Spider-Man: Brand New Day review — Emotional drama among the best moments of this superhero film
Under the stewardship of director Destin Daniel Cretton, the film isn’t as synthetic as the franchise’s previous instalments — especially the previous two films starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man. Brand New Day is more grounded than those movies, less bothered by multiverses and mayhem and more concerned with the characters.
Much of Spider-Man: Brand New Day is dedicated to an internal conflict Peter Parker is having between his two personalities. As his Spider-Man powers get stronger, he finds that his inner child is being eroded.
The new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a mixed bag. It’s both conventional and kinetic, sombre and silly. Under the stewardship of director Destin Daniel Cretton, the movie isn’t as synthetic as the franchise’s previous instalments — especially the previous two films starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man.
Brand New Day is more grounded than those movies, less bothered by multiverses and mayhem and more concerned with the characters. The action is spectacular (and most definitely inspired by the popular Spider-Man video games by Insomniac), the superhero shenanigans are reliably rote, but Brand New Day is at its best when it’s being a Bollywood emotional drama from the mid-2000s
There was a reason why those films struck a chord with millennials. Many of the characters were unexpectedly vulnerable; they cried, they hurt and when the going got especially tough, they sang ballads while gazing into the middle distance. There is a scene midway through Brand New Day in which Peter Parker has his heart shattered into a million pieces. He races to a rooftop during an evening downpour and swings silently from one building to another as his tears dissolve in the rain. You could almost imagine Atif Aslam wailing in the background.
But these are the film’s most affecting moments. Peter’s world, much like our own, changed irrevocably at around the same time. In Spider-Man: No Way Home — the bloated 2021 blockbuster that relied more heavily on fan service than friendly neighbourhood superheroics — Peter was forced to wipe the memories of his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya). He still pines for them five years later, picking up flowers every day in the blind hope that he crosses paths with the love of his life. You can tell that fans care about the characters; the moment that Zendaya is introduced in Brand New Day drew gasps from a packed morning show at a Delhi multiplex.
Superhero dilemmas
It helps that the two stars (Holland and Zendaya) have incredible chemistry. Holland, in particular, is so good as Peter that you almost get the sense that this is the only character he is capable of playing. He certainly left something to be desired in his performance as Telemachus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. In Brand New Day, however, he is locked in. Much of the movie is dedicated to an internal conflict he’s having between his two personalities. As his Spider-Man powers get stronger, he finds that his inner child is being eroded.
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Dilemmas such as this are fairly routine in superhero cinema. The very act of creating an alter ego indicates serious personality disorders. Peter is vehement about never taking off his mask in public in Brand New Day, but over time, he begins to let people into his secret world. Among the first to gain his trust is Frank Castle, or The Punisher, played in typically swaggering fashion by Jon Bernthal. But barring his closest allies, the person that Peter connects with the most in this movie is the villain of the piece.
Tom Holland and Zendaya have incredible chemistry as Spider-Man and MJ.
Marvel’s marketing makes it impossible to reveal who this is — since their identity was kept a secret in the trailers, it shall be kept a secret in this review — but suffice it to say that the antagonist in Brand New Day is perhaps one of the best that the Marvel universe has ever seen.
Not only are they motivated by pure emotions, but they are also an example of how franchises should seed the future without pandering to the audience. The character will no doubt have a larger role to play in future, but at no point do they seem underutilised in Brand New Day.
Locked in a bubble
Unlike the world-destroying and universe-melding climaxes that we’ve become accustomed to, the third act of this movie zeroes in on just two characters baring their souls to each other in a literal bubble. They’re isolated from the chaos of the outside world, united by shared trauma and loss.
Spider-Man has always been a particularly human character, which is perhaps why he has survived, in some way or another, for over 25 years on the big screen. In this day and age of muscle-men pretending to be superheroes, here’s a movie in which a regular 20-something like — a nice kid, as Frank says in one scene — shows what true heroism really is.
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It’s unfortunate, then, that Brand New Day’s procedural plot doesn’t have the same impact as the other bits. Dotted between the dramatic moments and the slick action sequences are scene after scene of Spider-Man tracking down something called V-Max.
To do this, he has conversations with several characters about mumbo-jumbo like gamma rays, R-DNA, and something called “inhibitors”. None of it makes much sense, nor is it particularly engaging. It’s merely a mechanic to get the plot from point A to point B. These scenes stick out in what is otherwise a perfectly pleasant crowd-pleaser, a movie that finally gives the character the emotionally resonant and visually thrilling adventure that has eluded him for nearly a decade.
