Marvel’s latest promises a fresh start for Peter Parker but delivers a familiar mix of action, cameos and franchise setup
By Dana Braga/Boston Movie News
Tom Holland … again.
We just spent three hours with him basically playing Peter Parker in sandals as Odysseus’s son Telemachus in “The Odyssey.” Now he’s back in the red-and-blue suit for his seventh run as Spider-Man. At this point, even Peter Parker looks tired of Peter Parker. He’s a drip. Unfortunately, so is “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
Fans are already calling the latest Marvel entry a return to form. Spoiler alert: The form never arrives, unless you dig 2 hours and 25 minutes of Holland looking sad. (I know I’m in the minority here, so save your outrage).
To be fair, there is an intriguing movie buried somewhere beneath the obligatory CGI destruction, franchise housekeeping, and setup for whatever Marvel has planned next (“Avengers: Doomsday,” coming in December and more… there’s always more).
The action picks up four years after “No Way Home” with a lonely Peter coping with the fallout of Doctor Strange’s multiverse-saving spell that made everyone forget his existence. Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) is gone, his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) doesn’t know him, and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) is just a stranger in a bodega. Peter keeps tabs on his friends via social media, watching as they attend MIT, graduate and roll into their twentysomething lives. He hopes they’ll remember him … someday.
This is Holland’s first solo Spider-Man outing without director Jon Watts, who helmed “Homecoming,” “Far From Home” and “No Way Home.” Taking over is Destin Daniel Cretton (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”), who, alongside writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, tackles one of Marvel’s more compelling premises: What’s left when Peter Parker has nothing to come home to?
It’s an unexpectedly human setup. Peter isn’t just grieving Aunt May. He’s grieving the death of his old life, too. The only identity he has left is Spider-Man, and so he throws himself into his work. He’s been swinging through Manhattan’s neighborhoods rescuing kids, nabbing muggers and rounding up robbers, reducing the Big Apple’s crime rate to its lowest in years, we’re told. At the end of every day, he leaves flowers at May’s grave.
Peter’s emotional unraveling even manifests physically as his powers go haywire. His arachnid DNA is evolving in ways he can’t control. Peter has long used mechanical webshooters, but now organic web splooge shoots out of his wrists, and he suffers migraines and blackouts. None of this is exactly subtle. But it’s at least interesting, and yet the movie seems almost afraid to linger there.
Instead, “Brand New Day” defaults to the same well-worn Marvel playbook. Eventually, the script charges Peter with untangling a web of deceit at something called the Department of Damage Control and pits him against a villain who uses mind control. There’s enough superhero business to make you forget the movie ever had something on its own mind. Every time the story threatens to become an intimate character study, another noisy action sequence barges in or another superhero makes a cameo to remind us this is still intellectual property first and drama second.
Cretton asks Holland to do something these movies have rarely demanded of him: act through grief instead of quips. So, of course, there is plenty of bleeding and brooding because anguish is easier to wear than to inhabit. Holland has always excelled at Peter’s nervous earnestness, and the heavier dramatic lifting exposes the limits of his range, a problem that also surfaced in “The Odyssey.” One upside: Spidey spends a lot more time shirtless here than in previous outings.
With great power comes great abs.
The supporting cast occasionally injects some life into the movie. Liza Colón-Zayas shows Peter some friendly care as Detective Jean DeWolff, while Jon Bernthal’s Punisher stomps in with just enough bad-boy swagger to keep the moms in the audience from checking their watches. And then there’s Florence Pugh, popping up as Yelena Belova, conducting Avengers’ business while submerged in a Russian bath. And the Hulk? Yeah. He’s there, too, adding nothing.
What’s frustrating isn’t that “Brand New Day” fails. It’s that it keeps showing flashes of the better movie it refuses to become. In many ways, Peter’s journey suggests the greatest superpower isn’t shooting webs, controlling minds, or swinging through the concrete canyons of New York without a net—it’s maturity. Accepting grief. Letting people in. Choosing to be Peter Parker as much as Spider-Man.
And maybe it’s time to give the guy a new girlfriend. The poor kid could use … a win.
‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’
Rating: PG-13 for sequences of action/violence and some language.
Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Jacob Batalon, Sadie Sink, Liza Colón-Zayas
Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Writers: Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters everywhere
Grade: B-
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