Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review – Tom Holland’s Finest Outing in the Mask

Of the actors to play Spider-Man on the big screen, Tom Holland has always been the most perfectly cast. A dancer by training, and a gymnast by hobby, he gets the athleticism in a way few other performers have ever attempted. But he also brings the zippy joie de vivre, an exuberance of youth, that has informed the character’s enduring popularity across generations.

So it was always a bit of a shame that Holland never got to play Peter Parker. Not fully. I have a lot of admiration for his high school trilogy, as indicated in past reviews. They brought a sprightliness which previously eluded the character in cinema. But perhaps because the Marvel Studios films needed to so forcefully distinguish themselves from what were then fairly recent variations on the Web-Head, they shied away from the things past iterations got right, most especially Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, and their own era’s sense of longing and sacrifice. It’s those soapy melodramatic stakes that come with adolescence and thwarted dreams that makes that 2000s trilogy so special. As a consequence, Holland’s Peter and Zendaya’s MJ instead existed in a largely idyllic alternative universe with a sitcom setup where they had the resources and flippant expectations of the billionaire set—which Peter more or less was as the chosen heir apparent to Iron Man and his money is magic power fantasy. It took three films to crowbar Holland’s wallcrawler out of that synergetic trap. 

I’m so glad they did, because the opening 15 minutes of reorientation into Peter’s changed status quo during this weekend’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day is something of a revelation. For this extended prologue, and large passages throughout the rest of the movie, Brand New Day is as much a homecoming for Spidey as the previous flick bearing that name. At last Holland is liberated to play the joy, as well as the agony and sorrow. It’s this multifaceted triptych that makes Peter’s crucible of growing up so relatable to anyone who ever did the same. And when Brand New Day focuses on just the intimate, messy, and definitely soapy fixations that come with that experience—when the movie is about Peter, MJ, and the other bestie Ned (Jacob Batalon)—Holland’s web has never been richer. It’s even strong enough to survive the weight of a lot of obtusely shaped MCU baggage somewhat hurriedly thrown into the silk trappings.

Operating as kind of the greatest hits of the Raimi trilogy all wrapped into one, Brand New Day finds a Peter Parker who has forsaken love, as well as friendship and all other humanity as he throws himself into full-time superhero-ing. If you do not recall the full details from Spider-Man: No Way Home, that movie concluded with Doctor Strange wiping the memory of Peter Parker from everyone in the world, including Ned and MJ. Before the magic trick (done to save the world for timey-wimey reasons), Peter swore he’d find his two soulmates and reintroduce himself. Yet after losing Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) in the same movie to the Green Goblin, he instead decides to not tell anyone his secret identity and carry the burden of Spider-Man alone.

Cut to five years later and he’s kept his self-denying promise. MJ and Ned have grown up happy and oblivious at MIT before coming back to the city, and Peter has rather miraculously been able to afford a ratty studio apartment despite having no seeming occupation other than crimefighting. Through sun, rain, and snow, we see him battle supervillains and the seasons alongside his only work colleagues, Detective Jean Wolf (Liza Colón-Zayas) and gun-nut vigilante Punisher (a phenomenal Jon Bernthal).

Peter tells himself it’s enough, but upon seeing MJ for the first time in years in-person, his lie melts away like old webbing, leading to an identity crisis of sorts where his body rejects his bachelorhood faster than you can say neurotic New Yorker. He also has his head turned in other ways by a new enigmatic threat in town played by Sadie Sink, who I can say almost nothing about without it counting as a spoiler.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the first MCU Spidey directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. It is also the best looking Spidey has been since the days of Raimi, and that is no coincidence. Cretton brings a quieter, more measured gaze into Peter Parker’s world, still keeping the lightheartedness the MCU is known for, but painting in grays and blacks, and the shadings of life. The web-slinging and swinging through Manhattan is excellent, but it is how Cretton and Holland find time at last to breathe in the air of those canyons, and how they can evoke both wonder and loneliness in a lad like Peter as he broods on MJ or is exhilarated about his latest victory, which gives them a magic. That and Holland, who feels in better command of the character than ever before.

Going long stretches of Brand New Day wearing the mask and relying only on his body language and an almost Tramp-like sense of physical comedy (fitting since Cretton name-checked Chaplin as a reference in our new magazine) goes a long way to realizing Spidey’s Bugs Bunny influences. Peter can mope, but as Spidey he can also dominate a room with good cheer that isn’t just childish; it’s also a defense mechanism that keeps the character this movie well-balanced and grounded.

The other aspect that unsurprisingly works strongly in the movie’s favor is when, after some due patience, Holland is finally sharing scenes again with Zendaya. Peter and MJ, despite what some voices at Marvel editorial would like to hear, have for decades been the heart of Spidey mythos, and the obvious chemistry Holland and his real-life wife share only deepens that core in Brand New Day. It’s something of an irony, then, that the young married couple are forced to play total strangers—at least from MJ’s perspective—in their fourth Spidey outing. But this inversion of the soap opera dynamic where now it’s the whole world that has amnesia, rather than our hero, makes the longing and awkward pauses between the two burn with meaning. Whatever happens in the narrative they’re handed, the subtext is undeniable that they’re the true endgame around these parts.

So it’s something of a shame when Brand New Day cannot entirely drill down on just that human level where Peter, fitfully and graspingly, attempts to rekindle his kinship with both MJ and Ned, and reconcile that with his Web-Head activities. This being a superhero movie means there must needs be a villain and action sequences but, without giving anything away, the film becomes heavily preoccupied in large swaths of its run-time with subject matter fairly divorced from Peter’s central dilemmas. Instead the movie becomes a springboard to introduce new, long anticipated corners and mysteries of the MCU onto the screen. I cannot say who Sadie Sink plays, but you probably can predict it well before the revelation comes, which turns the third act of the movie into a kind of backdoor pilot for another Marvel saga entirely.

Sink is quite good in the role, and she and Holland have their own, more perilous chemistry, but the film at times feels cluttered with its meta-franchise obligations as a result. In other moments, it’s downright distracted, such as when Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk is needlessly and superfluously stuffed into the yarn almost purely for the trailer sizzle he provides, which along with all the other plates in the air leads to entire Peter-centric subplots, such as how his body is adapting to his anxiety and mental hang-ups, to feel somewhat lost in Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers’ busy screenplay. (Although if you squint you still get a better take on the Lizard archetype than what we got in The Amazing Spider-Man movie.) 

But while Sink and Hulk’s characters feel like standard MCU IP-building, Bernthal’s Punisher is a genuinely wonderful addition. One of the appeals of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and Jack Kirby comics is that New York City is a small town, made smaller too in the industry of superheroes. These folks are bound to run into each other, and Bernthal’s often troubled and tragic Frank Castle being recontextualized as Spidey’s quasi-demented, high-strung friend from work is a brilliant blending of the Marvel Universe tapestries. Bernthal imbues so much warmth, anger, and, well, humanity into only a handful of scenes.

That human element shared between Holland and Bernthal, or Holland and Zendaya, or Holland and Batalon, is where Brand New Day’s greatest strength lies. There’s an obvious common denominator there, and when it’s keyed into Holland’s register, this movie soars.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens on Friday, July 31.