- Title: Spider-Man: Brand New Day
- IMDb: link
Spider-Man: Brand New Day feels like director Destin Daniel Cretton and screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers grabbed everything in the kitchen and blended it together, not sure of how exactly it would turn out. What they deliver is film that needs to both be a new start and a finale for Tom Holland as the Wall-Crawler, that needs to wrap-up the threads left dangling after Spider-Man: No Way Home, open up the Spidey world for several existing Marvel characters including Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), Yelena (Florence Pugh), and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and introduce a key new character pivotal to Marvel’s non-Spidey plans moving forward.
At times, especially early on during our montage of Spider-Man in action, and in the climactic battle at the end, scenes, staging, and key tech feel directly ripped from the Spider-Man Sony games highlighting some pretty good action in some obvious CGI of Spider-Man clad in a costume closest to his classic comic look.
After cyber-stalking his old friends (Zendaya and Jacob Batalon) for their entire time at MIT, Peter’s itch for connection leads him into their world not realizing doing so will put them in danger. The pair, MJ more than Ned, will play into the larger themes and where the film ultimately wants to end up, but even they at times get swallowed up by the rest of what’s happening to poor Spidey.
The heart of the story is a lonely Peter Parker spending four years of his life concentrating on being Spider-Man and becoming the hero of New York City. However that isolation, along with an out-of-control mutation (which is somehow better explained in the trailer than the film) of our favorite Web-Head, lead to some concerning behavior which he attempts to control with some advance tech he builds himself. How he does this, or pay for his apartment or various other expenses, is a complete mystery as Peter appears to be a recluse without any notable income.
At the same time, Spider-Man is dealing with a new villain taking over the bodies of random people and using them in attacks against Damage Control who house and experiment on acquired villain tech. Having run through the big Spidey villains in other films, Brand New Day offers a different type of story that gives us someone for our hero to fight, although their motivations will prove far more complicated than lesser characters likes Scorpion (Michael Mando) and nameless Hand ninjas who also get thrown into the script for Spider-Man to beat on.
In throwing so much plot and angst into the stew, not everything works, but enough does for an enjoyable time. It’s not the best of the Holland Spidey films, and only sort of works as a closing chapter (as we know we’ll see him in Avengers: Doomsday and likely Avengers: Secret Wars as well). The Spider-Man / Punisher sequences are certainly a highlight along with Spidey’s need for reconnection to his friends (when it isn’t buried underneath the larger possessing villain story which, while challenging to our hero, isn’t always visually stimulating for the audience).
Although it’s fun to see them, I don’t know that we need either Hulk or Black Widow in the film as they feel like a bit of fan service and plot-serviceable NPC characters to simply injected into the script drop a bit of needed knowledge and/or short-term obstacles as you play Spider-Man through the latest video game. And more than any Spider-Man movie, this feels like a video game.
As for our key new character played by Sadie Sink, she gets her own arc in the film (helped immensely by Peter’s own trauma at a pivotal moment that brings back another familiar face), but through much of Spider-Man: Brand New Day she’s far more plot device than three-dimensional character. Frankly put, she’s more important to the MCU moving forward than she is here where she’s only a fraction of the character she will likely become.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day gives us more street-level Spidey action than maybe all of the other Holland films together (although most of it is in montage) and we also get to see a popular Spidey not being hunted or attacked daily from any of the city’s daily periodicals. That’s a nice change. When ranking Holland’s films, I don’t see a way where it doesn’t end up in last place. However, even if it is a bit of an overstuffed extravaganza, at the heart of it there’s some good Spidey beats and a hero that’s still quite enjoyable rooting for.