‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Review: The Best MCU Movie In Years
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Credit: Sony / Marvel / Disney
My Spidey-senses are tingling. I have a good feeling about the opening of Spider-Man: Brand New Day this weekend. If the theater I attended was any indication, this is going to be a massive box office success. There was one moment, which I’ll get to later, that made the whole theater gasp.
The real winners? Tom Holland, Jon Bernthal and Zendaya, all of whom also starred in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (here’s my review of that film) which opened to a massive global box office just two weeks prior.
Of course, the films are about as different as two films can be. One is about a lonely hero trying to get back to the ones he loves while encountering strange monsters and other obstacles. The other is about a lonely hero trying to get back to the ones he loves, encountering strange monsters and hoping that his love will still be there waiting when he returns. Both of these men are battered by their pasts, by the the actions they took to protect the ones they loved, by the loss and the terrible cost of victory.
Okay, there are some very weird similarities between The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, now that I think about it, but I suppose that makes sense since both come from the heroic tradition. Odysseus was just the Spider-Man of Homer’s ancient Greece. Beyond these striking plot similarities, however, these two films could not be more different. And the three major actors who play characters in each film. And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
But I digress. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
Note: This review will be spoiler free for the first half, though I’ll obviously discuss the premise and setup (though we’ve basically seen that in the trailers and marketing materials already).
I will clearly mark when the spoilers begin, because I do very much want to talk about the ending of this movie and what it all means for the future of the MCU – and perhaps a revival of the superhero genre, which has been so very, very stale for the past few years (outside of some gems like Wonder Man, which was created by Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of Spider-Man: Brand New Day! And was just cancelled, because the House of Mouse is apparently run by lunatics!) And more than that, I want to talk about how the end of this movie made me feel, because it has been some time since a superhero movie made me feel much of anything.
Alright, let’s begin.
‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Is A Direct Sequel To ‘No Way Home’
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Credit: Sony / Marvel
It’s kind of hard to believe, but Spider-Man: No Way Home came out in 2021. Five years ago! I honestly didn’t realize it had been so long, but then again I hadn’t been thinking about Spider-Man all that much, or Marvel, or superhero movies for that matter. For the most part, these have been pretty lackluster, in both the MCU and DCU. Captain America: Brave New World was pretty awful, proving that it’s really not that easy to swap out Steve Rogers – especially with such a lousy script.
Over in DC-land, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn promised to bring about a new era of awesomeness, but his opening salvo – Superman – was lackluster and messy, even though they nailed the casting. And while Peacemaker almost made up for that with a solid second season, then along came Supergirl and now DC’s hopes are all pinned to Clayface (of all the villains you could possibly pin any hopes to).
So I’ve been a little checked out when it comes to superhero stuff, not because I don’t enjoy it, but because it’s been, for the most part, so dull and so mediocre outside of the diamond in the rough scattered here and there (and Peacemaker and Wonder Man, gems they may be, are both TV shows).
I’m repeating myself now, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day is one of the best superhero movies in years. Again. Only, this one is better. Yes, No Way Home had lots of fun cameos. The three Spideys all together – Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland were quite the Three Musketeers, and it was a fun gimmick; and, of course, you can never go wrong with Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin.
Still, that film felt like it was all mixed up in all the other problems with the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the time. The obsession with the multiverse. The messy, feckless, rudderless ship that the MCU became after Endgame. In that chaos, a few bright lights shone, but they were still mired in post-Endgame fog. Perhaps Brand New Day really is just that, a turning point for Marvel and the MCU. And perhaps that’s wildly optimistic and I’m just still buzzing from what was a really fun, if a little clunky at times, movie.
Everyone Has Forgotten Peter Parker, Including Peter Parker
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Credit: Sony / Marvel / Disney
So Peter Parker had Doctor Strange wipe the entire world’s memory of him from existence. Not of Spider-Man, but of Peter Parker himself, because that was the only way to stop the universe from unravelling in the mess of a multiverse apocalypse that Peter had unwittingly created. The physics of it all are a little murky now, half a decade on, but the point is this: Peter Parker had to save the world and in order to do so, he had to wipe himself from the memories of everyone, friend or foe alike. Not quite like dying to save the world. At least when you die, your memory lives on. Or you get recast as Doctor Doom.
