Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review
Spider-Man: Brand New Day strips away much of Peter Parker's old life and gives Tom Holland the room to deliver his most mature performance as the web-slinger yet. It isn't quite the clean reset its title promises, but when the film focuses on the lonely young man beneath the mask, it delivers some of the strongest Spider-Man storytelling of the MCU era.
There is something wonderfully cruel about where Spider-Man: Brand New Day finds Peter Parker.
He saved the world, but the people he loves no longer remember him. MJ has moved on. Ned has moved on. Aunt May is gone. Peter Parker has effectively disappeared, leaving Spider-Man as one of the few pieces of his old life that remains.
For once, Tom Holland's Peter isn't worrying about impressing Tony Stark, going on a school trip or trying to keep a superhero disaster from ruining his teenage life. He's alone, he's grieving, and he's discovering that being Spider-Man all the time might be considerably easier than figuring out who Peter Parker is supposed to be.
That gives director Destin Daniel Cretton something the previous Holland films rarely possessed: silence.
And Holland is terrific in it.
Brand New Day isn't a complete reinvention. Familiar Marvel problems still lurk around its edges, and the film occasionally seems unable to resist reminding us that another enormous interconnected adventure is coming.
But underneath all that machinery is a surprisingly personal Spider-Man story.
And that is where the movie really works.
A LONELIER HERO
Peter Parker Has Finally Been Forced to Grow Up
The ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home gave this film an extraordinary starting point.
Everyone Peter cared about forgot him.
That could easily have become another temporary comic-book inconvenience, something undone within the opening act so the familiar gang could be put back together. Instead, Brand New Day understands that Peter's isolation should have consequences.
He has thrown himself almost completely into being Spider-Man.
It makes sense. Spider-Man has rules. There is always another crime, another person who needs help and another rooftop to leap from. Peter Parker's problems are much harder to solve.
Holland plays that distinction beautifully.
The energetic teenager who once desperately wanted to become an Avenger has been replaced by somebody carrying considerably more weight. His humour hasn't disappeared, but sadness now sits behind it.
More importantly, Holland never makes Peter's loneliness feel like an excuse for endless misery. You can still recognise the character we have followed since Captain America: Civil War. He's simply older.
For a character permanently associated with responsibility, this is perhaps the first Holland Spider-Man film that truly makes responsibility feel heavy.
And that gives Holland his best opportunity yet to prove just how good he is in this role.
UNDER THE MASK
Tom Holland Gives His Best Spider-Man Performance
Tom Holland has always been an excellent Spider-Man.
Brand New Day finally allows him to be an equally interesting Peter Parker.
There is a difference.
Previous films frequently surrounded Holland with enormous personalities. Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark became a mentor. Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange brought the multiverse. No Way Home even reunited Holland with two previous Spider-Men.
This time, the emotional burden belongs to him.
Holland responds with a more restrained performance than we've become accustomed to seeing from his Peter. There are scenes where the expression on his face communicates far more than another page of dialogue could have done.
His encounters with MJ are particularly effective because Peter carries memories she doesn't possess.
Zendaya doesn't need to remember everything for those moments to hurt suddenly. Peter remembers enough for both of them.
It creates one of the film's most compelling questions.
Does Peter have the right to drag people back into a dangerous life simply because he misses them?
That's exactly the sort of impossible moral problem Spider-Man stories should be built around.
The greatest battles Peter Parker faces have rarely been about whether he can defeat somebody physically.
They're about deciding what doing the right thing actually means.
A DIFFERENT NEW YORK
The MCU's Spider-Man Finally Feels Closer to the Street
There is also a welcome change in the world surrounding Spider-Man.
Peter feels less like the junior member of an enormous superhero organisation and more like a young man protecting New York.
That's an important distinction.
One of the enduring pleasures of Spider-Man is that despite his extraordinary abilities, his world can remain surprisingly ordinary. Apartments matter. Money matters. Relationships matter. The people on the pavement beneath him matter.
