The MontyVerse

In a movie filled with magic ninjas, a handful of rogues, mystery characters, and a Hulk, can Spider-Man: Brand New Day find the time to be a satisfying movie about Spider-Man?

That’s the question I found myself asking as I sat down to watch the latest installment of Sony and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man franchise, one that is often criticized for shoehorning in Avengers characters that take the spotlight away from our friendly neighborhood hero. I yearned for the days when Spider-Man stories focused on the dialectic balance between Peter Parker and Spider-Man, as the best Spidey tales usually show one of them having to lose for the other to win. Yes, Jon Watts’s “Home” trilogy did have that, but I feel like cameos and spectacle largely overshadowed it. This time around, Destin Daniel Cretton is in the directing chair, and he has something to prove, as this film truly feels like a brand new day for the character.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is Tom Holland’s fourth outing as the wall crawler, and this just may be his best performance yet! After the events of the last film, the world has forgotten Peter Parker. With no family, no friends, and no mentors, it’s a brand new day for Peter as he dedicates himself to fighting crime full-time as Spider-Man. The funny thing about life is that it’s full of changes, and as Peter runs from processing all that he has lost, he comes face to face with a new set of problems. The pressure of being consumed by his work full time and seeing his old friends move on without him sparks a change in Peter that he may not be able to control. However, he may need to figure it out sooner than later as a new threat emerges that is unlike anything he has seen before…mainly because he can’t see it. Can Peter find the balance between Spider and Man in time to stop a threat that is able to reach out and attack those closest to him?

The beauty of Spider-Man: Brand New Day is that on paper it looks overstuffed and bloated, and while it can feel that way at times, you see that the film was designed and built around servicing the character of Peter Parker. This is a welcome change for the MCU Spider-Man films; they’ve previously been packed with unnecessary characters, side plots, and jokes that move us away from the core character. Destin Daniel Cretton and Tom Holland have come together to give us an emotional Spidey story that focuses on the themes of grief, trauma, and change. While the film does feature a lot of characters, without spoiling anything, I feel like they are all used well in telling this story. Allowing Tom Holland to give the fans the film he believes they’ve been asking for.

Holland is a veteran Spider-Man at this point in his career. He has played the character eight times now between solo Spider-Man films and major Marvel crossovers. He has an ownership over this character that he exercises extremely well this time around. In Brand New Day, Holland brings a maturity to the role in what is his strongest performance yet as the character. It’s beautiful in a way because as we have watched this Peter grow from a squeaky-voiced Spider-Boy in Civil War into a life-hardened hero, we have also watched Tom grow as a performer, and this film is a testament to the work he has put in. The emotional weight rests solely on his shoulders this time, and he carries it with the weight of a pro. You can see a shift in him, and I am excited to see where he can take this character in the future.

While Peter is the focus of this film, we do have a talented cast of characters joining him to aid or ail in his adventure…or, in Frank Castle’s case, both. I loved the inclusion of Liza Colón-Zayas as classic Spider-Man character Jean DeWolff, one of Spider-Man’s most famous allies yet to make a live-action debut until now. Colón-Zayas is hot off a career-defining role as Tina Marrero on The Bear, a performance that has earned her critical praise and Emmy gold. She enters the world of superheroes in a role that perfectly suits her style, and she adds a layer of New York authenticity to a film that sometimes feels like NY by way of Glasgow. Detective DeWolff is a small but pivotal role that shows how Peter, even in his masked life, is still putting distance between people, even the ones who consider him friends. Colón-Zayas is used perfectly here, as her innate authenticity and likability make you enjoy this character and their rapport with the web head.

Returning to the franchise are Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds, Peter Parker’s former best friend, and Zendaya as MJ, Peter’s former love who doesn’t even remember he exists. After the Shakespearean tragedy that is the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, I was hoping we would take a break from these characters for a movie. I do think they are utilized extremely well here and appear for the right amount of time. They are here to show the weight of Peter’s sacrifice and to show the dangers of staying frozen in your trauma while the world around you keeps moving. Zendaya is spectacular here, showing us a more mature and different MJ than we have seen in the earlier films. It almost feels like she is a different character here, and the movie uses that in the narrative to explore her new dynamic with Spider-Man.

Tramell Tillman is great as the calm, cool, and collected William ‘Bill’ Metzger. Tillman is a welcome addition to any ensemble. Here, he utilizes his effortless cool to contrast the lightning-fast pace. He gives you so much as a performer even when he is playing a character that gives you nothing. The list of Spider-Man villains in this is long, but I will say the standout was the returning Michael Mando as Mac Gargan aka Scorpion. I really loved to see him come back and do more this time around, and his fight scenes with Spider-Man were vicious and fun.

I would love to talk about Sadie Sink’s character and her performance in detail but that is simply impossible to do without spoiling some things. I will say that I enjoyed her in the movie.

Now, this wouldn’t be an MCU Spider-Man film without the addition of some additional heroes. In the past, this was the biggest problem I had with the previous Spider-Man films, but I am happy to report that I really enjoyed the inclusion of the Punisher and the Hulk in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Both characters were used well in the story, and they represent the darkest possible outcomes on both sides of Peter’s current internal struggle. Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle represents the darkest pits of grief and despair and what happens when you let it consume you. While Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk represents the monster inside, constantly fighting to come out, and what happens to everything around when it does.