Now, four years later in the story, Peter remains a solitary hero, working closely with the friendly neighborhood NYPD Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas). He’s famous and successful and lonely. He misses Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ and the friends he made in the Avengers and his old life, but he carries on, the martyr, and helps bring bad guys like Scorpion (Michael Mando) to justice. He doesn’t seem interested in making new friends or dating or doing singles stuff like random trivia or karaoke nights. His life is a little depressing, to be honest, but he’s pushing all that down until he finds himself following Ned to a party (he follows him on social media, so he’s always up-to-date on his and MJ’s lives) but this time he actually follows him to their place where he mingles and discovers that MJ has a boyfriend.
This sends him into a mental spiral, a decline that has some very real consequences involving his powers that I won’t get into here. Suffice to say, we all hit puberty at different times.
On top of all of this, there’s a new threat in town, a threat that the Department of Damage Control wants stopped. This rather obviously shady government department is led by Bill Metzger, played by Tramell Tillman who we all know from Severance. So we know immediately that something is up with this guy, though I just kept waiting for some defiant jazz.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Credit: Sony / Marvel / Disney
One thing leads to another and Spider-Man finds himself hunting and being hunted by this new threat, often bumping shoulders with the Punisher. They make a great odd couple. Peter so sweet and sincere; Frank so grouchy and vulgar (that at one point, just as he utters the word “Mother–” he’s cut off from finishing the curse by a well-placed web.
And Peter keeps bumping into his old pals, too. He visits Bruce Banner who’s retired from Hulking and is teaching physics to college kids who only really take his class because he’s the Hulk. But through it all, Peter is trying to come to grips with this new life mostly by denying his own feelings and clamping down the changes that are happening in his life. It’s just that age old story. You can’t really run away from your problems. You can’t ever really hide from yourself.
The movie works because it’s a good story that moves along at a great clip and throws in plenty of action and humor to balance out its more somber themes. Plenty of web-slinging, plenty of antics, plenty of things going boom. Holland is perfect as Peter Parker, and the various familiar faces he comes into contact with are all fun – especially Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and her amazing office.
Yes, the plot can feel a tiny bit convoluted at times, but it’s nowhere near as confusing as Brave New World, and by the end it all comes together nicely, even if many threads are left dangling. It also avoids one of the biggest pet peeves I have with these movies: The World Is Going To End And The Superhero Has To Save It trope. There’s probably a better name for that. But the world-ending stakes almost always take me right out of a movie, because we know that one of two things is going to happen. Either the world will end, and thus the franchise will be over, or the heroes will save the world. Rarely, very rarely, does this involve heroes dying in the process. Smaller, more intimate stakes are what get me invested in these stories, because more personal stakes are more relatable and create more tension and thus, despite being smaller in terms of scale, are actually much bigger in terms of narrative oomph.
I felt nothing watching The Fantastic Four. Nothing, Lebowski! No fear that the world would end. No fear that any of the characters would die trying to save it. Just nothing at all. I enjoyed Thunderbolts right up until it became this goofy plot to save the world from this new shadow power. Superman might have been fun if our hero had had to choose between saving Lois Lane or saving the city or something, anything, beyond just “the world is going to end because of space pockets going haywire.” These stories are dull because they’re all basically the same. Brand New Day did something different. It kept wasn’t some revolutionary story, by any means, but it kept things personal from start to finish, and there’s some fun, if somewhat predictable, twists to keep it from devolving into mustache-twirling supervillain territory.
In other words, this is a fun movie that avoids most of the pitfalls the MCU has fallen into in recent years – dull stories and characters, an addiction to the multiverse, lame final confrontations, etc. etc. – and let’s us just enjoy these characters and this world for a couple hours. The audience clapped in my theater, and this was a showing that got interrupted halfway in by a power outage. Impromptu intermission.
Okay, now for some spoilers.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Credit: Sony / Marvel / Disney
So, the “bad guy” of the movie is Jean Grey, the X-Men character now played by Sadie Sink of Stranger Things. Of course, she’s not really a bad guy at all, she’s just a powerful psychic trying to find her sister who was abducted by Damage Control and Mr. Milchick – er, Bill Metzger. She’s young and angry and arrogant and powerful and uses whatever tricks she has at her disposal to get into Damage Control HQ and try to rescue her sister, and this involves manipulating Peter. She can essentially possess people within 33 feet of her and hop from person to person. (If you saw the 1998 Denzel Washington movie, Fallen, you’ll get a sense of how this works, only Jean Grey is not a demon).
