Images courtesy of Sony Pictures
SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY– 4 STARS
LESSON #1: ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER— There are a great many people who believe in the expression transposed across proverbs to songs saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” In the five years since the smash hit Spider-Man: No Way Home, folks have dearly missed the familial world of Spider-Man. In this day and age of entertainment and content, five years is virtually an eternity. For the fussy and cranky sectors of fans, the wait for Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a frustrating test of patience and, unfortunately, fuel for the inferno of conjecture clickbait. For better and truer people, that anticipation time is filled with reflection and appreciation, fitting this lesson’s adage of devotion.
While his exploits alongside Doctor Strange in 2021 continued the Multiverse Saga, the universally approachable web-slinger, borrowed from Sony Pictures, avoided much of the oversaturation that resulted from three Marvel Cinematic Universe phases following the COVID pandemic. In that time, the greedy machine wised up, shrinking from as many as four films and TV shows a year to as low as two, which has done wonders for bringing some of the event-level specialness back to Marvel films. Spider-Man needed this break, and we did too. Arriving with the passage of time firmly welded to its ripened core, Spider-Man: Brand New Day rewards those hearts who arrive eager and encouraged.
The Magic Eraser events of Spider-Man: No Way Home recalibrated Spider-Man (Tom Holland) from an honorary Avenger back to the street-level crimefighter living in a dingy loft apartment in Queens with a secret identity and his own self-developed tech to deal with, as one surprise cameo-making presence labels, “small potatoes” problems. In partnering with NYPD Detective Jean DeWolff (overqualified Emmy winner Liza Colón-Zayas from The Bear) and occasionally Frank “The Punisher” Castle (Jon Bernthal, graduating to a movie assignment), Spider-Man has been apprehending heavies like Scorpion (a returning Michael Mando, who’s been waiting ten years and chomping at the bit to whip that tail on-screen since the end credits tease of Spider-Man: Homecoming), Tombstone (rapper Marvin Jones III), and the masked ninjas comprising the crime syndicate The Hand left and right. Showing off an energetic new level of action chops from the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings team of stunt coordinator/2nd unit director Pen Zhang and fight choreographer Xiangyang Xu and captured by daring, angular camera work from cinematographer Brett Pawlak (Just Mercy), crime statistics are down, and public approval for the vigilante couldn’t be higher.
LESSON #2: ABSENCE LEADING TO LONELINESS— Despite those successes, these long five years—accelerated by an opening montage of missed college years before Spider-Man: Brand New Day—have provided new substantiality to Tom Holland’s Peter Parker story in the form of enormous loneliness. No matter the victory or acclaim granted to him, Peter leads a painful and borderline ragged solitary life without his best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) and the love of his life, MJ Watson (Zendaya), who, like everyone else in the world, forgot Parker’s entire existence as a self-sacrificial measure to keep them safe. Peter keeps tabs on them both via social media, but, without the confidence to reconnect with them, their happiness only brings him more anguish. As Det. DeWolff prophetically warns him, “Being married to the job never ends well.”
As Spider-Man: Brand New Day progresses, those aforementioned “small potatoes” keep getting bigger and more baked in the theatrical oven. A spike in larger-scale attacks in the city targets sites connected to the Department of Damage Control, currently headed by Director Bill Metzger (fellow Emmy winner Tramell Tillman of Severence, a deep cut who might tip the hand of hardcore comic lovers to a possible bigger picture), who has come to accept and recruit Spider-Man as an ally to their governmental efforts of “redirecting destruction.” The unseen adversary behind these infiltration attempts appears to be using a form of bodily inhabitation (think Denzel Washington’s 1998 flick Fallen) as the proverbial puppet strings of choice to make innocent people do the dirty work.
Luckily, Peter Parker, with his heightened arachnid senses, appears to be immune to falling victim to this type of control, putting him in the best position to do the most help. However, with age and stress have come newly detected genetic evolutions of his own tainted DNA, something he desperately needs to get to the bottom of—helped by a little science chit-chat sidebar with Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo)—alongside the escalating mystery behind the Damage Control activities. With all of these burdens and motivations out there, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is chockful of action points and moving narrative parts.
LESSON #3: YOU NEED GOOD PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE— There may be a fair argument that this many kinetic machinations and dramatic namedrops, charted by returning franchise scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommer, now on their fourth venture with beloved hero, are too much for one movie and its stout 145 minutes. Yet, all of the inclusions—stable and surprise in nature—lend to the earnestness and seriousness of Spider-Man’s central mantra of “With great power comes great responsibility.” The advancement of maturity presented by Spider-Man: Brand New Day has made it so that Peter cannot achieve that totem alone anymore. He needs good people in his life as anchors, sounding boards, kindred spirits, and good, old-fashioned trusted allies. With the benefits of reciprocity keenly in mind, Peter needs to reach a supportive, apologetic, and vulnerable place where he can be that same type of positive presence for other people, even his opponents.
Simply put, this is a Spider-Man movie with its big boy pants on. The supreme surge of impactful emotions in Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes straight from the heart of Short Term 12 and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton, taking over from Jon Watts and shifting from his previous MCU assignment of the unfilmed Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. He, coupled with Michael Giacchino’s rich new tone given to the orchestrated score, seems to know precisely when to slow down for the right pauses to let the actors live in moments and punch more feelings than bad guys. A blockbuster film unafraid to chase that much satisfying solace as it does to deliver exhilaration is something to respect and cherish.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1414)
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