Ever since Thanos snapped half the universe out of existence and Endgame painstakingly stitched the Marvel Cinematic Universe back together, Marvel has been trapped inside its own museum, endlessly dusting off relics from a past it cannot stop monetising. Seven years of chasing the diminishing returns of its increasingly baroque mythology has produced a dense industrial complex that has entirely lost sight of the ordinary people who once gave those cosmic stakes so much weight. With Spider-Man: Brand New Day, helmed by Short Term 12 and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton, the studio finally seems to have come to terms with the exhaustion from multiversal slop.
‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ director Destin Daniel Cretton on capturing the spectacle without losing the heart
Cretton inherits perhaps the bleakest ending any live-action Peter Parker has received. At the conclusion of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland’s Peter willingly erased himself from everybody’s memory to prevent the collapse of reality itself, sacrificing his relationships with MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) so the wider world could survive. Writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers ground Peter’s grief inside recognisable routines. Years after Aunt May’s death, Brand New Day finds him living alone in a cramped apartment (that would still give Mr Ditkovich a run for his money), obsessively following Ned’s social media updates from afar while New York celebrates Spider-Man without knowing the exhausted young man underneath the mask.
