This is going to be a major year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the announcement of Avengers: Doomsday, fans have been salivating for any and every piece of news that could hint at what to expect from the upcoming movie. And since Sony is now working with Marvel, allowing Spider-Man to be a part of the MCU, audiences are hoping to get a few clues in the latest film. The Doomsday trailer has been released, yet there are still many unknowns, like what the story actually is. We’ll have to wait until December to uncover that secret, but in the meantime we have Spider-Man: Brand New Day as an appetizer to hold us over. While there may be a few things in the film that are possible MCU futures, you won’t be getting any spoilers out of me. But what I can tell you is that Spider-Man: Brand New Day gives us a solid superhero adventure but forgets to dive deeper into what’s happening to the man behind the mask.
At the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, we watched an already grieving Peter Parker say goodbye to the people he loved most in the world. At this point, he’d already lost Tony Stark, a casualty of defeating Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, and he had just watched Aunt May die at the hands of Green Goblin. Now, because his identity was revealed, to protect the last people he had left, MJ and Ned, he had Doctor Strange cast a spell that made everyone forget not just that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but Peter Parker in general.
Brand New Day opens with Spider-Man doing what he does best, assisting New York’s finest by fighting crime. He’s chummy with Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), whom he chats with regularly. We see him move into a ratty apartment, part of the Peter Parker starter kit, and he talks to his AI, E.V. (Naomi Watts). Through conversations with the detective and the montage of his crime-fighting, it’s clear that Peter has been drowning in his work to distract himself from the loneliness he feels. Detective Jean even tries to get him to take some time off and let the cops handle the crime for a while, to which he protests. Peter insists that he’s fine; of course, we know he’s not. In his apartment, he cherishes a coffee cup from the shop MJ (Zendaya) used to work at and spends his free time watching videos Ned (Jacob Batalon) posts to his social media account, anonymously staying up to date on his friend’s lives.
Before we can dive further into that, there’s a new big bad in New York, whose anonymity is even greater than Peter’s. This unknown entity is a telepath (Sadie Sink) who can jump into people, possessing random citizens and using them to do their bidding. For some reason, the telepath can jump into everyone except Peter, which is intriguing not only for the telepath but also for us. At the same time, noted in the trailer, while lurking on his friends, Peter sees MJ give some dude a kiss at a party, which triggers some kind of mutation, complete with side effects including premature web emissions. This new anomaly leads him to seek out Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), aka our fave angry guy, Hulk, to figure out a quick fix. And when the telepath starts targeting the people around Peter, he enlists the help of Frank Castle, aka Punisher (Jon Bernthal), to help him keep those he loves safe.
If it feels like a lot is going on in this film, that’s because there is. And while having a lot of action in a superhero flick might seem like a good thing, it’s actually one of the main issues in this installment. Tom Holland is an excellent Spider-Man, and that isn’t up for debate. He has great emotionality, physicality, and quirky comedic timing that make his balance optimal for the character of Peter Parker as well as his portrayal of Spider-Man. The issue with Brand New Day is that the story should’ve been a platform for him to demonstrate all of that given his new isolated reality, but they cut it short to offer a launching pad in service of the MCU.
When Peter first sees MJ kiss someone at the party, he experiences an overwhelming wave of emotion that triggers a physical response. He moves as if he can’t breathe, as if someone just knocked the wind out of him. He can’t focus; he’s dizzy, and then he wakes up in a place he didn’t fall asleep, webbed up on the side of a building. Peter was already using work to mask his loneliness and depression, and now he’s experiencing what appears to be anxiety. The film gestures toward something profound here: the way grief and anxiety can hijack the body, powers or no powers. He’s already been experiencing headaches, which Detective Jean has been warning him about. And instead of taking time off, he goes to Bruce to find something that’ll help suppress his mutation so he doesn’t have to deal with it. This is a great allegory for what happens when you try to ignore your trauma instead of working through it.
But we never get this triumphant epiphany or emotional breakthrough as we did in Thunderbolts*. Instead, we stitch a quick Band-Aid on Peter so that we can give the remainder of the film to our villain to launch future MCU projects. Insert sad trombone here. Fans have long complained about how some of these Spider-Man films fail Peter’s character in service to set up other characters for the larger cinematic universe. Though I don’t always agree, this film feels most closely related to that sentiment. To the point that it also feels like the writers forgot to grow Peter up. Shouldn’t he have a job by now? Just because the world doesn’t know who he is, it doesn’t mean he can’t go to college. Shouldn’t he be in college?
To show us how the world has moved on, we cycle through the years via montage; meanwhile, Peter is standing still. Which isn’t so much of a bad thing. It could be that it illustrates his inability to let go of the past and move forward, which also plays into how impacted he was to watch MJ at that party. It’s like someone took his blinders off and he was forced to see and reckon with his current reality. Again, it would’ve been wonderful to watch him work through this. Though the telepath couldn’t get into Peter’s head, the audience should’ve been able to. We should be able to know what’s going on in there. Bring us in more so that when we reach the climax of the film, we’re so invested in his journey, we feel as liberated as he does when he finally reaches acceptance.
One of the best decisions they made was including Frank, and Jon Bernthal reminds you why he is the only person who should ever play this role. On the surface, Frank and Peter seem to have a lot in common. Both of them are operating in isolation, working as a team of one. Both insist they don’t need anyone else, and none is more insistent than Frank. But during a collision of ideals, Frank reminds Peter that they are not the same. Frank’s family is gone. He can’t see them. He can’t reintroduce himself to them. And he tells Peter, in that big brother way, that Peter is choosing a life he doesn’t have to lead. Bernthal delivers this scene with a gruff tenderness, his line readings carrying equal parts tough love and genuine care. Opposite Holland, whose Peter feels constantly on the verge of shattering, it’s one of the film’s best moments. I love this scene so much because it honors something true: everyone’s burden is different, which means the way to cope and push through will also be different. Frank schools Peter, course-correcting his attempt to liken his trauma to someone else’s, and in doing so reminds him that the people he loves are still here. There are still people he can hold onto. For one brief, lucid moment, Brand New Day remembers that Peter’s tragedy isn’t that he has no one left. It’s that he’s choosing to live like he doesn’t.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is still a fun time at the movies. It’s loaded with thrilling fight sequences, some of the best banter between heroes, and a handful of genuinely tender moments. It has all the pieces for a story about healing. It just never lets Peter hold them long enough to put himself back together authentically. For a character who’s lost everything, the film feels less like a fresh start and more like a missed opportunity.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.
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