I caught Brand New Day the night after release, but only just now found the time to review it. This isn’t such a bad thing, though, as it’s given me time to mull over the film, rather than immediately reacting to the thrill and spectacle. While I don’t agree with some critics who have called this the best Spidey film since 2004’s Spider-Man 2, and certainly not the best Spider-Man film ever (the two Spider-Verse films top the chart for me), this is undoubtedly one of the Wall-crawler’s best outings yet. Personally, I’d put this on a par with 2021’s No Way Home, and while the two films take different approaches to Spider-Man’s adventures, they share the same balance of extraordinary action set pieces and truly heartfelt, emotionally rich performances.
Of course, Brand New Day - which has little in common with the comics arc of the same title, beyond Peter Parker’s identity as Spider-Man having been forgotten by everyone - exists entirely as a response to the previous film. No Way Home was released over four years ago, and the new movie picks up Peter’s story in roughly real time. While MJ and Ned have graduated from MIT, Peter’s life revolves fully around his vigilante adventures. That’s not to say he hasn’t moved on at all - he’s developed a strong working relationship with Detective DeWolff, even if she doesn’t know his real name - but he is largely isolated and pours everything into his crimefighting.
What strikes at first is how much older the young leads appear. Part of this is, doubtless, down to the fact that they’re playing young adults rather than pretending to be teens, but now that they’re pushing thirty, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon, all born in 1996, are distinctly more mature in looks and manner than they were when this started. The characters have grown up over the course of this franchise, which makes it all the more tragic that Peter has had to grow up, essentially, alone. All three put in exceptional performances, with Zendaya in particular dominating her scenes, which seem to take up much more of the runtime than the twenty minutes or so they actually do. The fact that she can hide her chemistry with her husband is remarkably impressive. Holland, luckily for him, doesn’t have to hide how besotted he is with Zendaya, meaning he has to impress us with every other aspect of his performance. His Peter Parker is at once more assured, more in control, and yet more vulnerable and fragile than ever before.
Another remarkably impressive element both of Destin Daniel Cretton’s direction and the script from Eric Sommers and Chris McKenna is that this is an incredibly busy story, filled with various heroes and villains, and yet never feels overstuffed. Holland’s Spider-Man shares screentime with both Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, with Sadie Sink also taking on a major role. (Now that Firestar is finally in the MCU… no, not really, but I won’t spoil her role here. To be honest, if you’ve got a solid idea of who she might be playing, you’re probably right.) Florence Pugh even makes a brief but memorable appearance as Yelena Belova, now in a more supervisory role. In spite of the various crossover characters, most of whom straddle the hero/antagonist divide, Spider-Man never feels like he’s sharing the spotlight; Holland never feels like part of an ensemble. The only other superhero film that’s truly pulled off this balancing act is last year’s Superman, and it’s a very tricky job.
Much of this is down to the strong but gracious performances of the other cast members. Bernthal, in particular, impresses as a somewhat toned-down but still accurate version of Punisher, Frank Castle, whose fractious relationship with Spider-Man is great to finally see in live action. Sadie Sink is, to the surprise of absolutely no one, staggeringly good in her role. It’s wonderful to see Severance’s Trammell Tillman as Damage Control head honcho Bill Metzger, and it doesn’t detract from his performance at all that the character is so obviously villainous.
For Spidey fans of my vintage, there are a lot of nicely nostalgic elements. We only get hints of Peter’s mutation into Man-Spider here, which is perhaps a shame for those of who wanted a full remake of Neogenic Nightmare from the 90s animated series, but there really wasn’t room for the film to go down that route. While it seems that Peter is able to control his new mutation eventually by embracing it, there’s also the potential for more developments down the line. It’s great to see Michael Mando return as Mac Gargan, having been set up as a new villain way back in Homecoming in 2017, now sporting the full biomechanical armour of the Scorpion. It’s a shame Tombstone only gets the briefest of cameos, but we can’t give everyone a plotline.
Brand New Day sets up a number of potentially very important elements for the MCU as it moves forward Avengers: Doomsday and whatever lies beyond the Multiverse-crashing events of this phase’s finale. Whether these will all be followed up, or whether some threads will be left dangling, as so may have been in the past, remains to be seen. Unlike so many of the later MCU movies, though, Brand New Day feels like it can comfortably stand alone, even as a sequel and the potential start of a new Spider-Man trilogy. A top-tier superhero film starring an actor at the absolute top of his game.
