After five long years, Spider-Man swings back into theaters this weekend with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the title alluding to a reset for Peter Parker after the events of 2021’s No Way Home.
While the movie drops us back in very soon after those events, it quickly takes us through four years of Peter’s life as he rebuilds Spider-Man’s image and forgoes contact with his girlfriend, Michelle Jones (Zendaya), and best friend, Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon). With no one in the universe remembering that Peter Parker exists—much less that he is Spider-Man—Peter has thrown himself entirely into his work, with no social life at all. It’s all Spider-Man, all the time.
As Spider-Man, he has picked up a new friendly relationship with NYPD detective Jean DeWolff, played with a lot of charm by The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas in a small role, and with Jon Bernthal returning as The Punisher. The latter friendly rivalry may just be the best part of the movie, with Frank Castle slipping surprisingly well into a PG-13 mold and even a comic relief without changing the core of the character.
But all work and no play makes Peter … what exactly? That’s the question as the opening montage of crimefighting over the course of four years includes frequent headaches and something going on with his wrist, until finally Peter collapses to find himself with organic web-shooters a la Tobey Maguire (or as Peter calls him, Peter 2).
It turns out that the emotional and physical stress Peter has been putting himself under, isolating himself from all loved ones, may just be having a strange physical effect that threatens to overtake him.
That brings in yet another Marvel Cinematic Universeside-character into this fold, as Peter seeks out Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) for help suppressing this worrisome new mutation.
Where the movie most struggles is this weight of the MCU on its back. The promise of Brand New Day for many people was seeing Spider-Man stripped down back to some of the basics of the character. He is no longer in an Iron Spider nano-tech suit, for the better. But the demands of the cinematic universe still threaten to strain the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to the breaking point, unable to escape the ever-present understanding in the background that there’s a larger universe his story is affecting.
That’s without even getting into the mysterious mind-hopping villain that Marvel has worked overtime to keep under wraps, to whatever level of success.
Despite these burdens, Brand New Day mostly moves freely within them, making the side characters feel more like natural appearances than shoehorned visits—after all, Banner is just right around the corner at Empire State University, and The Punisher is as New York as they come; why wouldn’t Spidey run into these guys when it makes sense for the story?
Where the movie most shines, and what makes it arguably the best Tom Holland Spider-Man film to date, is its darker tone, giving us some of the signature sad-boy Spider-Man that makes the character so compelling. This Spider-Man has not only suffered great loss, but also great self-sacrifice that taps into that feeling of the Sam Raimi films.
Holland cements himself here as the best Spider-Man on screen, or at least the best Peter Parker. While it may not quite top the Raimi films for you, it won’t be because of Holland.
It’s also brilliantly directed by Daniel Destin Cretton, who appears to have the sauce in spades and hopefully will establish a great new set of Spider-Man films that can stand alongside the Spider-Verse and Raimi collection.
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