a half-decade or more? Certainly. But what it gets right outweighs what it falters on, making it not dissimilar from the titular web head himself. I was rooting for this movie despite my own superhero cynicism. It made me remember why I loved Spider-Man as a kid, sitting in my room reading comic books as he faced tragedy and heartbreak only to get up and keep fighting on. It made me feel, even subconsciously, that maybe I could do the same. I think that’s why we see ourselves in and aspire to be him, not because of the suit or the powers but what they represent: an unbridled humanity and a sterling example of the power that goodness in the face of overwhelming odds can offer to a world in pain. We’ve always needed Spider-Man, and it’s good to have him back.
Say hello to Spidey.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is playing at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place and The Broad Theater.