It is really great to see Ruffalo, and I think his conversations with Peter help to remind us just how far Peter has come intellectually in the past 4 years. The return of the savage Hulk is one fans have been wanting for quite some time, and the Jade Giant does not disappoint here. Having a heavyweight throwdown with Spider-Man…and I guess Punisher is there too. Speaking of Mr. “let me tell you something,” Bernthal did the impossible and allowed the movie to use Frank Castle in a fun new way. Yes, he is still the same Bernthal-based tough guy, but his interactions with Peter are pure comedic gold, due in no small part to the chemistry between Bernthal and Holland. I want to give Jon props for allowing the movie to poke fun at the absurdity of The Punisher despite how precious he tends to be about the character.

Listen, we were never going to get an MCU Spider-Man film without some extra characters, and this time it works better than most others. The Punisher began his long publication history in a Spider-Man comic as an antagonist, and The Hulk has shared plenty of panels with the wall crawler to justify his presence here. Banner helps Peter learn more about the physical changes he is going through, and Frank gives Peter some tough love about loneliness and the cost of waging a one-man war on crime.

Destin Daniel Cretton deserves a lot of praise for the success of this film. When he took over directing duties for this fourth installment, he stated that Spider-Man meant a lot to him and that it was his favorite character. That passion oozes off the screen in every action sequence and character moment, mixing the love of a fan with the clear vision of a confident director. He knew exactly the type of Spider-Man movie he wanted to make, and I think he achieves it both in story and spectacle.

The detail that got me is one shot: Cretton told THR that the trailer beat where Spidey dives into the Hand took at least 65 takes at 420 frames per second, all to match specific comic covers and panels frame for frame. That tells you exactly where his head’s at. You don’t burn 65 takes on one moment unless you’re a source-material nerd chasing an image you’ve had in your head since you were a kid.

The most interesting thing about how Brand New Day is shot might be who’s shooting it. This is DP Brett Pawlak’s fourth movie with Destin Daniel Cretton, going all the way back to Short Term 12, a tiny, handheld, deeply intimate little film from long before either of them touched Marvel. So the question I had going in wasn’t whether they could make Spider-Man look big. It was whether that faces-first indie instinct survives a tentpole. Everything they’ve said points the same way: they didn’t want it looking like the last three. To their credit, it absolutely does not. They bring a lot of unique and fun visuals to this franchise, including in-mask POV shots as well as the return of practical web swinging in camera.

Destin’s past experiences and indie background allowed for a lot of practical sets and effects to be used. They turned Glasgow’s city center into a stand-in for New York and built the big street set-piece out of real streets. While I applaud the use of some practical sets combined with Pinewood studio sets, there are times when it felt like I was looking at a faux New York; however, it might be because I am a New Yorker.

The action was the part I was most curious about, and it really comes down to supervising stunt coordinator Peng Zhang. He was Cretton’s fight choreographer on Shang-Chi and spent years working next to the late Brad Allan, so pulling him in feels like a real choice to carry that grounded, hands-on style into a Spider-Man movie. Cretton keeps saying he wanted it more street-level, and the thing that got me is that the Jackie Chan stunt team is on this one, with Chan himself acting as action director and stopping by set during rehearsals. I really think this approach helped to elevate the action in the film, as the fight scenes all felt real. Real acrobatic, contact combat built in around the web-slinging instead of VFX bodies getting chucked through the air. This leads to one of the best Spider-Man fight sequences in the third act that utilizes the character in a fresh and exciting way.

While action makes the movie move, story is what makes it sing. I think the emotional impact of this story is what really hooked me. I resonated deeply with this damaged version of Peter Parker as we see him trying to process the loss of May and his friends by running away from it. Despite having great power and the responsibility to use that power, Peter learns the hard way that eventually dams break, and try as we might, we can either process our emotions or let them destroy us. These are very heavy themes to tackle for a kid-friendly summer blockbuster, and the film filters them through a superhero lens in a way that is satisfying for older audiences and approachable for younger audiences.

The use of Hulk to show that no matter how hard you try to suppress emotions, chemically or mentally, they will always boil to the surface unless we deal with them. The use of the Punisher to show the toll on the man after succumbing to a life sentence of loneliness and how that chips away at your soul. The use of an actual mask to represent Peter masking his deep sadness from those around him. I think they are brilliant metaphorical tools used in service of telling a story about mental health and the physical effects it has on the body. Being lonely could kill you; it’s okay to let people in.

I deeply connected with this damaged version of Peter Parker because his struggle has very little to do with superpowers, villains, or saving New York. It is about what happens when we mistake keeping busy for actually moving forward. Peter can bury himself in being Spider-Man, hide behind the mask, and swing from one crisis to the next, but eventually, he has to stop and deal with everything he has lost.

To me, that is the essence of Spider-Man. He suffers, struggles, rebuilds, and keeps moving forward. Not because the pain goes away, but because he refuses to let it strip away his humanity. Brand New Day understands that Peter does not become a hero by shutting everyone out. He becomes one by realizing that he cannot do it alone.