Remember Peter Parker? By the end of the last instalment of the Spider-Man movies, No Way Home, we were the only ones who could. Following a characteristically complicated but deft collision of multiverses, young Peter (Tom Holland) had realised that the only way to save the world (again) was by getting Doctor Strange to cast a spell that made everybody – including his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) – forget that he’d ever been Spider-Man.
He therefore began his Brand New Day alone in his apartment with only a highly evolved piece of AI for company. Sure, he’d returned to his roots of capturing local crooks by the dozen. But while this restored the hero status that J. Jonah Jameson had motivelessly tried to undermine in No Way Home, it failed to cure his loneliness. ‘Spider-Man has to do the hard thing,’ he mused, ‘even if it breaks Peter Parker’s heart.’
And for much of the film, this was the crisis he was facing. Having resolved to go all-in with being Spidey at the expense of Peter, he found his arachnoid hormones increasing – symptoms of which included blinding headaches, out-of-control web manufacture and existential angst. As a result, he consulted Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), these days a good-natured university lecturer, on how he had kept the Hulk from taking him over and was told about a handy DNA-inhibiting device. But, as Banner said, what if this also inhibited traits that needed to be expressed, especially when fighting monsters?
Sadly, this warning proved prescient – because being just Peter not only rendered him a less effective fighting machine, but also left him feeling incomplete. The answer, he gradually came to understand, was to accept both parts of himself, however painful that might prove.
In other words, the Tom Holland Spider-Man films have followed a familiar trajectory for superheroes and the more ordinary kind alike. The first one, Spider-Man: Homecoming, was an essentially jolly affair in which Peter’s frank enjoyment of his powers formed part of a smart and funny teen movie, complete with awkward crushes and lots of milling around high-school lockers. The second, Spider-Man: Far from Home, featured a school trip to Europe but retained a similar tone – at least until towards the end, when it became more melancholy. This process then intensified in No Way Home where the jokes largely disappeared and the cost of being Spider-Man emerged. Now, in Brand New Day, we get a full-blown meditation on this cost – just as we’ve had on that of being Batman, Sherlock Holmes and even Hercule Poirot in various media over the years.
Personally, I prefer it when these people aren’t engaged in a deep inner reckoning – and for the first section here, the audience will surely miss Ned and MJ as much as Peter does. Yet, as ever, the Spider-Man franchise went about its chosen work with undeniable aplomb, helped greatly by Holland’s ability to reflect all aspects of his character’s predicament.
And, of course, there was plenty of other stuff going on too. For one thing, a stolen tank was heading towards a detention facility where many a supervillain was being held. For another, the tank turned out to be driven by an elderly female janitor whose mind had somehow fallen under the control of person or persons unknown.
Thanks to that aplomb I mentioned, the film is a complete blast
Nor was she the only one, as we discovered when we were constantly wrong-footed by goodies turning out to be baddies and vice versa. I’ll refrain from spoilers but I think I can say that when Spidey identified the criminal mastermind behind it all, he decided this was someone who hadn’t had the breaks and was to be healed rather than exterminated.
Both the wrong-footing and the urge to heal have been regular features of the previous Holland films. So, despite the title, and the presence of a brand new director in the shape of Destin Daniel Cretton, this one can’t be called a startlingly fresh take. The same applies to the many swinging scenes and spectacular fights, which by now (and perhaps unfairly) feel less like eye-popping revelations of what cinema can do and more like the return of old friends.
Thanks to that aplomb I mentioned, however, the result is still a complete blast. Granted, it probably won’t make much sense to people who haven’t seen its predecessors, and even they might have a few head-scratching moments if they – like your reviewer – lack an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: 38 films and counting, plus 17 TV series. Even so – and I don’t mean this in the least pejoratively (and nor should anyone who isn’t a colossal snob) – Brand New Day is a triumph of Hollywood professionalism.
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