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A Brand New Day for a Bold New Spider-Man

The persistent motif across the MCU’s Spider-Man movies has been growing up. It began by following the titular hero through his latter years of high school, and reached its peak in Spider-Man: No Way Home, in which by the end Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is thrust into adulthood rather dramatically by the death of his aunt and the choice to have everybody forget he exists -including his beloved MJ (Zendaya). That film concluded with a very humbled Peter deprived of most of his connections and resources, living a solitary existence in a squalid apartment while fighting crime as his alter ego, revealing his true identity to absolutely nobody. An unusually bold choice for a franchise that likes to position its heroes as privileged celebrities. The harsh realities of maturity were on his doorstep, and it promised tremendous development for the series’ future.
That promise is delivered on in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, for the most part. While some of the usual Marvel traits in script, structure, and outside references come in and muddy things up a touch -especially in the second act- it’s a movie that feels more in the spirit of the friendly neighbourhood web-slinger than any live-action movie since Sam Raimi was at the helm. In the first hour especially it takes its cues from Spider-Man 2 and does an apt job of it, honing in on the character’s isolation and lovelorn sadness in a very resonating way. And while that tone and some of the most interesting story points aren’t maintained as well through the rest, it proves to be by far the most curious and thoughtful of this recent batch of Spidey movies.
It does indeed pick up where No Way Home left off. Peter lives a completely anonymous existence protecting New York City while quietly mourning the life he lost with MJ, who over the span of four years he intermittently observes through the social media MIT journey of his former friend and her roommate Ned (Jacob Batalon). As Spider-Man though he wears a mask of courage and charisma in his relationship with the NYPD and an organization called Damage Control, with whom he works to uncover the secret of a telepathic entity that has been causing mayhem in the city via possessing the minds of various individuals -though for whatever reason cannot access Peter’s. As he investigates this mystery whilst trying to keep down his despair, Peter also must contend with a personal mystery around a strange evolution of his own powers.
From the start, the movie grabs your emotional engagement with how it sets its scene for this new grown-up Spider-Man. An early montage tracking through those college years that Peter misses out on, contrasting his vicarious experience of Ned and MJ with both his thrilling superheroics and his lonely existence is one of the strongest sequences the MCU has ever delivered. Credit goes to director Destin Daniel Cretton, taking over from Jon Watts. Marvel is known for poaching directors from the indie space to mould into their studio style -but the first act of this movie, and specifically the scenes of Peter longing to interact with his old life and romance, is the first time that those low-key dramatic indie instincts have really manifested in one of these movies. Holland also plays it particularly well -he has grown substantially as an actor and brings honest depth to this formerly pretty mundane character. He is at last a Peter who is relatable, one of the key facets of the character historically and it makes him a more engaging hero, especially up against such a mysterious threat as the one that haunts him here -quite literally, it is often a little freaky the way this entity interacts with him through random people.
At the same time it is a choice that humanizes those random people -this being one of the better Marvel movies in a while to give a face to the public and an identity to Spider-Man’s sphere of protection. It is referenced bluntly in a scene where Spider-Man goes to Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) for information (her “office” is amusingly a bathhouse) and she notes that compared to other heroes -herself and the Avengers included- he is “small potatoes”, a hero for New York. Yet the film takes some pride in that, in both the glimpses it allows of New York life around Spider-Man and a surprisingly evocative end credits collage of corners of the city -replacing the scrapbook style of the Watts films and further establishing a sense of maturity for this hero.
Going hand in hand with this is a starker severity of his conflict and personal stakes. Throughout, the first act this is played the strongest, Peter’s arc, his principles and emotions and how they impact his physiological changes, organically in tandem with the pressure of his mysterious foe -culminating in a great, even somewhat dark plot development. The trajectory of all of this does however diminish a bit with the arrival of Sadie Sink into the film and more complicating layers being added to the story at the expense of its tonal consistency. It is here where the movie plays some of the typical Marvel moves towards setting up future MCU projects, but to its credit does keep things fairly contained, beyond a sequence involving Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk that makes for some fun action but is certainly a distraction. While the arrival of Sink’s character brings about a neglect in focus on Peter’s evolutionary issues (including new organic webs), it doesn’t profoundly touch the heart of that relationship with MJ -who does feature into the film of course- and who is handled with incredible tact. She and Spider-Man get some scenes together, and very cute ones at that, but when it comes to a boil: the crux of the former romance between them given the new context- the film opts to go in a genuinely surprising direction that may not be a crowd-pleaser but is unmistakably the right choice. One that does a real service to both characters.
Meanwhile, the material around Sink’s critical character -a spoiler, regrettably- isn’t totally disconnected from Peter’s personal struggle, and though she is on some level a gimmick, her drama and story is given pretty severe weight as the mystery around her and her motivations comes down. It’s not exactly unpredictable where it goes but even still the starkness of it is noteworthy. Through it, Sink plays well with some pretty intense material.
In contradiction to that, an unexpected delight of the movie is Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher. This is his first appearance in a Marvel movie but he blends seemingly into the fabric of the universe despite being a more cynical character, and his brusque rapport with Spider-Man is a distinct highlight of the film. They are essentially each other's one friend, and Holland and Bernthal maintain an appropriate sardonic yet endearing chemistry to that end. 
It is a relationship that carries the movie through doldrums of plotting and another weak real villain at the heart of things. But arriving at the climax, there is another relationship for Peter that proves instrumental and in a deceptively simple way. There is a space in his mind that the movie builds to and once it is revealed, the soft power of it and the value it espouses hits in a very palpable way. Especially so in the context of very high stakes that -even for "small potatoes" New York- feel heavy, in part due to a cascade of visceral emotional anguish that spurs them. But within this a key is unlocked to Peter's character, in spite of all these changes, and to how he might inspire change in others. Overtly emphasizing alienation, heartache, and loss, and the difficult process of not letting these define oneself, it is the most effectively down-to-earth, humbling vision of Peter that this series has ever shown. And it is painted as his power just as much as the web-slinging. It feels loosely of a spirit with James Gunn's Superman -I wonder if Cretton and his collaborators were directly inspired.
And Peter is seen to be carrying it forward by the end, accepting his state while gradually making the steps to move out of his misery. He is never going to be the Spider-Man of those first three movies again, but he is on his way to a fitting equilibrium. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the first "Spider-Man 4" -of all the movie franchises this hero has spotlighted they have never gotten this far before. Some might knock the MCU series for taking three movies to arrive at the popular status quo that Sam Raimi delivered on in one. But those prior movies serve to make this one richer, and inform the pathos so central to this character journey that you can't help be grateful for them. Maybe that is a sign of maturity as well.

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