Spider-Man: Brand New Day shouldn’t work. It tells too many stories with too many characters who have too many problems to all work in a single movie. Except it does. Somehow, someway, director Destin Daniel Cretton magically balances all of those things into a wholly satisfying and entertaining experience. There are some teeny tiny blips along the way, but ultimately they don’t take away from the whole. This is an awesome movie with a huge heart.
In Brand New Day, Peter Parker, played by Tom Holland, is still very much dealing with the consequences of the last film, No Way Home. In that film, he had to make everyone who ever knew him forget about him, so his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) went to college without him. Meanwhile, Peter became reclusive and focused on nothing but being Spider-Man. And so, Brand New Day opens with those first threads: Peter dealing with the loss of his friends, his friends growing up without him, and Spider-Man’s growth as a hero. From there, we very quickly meet the threat of the movie, a mysterious character eventually revealed to be played by Sadie Sink. The character has the ability to jump from person to person, see inside their mind, and she’s using the power to look for something. Spider-Man wants to stop her, and while he tries to do it on his own, he will eventually have to seek out the help of two characters who also have had to deal with trauma and loss: Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, played by Jon Bernthal, as well as Dr. Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo. Spider-Man tinkering (Image: Sony) Cretton, working from a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, effortlessly bounces between these stories and more. Everything develops in tandem, and the film’s tone always feels grounded and cohesive. It’s almost a miracle how, in every single scene, everything in Brand New Day feels like it fits. New characters, new settings, new problems, it’s all held together by that strong tone. A tone that oddly makes it okay to get so wrapped up in one story you almost forget about the others, because you always know those are coming back around too. Brand New Day always feels like it’s moving forward even though so many things are happening simultaneously.
