Near the end of Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark says, “You mess with time, it tends to mess back.” Too bad Peter Parker (Tom Holland) had to learn that lesson the hard way in Spider-Man: No Way Home, when his attempt to make everyone forget his secret identity resulted in his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) being killed. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Peter deals with the fallout in ways that aren’t always pretty. I’m always instructed to avoid spoilers in these reviews, and in this case, the spoilers contain some of the best of this movie, but I’ll do my best.
The new film finds him living like a shut-in, only talking anonymously by phone to an NYPD detective (Liza Colón-Zayas) and only venturing out of his Queens apartment to foil criminals. He spends most of his time sadly following Ned (Jacob Batalon) on Instagram as he documents the crazy times he and MJ (Zendaya) are having at MIT. After Peter reunites with them following their graduation and return to New York, his superpowers start fritzing, resulting in inaccurate slinging of his spider webs and fits of uncontrollable rage. Logically enough, he consults Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) regarding the latter.
There are other pairings with Marvel superheroes here, but the best one is with Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal). While the movie’s PG-13 rating forces Frank to cut out the swearing he does on his TV show, the Punisher is still plenty salty when Spider-Man stashes MJ with him to keep her safe from the new villain. Frank isn’t wrong to call Peter a coward for pushing her away, though of course, when Frank lost his loved ones, he responded by shooting everybody. The filmmakers call out his crap as well, which is great.
This ties in, if not so neatly, with the main plot, as Spider-Man has to deal with a hidden villain who can take possession of anyone and make them do their bidding. The person behind this turns out to be a character that the Marvel movies have dealt with before, although this time, their motivations are much easier to understand than previously. They take control of both Banner and Castle and send them to kill Spider-Man, and they’re also responsible for a splendidly mean moment when Peter thinks he’s told MJ the truth about his identity. Aside from Killmonger in Black Panther, this person is the best bad guy in the whole Marvel universe.
The ideas are all here; the problem is the shape. Director Destin Daniel Cretton and fight choreographer Zhang Peng come over from Shang-Chi to assume the helm, and they create striking visuals (like the Hulk straining against the slender threads of Spider-Man’s web) as well as a fight sequence where Spidey takes on a sisterhood of red-clad ninjas — the sight of them leaping through the air toward him makes him say, “God, that’s cool.”
Unfortunately, the structure of this adventure means that the wall-crawler has to spend the entire third act undoing everything he did in the second. More than once I thought, “Another plot development?” It all feels overstuffed, and I dare say that there are other directors in Marvel’s stable who could have delivered a more streamlined version of this story.
How much do Spider-Man fans care about that, though? The story elements here both get Peter Parker’s story out of a holding pattern and set up stuff to come in the upcoming Avengers movie. The script recognizes that it’s not good for Peter to carry on his crime-fighting quest by himself, and so the evolution of his superpowers comes with evolution of his character. Time and future movies will tell whether the saga follows up on that, but it’s good for now.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Starring Tom Holland and Zendaya. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, based on Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s comics. Rated PG-13.