Brand New Day doesn't abandon the larger MCU, but its strongest moments make Peter's world feel smaller and consequently more personal.
Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle fits particularly well into that environment.
The Punisher and Spider-Man occupy completely different moral territory despite frequently hunting the same kind of people. Peter believes that possessing power gives him a responsibility to preserve life. Frank tends to arrive at a considerably more permanent solution.
Together, those philosophies give their scenes more purpose than simply presenting another recognisable Marvel character for the audience to applaud.
Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner reflects Peter's internal struggle, while Sadie Sink brings a different kind of emotional energy to the film.
There are a lot of characters here.
Surprisingly, most of them have a reason to be.
THE MARVEL PROBLEM
Unfortunately, It Still Can't Completely Escape the MCU
And then Brand New Day occasionally remembers that it belongs to a gigantic cinematic universe.
That's where things become less elegant.
At times, you can almost feel the film looking beyond its own ending. Characters arrive, possibilities are introduced, and pieces move around a board that clearly extends far beyond this particular Spider-Man story.
That isn't automatically a problem.
Shared universes can be enormously entertaining when the connections strengthen the film you're watching.
The trouble comes when tomorrow's movie starts to matter more than today's.
At 145 minutes, Brand New Day has plenty of time to develop its ideas, yet some of its most interesting ones still feel as though they are being saved for later.
That's frustrating because the smaller story is good enough.
We don't need Peter Parker to remind us that the MCU exists constantly.
Spider-Man is interesting enough on his own.
Whenever Brand New Day remembers that, it becomes a much better film.
ACTION AND SPECTACLE
Spider-Man Still Knows How to Put on a Show
None of this means Cretton has forgotten that people also bought tickets to watch Spider-Man swing through New York.
The web-slinging remains exhilarating, and Holland's Spider-Man has a physicality that has always distinguished this version of the character.
But interestingly, the action isn't what stays with you.
That's both a compliment and a criticism.
There are enjoyable confrontations and some terrific visual moments, but Brand New Day isn't constructed around one enormous sequence that threatens to swallow everything else.
Instead, the spectacle serves Peter's emotional condition.
That is refreshing.
It can also leave a couple of the action beats feeling less memorable than those in the franchise's very best instalments.
The film is at its most exciting when Peter's physical and emotional problems collide.
Spider-Man can throw himself from a skyscraper without hesitation.
Talking to somebody he loves is considerably more frightening.
That remains one of the character's great contradictions, and Brand New Day understands it.
A NEW BEGINNING?
The Best Thing About Brand New Day Is Where It Leaves Spider-Man
Perhaps the greatest achievement of Brand New Day is that Tom Holland's Spider-Man finally feels capable of existing without being defined by what came before him.
He's no longer simply the kid Tony Stark discovered.
He's no longer the inexperienced teenager surrounded by older Avengers.
And the film doesn't need Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield standing beside him to explain what being Spider-Man means.
Peter has learned those lessons himself.
Painfully.
There is still work to do. The movie carries too much franchise architecture to become the completely stripped-back Spider-Man adventure its opening promises, and occasionally you wish Cretton had been allowed to ignore the wider MCU altogether.
But Holland's Peter now has a confidence that wasn't there before.
Not superhero confidence.
Something more interesting.
He understands that being Peter Parker matters too.
After four solo films, that might be the most important lesson this version of Spider-Man has learned.
The Verdict
Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn't quite the radical reset its title suggests, but it gives Tom Holland the most mature and emotionally satisfying material of his Spider-Man career. The wider MCU occasionally gets in the way, and some of the film's ideas deserve more room than they receive, yet its best moments understand exactly why Peter Parker has endured for generations. Beneath the costume, the powers and the enormous franchise surrounding him is a lonely young man trying to do the right thing. For the first time in Holland's series, Peter Parker feels every bit as important as Spider-Man.
In This Review
