Spider-Man: Brand New Day: A Brand New Day For Peter Parker (Early Review)

It’s been ten years since audiences were first introduced to the MCU’s version of Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War through Tom Holland, an eager English actor who immediately brought a fresh energy to the role with his youthfulness and dance-trained physicality. Unfortunately, the promise of watching this Spider-Man gradually mature never quite materialized across his MCU run. Criticism that the character had become more “Iron Boy” than Spider-Man only grew as director Jon Watts’ trilogy progressed, eventually culminating in Spider-Man: No Way Home, a massive critical and commercial success that paradoxically revealed that previous cinematic iterations understood the fundamentals of the character better. At the same time, it reset Peter Parker to a more familiar status quo while still preserving a distinct MCU backstory.

Following the enormous success of No Way Home, Sony and Marvel reportedly had competing visions for the character’s future: Marvel pushed for a more personal, street-level story, while Sony wanted another large-scale spectacle. Seven MCU appearances, five years, a new director, multiple delays, and an uncredited rewrite from Justin Kuritzkes (Challengers) later, it’s a minor miracle that director Destin Daniel Cretton has managed to rediscover the emotional core of the series, while satisfying both studios’ ambitions, resulting in the web-head’s strongest live-action outing since Spider-Man 3 and the MCU’s best film since Avengers: Endgame. Mileage may vary on how much audiences feel the burden of interconnectivity here, but the greatest achievement of Spider-Man: Brand New Day is how confidently it re-establishes its world, tone, and sense of action, finally letting Spider-Man be Spider-Man.

Part of what makes this new approach feel so natural is that Cretton has always been a filmmaker interested in characters struggling to reconcile who they are with the people and circumstances that shaped them. From Short Term 12 to Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, his work often revolves around family, trauma, identity, and people who have difficulty expressing vulnerability, making him an unexpectedly perfect fit for a version of Peter Parker whose greatest conflict is no longer becoming a hero, but figuring out how to exist outside of the mask.

The film begins four years after the events of No Way Home. The world has forgotten Peter Parker, and an electric opening montage quickly brings the audience up to speed. It’s immediately apparent that Cretton is making up for lost time, giving Holland’s Spider-Man a tangible relationship with New York City and the faces of its inhabitants, as Parker fully commits himself to the role of Spider-Man. As he retreats from the world, he finds himself years removed from Ned (Batalon) and Mary Jane (Zendaya), leaving him with Jean Dewolff (Liza Colón-Zayas) as his only real acquaintance, a detective whom Spider-Man trades information with, and Jon Bernthal’s scene-stealing Punisher, who works surprisingly well within a PG-13 framework without being sanded down into self-parody. But as Peter’s personal life continues to shrink, a mysterious new threat forces him to confront his past while an abrupt, body-altering transformation begins to take hold.

At the risk of feeling narratively overstuffed, the city genuinely feels alive in a way that the MCU has never truly felt before. Ironically, despite filming primarily in England and Scotland, Brand New Day captures the closest feeling of what a Marvel New York City filled with heroes and villains should actually be: of course Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is a teacher at the university; of course The Punisher and Spider-Man have a relationship; of course Spider-Man fought ninjas like it was an average Tuesday. Keeping up with MCU lore has made interconnectivity feel like a chore, but Brand New Day correctly displays restraint when referencing the larger universe. While the overwhelming introduction of characters leaves a lingering concern that Marvel/Sony might never produce a Spider-Man film without cameos, the script naturally weaves together most of its threads.

Brand New Day understands Peter Parker’s isolation isn’t just a consequence of his sacrifice at the end of No Way Home, but a burden he carries to keep his loved ones out of harm’s way. For the first time, Peter has no expectations to live up to and no one to disappoint, allowing him to fully disappear into Spider-Man. The film’s central conflict isn’t whether Peter can be a hero, but whether he can allow himself to be a person again. What prevents the ship from steering off course is how naturally the supporting characters either mirror or challenge Peter’s conflict, with each character getting more than one moment to shine. Unlike previous Spider-Man villains, the threat here matters less as a mirror image of Peter Parker and more as a force that challenges his isolation.

Holland delivers his strongest performance as the character yet, playing Parker with a newfound restraint and sensitivity. His chemistry with the cast certainly helps, whether it’s with frequent on-screen collaborator Bernthal or Zendaya and Batalon, whose decade-long friendship lends itself a strong amount of weight as the audience spends most of the film witnessing them apart. The film thankfully utilizes the latter semi-sparingly, while also giving each actor a bit more breathing room to show off their comedic chops. No one is expecting this to be Zendaya’s best performance this year, but given her continued growth as an actor, it feels fair to lay to rest any detractors of her take on this character. No one else makes sense for this version of Mary Jane, especially after seeing how much history Holland and Zendaya bring to their dynamic.

With the change of direction comes a different approach to the action and camera work as well, with Cretton adjusting his hand-to-hand style of combat from Shang-Chi, while drawing inspiration from Insomniac’s Spider-Man. Aided by Holland’s new suit displaying prominent fabric wrinkles and shooting much of the action practically, there’s a greater sense of tactility than ever with the MCU’s Spider-Man, who is more fluid and visually dynamic than ever on-screen. Holland’s dance background continues to shine in his physicality, from minor expressive movements in scenes to delivering hand-to-hand, unmasked action choreography. Watching the character whip around the room throwing punches looks great, and the film knows exactly when and how to take the appropriate pivots back into dramatic territory, with one early instance introducing an impressive camera trick involving snap-pans and choreographed extras to shift gears.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a breath of fresh air that understands the character’s greatest strength has never been the scale of the world around him, but the humanity within it. After years of watching Peter Parker become increasingly tied to the larger MCU machine, Cretton’s film finds the balance that has always defined the character: a hero capable of impossible things who still struggles with ordinary human problems. It embraces the history surrounding this version of Spider-Man without allowing that history to define him, delivering the spectacle of No Way Home while remaining far more intimate and slightly downbeat. For the first time, Spider-Man’s future feels less defined by where he fits within the MCU and more by where Peter Parker goes next.

still courtesy of Sony Pictures

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J.A. Birney

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