So at one point, she possesses MJ and while she and a masked Peter stand on a rooftop, she pulls up his mask and says that maybe something will spark her memory. And they kiss, and she says “Peter?” and he starts to cry because he’s so relieved that through the power of love, she’s remembered who he is. Only it’s not MJ at all. It’s just Jean Grey possessing her, and she mocks him for it afterward. Oh you thought the power of love’s true kiss would restore her memory? she taunts him (I’m paraphrasing). It’s sad. It’s a sad moment, and it becomes bittersweet when they actually talk about it later and he tells her that he loves her and she says she doesn’t even know him. She thinks he’s a great guy, but to her he’s just a stranger.
But when he takes her home, she invites him up to meet Ned (fully masked) and they all hang out. Ned is thrilled because he’s been trying (and failing) to solve the mystery of who this masked superhero is. He’s even put together a Spidey tracker app (that is featured in the post-credits scene). What MJ notices during their time spent joking around is that they do, in fact, seem like best friends. Even though Ned has no idea that he ever knew Spider-Man, they joke and laugh the way only old friends do.
And I think this, and how it ties into the very end of the movie, is really what sold me on this film. Because no, the power of true love’s kiss doesn’t work, doesn’t spark that memory for MJ, doesn’t rekindle her love for him. But at the very end of the movie, after the dust settles, Peter spots Ned sitting at a cafe and walks over and greets him. He introduces himself as Peter, the name Ned heard MJ refer to Spider-Man as.
And then Peter goes to shake his hand, and they do their special hand-shake, and they do it exactly the way they always did. There’s this dawning look of realization that comes over Ned’s face as Peter smiles back at him. “Oh, Peter!” he exclaims. And the credits roll. There were audible gasps from the audience. It was one of those perfect emotionally poignant endings to a film that made everything that came before it work better, click together just so. Honestly, I think it was one of the best single moments in the entire MCU run.
It also sort of reminded me of Hook, when the Lost Boys are all picking sides over whether Robin Williams’s character, a middle-aged all-grown-up Peter Pan who doesn’t even remember that he’s Peter Pan is, in fact, the Pan. Most of the kids go over to Rufio’s side, because Rufio is the leader now and he doesn’t for a second believe that this “Boil-dripping beef, fart-sniffing bubble butt!” could be Peter Pan. All grown-ups are pirates as far as Rufio is concerned.
And then one little boy walks across the line in the sand and walks around him, looking him up and down. And he he holds Peter’s middle-aged face in his hands, takes his spectacles from his face, feels the lines on his face and grabs his cheeks, squeezing them back into a smile. And then he says “Oh there you are Peter!”
Well I love that movie, Hook, and I always will, and that scene always gives me chills and makes me teary-eyed. And maybe it’s just Peter Parker and Peter Pan sharing a name, but it was that same moment in Brand New Day in a lot of ways. Ned realizing, as they finished that elaborate secret handshake, and not just realizing in the way you know something is a fact, but recognizing that a thing is true, and in so doing, breaking the spell.
It’s not the girl, not the kiss, not the thing Peter’s been mooning over all these years, it’s the friendship. That older, deeper bond; not the flighty, hot-burning passion of love and attraction, but an old stone, rooted deep, that even Strange’s sorceries can’t erase. And I could tell that the audience felt that moment as strongly as I did. It crackled in the air.
To dip our toes back into The Odyssey, it’s similar to Telemachus realizing the old beggar is his father. That loyal dog, holding out all these years for his master to return. That deep loyalty no curse, not even the gods themselves, can shake.
Verdict
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is an exciting, emotionally powerful, often hilarious action-adventure movie that breathes new life into the superhero genre. Whether it’s a flash in the pan or the start of something better for the MCU remains to be seen, but you should go see it on the biggest, bestest screen you can find. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Let me know your thoughts on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Be sure to check out my YouTube channel as well, where I’ll have a review up for this film soon also, and while you’re at it feel free to subscribe to my Substack!
