REVIEW: Tom Holland delivers his best performance yet as Spider-Man in ‘Brand New Day’
DUBAI: “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is the most somber, inward-looking outing yet for Marvel’s friendly neighborhood hero, and Destin Daniel Cretton (“Short Term 12,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Wonder Man”) proves an unexpectedly perfect fit for this tonal swerve. Long praised for his work with actors in intimate character dramas, Cretton brings that same sensitivity to a blockbuster canvas, drawing out a raw, lived-in aperformance from Tom Holland that pushes the character into genuinely unsettling territory.
Picking up on the emotional wreckage of “No Way Home,” the film finds Peter Parker in a state of profound dislocation. With the help of Doctor Strange, he has wiped the world’s memory of his secret identity, which means that best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) and the love of his life, MJ (Zendaya), now move through their days as if he never existed. Heartbroken and utterly alone, Parker spends his days and nights throwing himself into crime-fighting, as if overwork might fill the void where his life used to be.
The story leans hard into that isolation, treating it as the film’s central thematic engine. The central theme of the script asks Parker what he is denying himself if he chooses to ignore what makes him most human: his relationships. And the more he goes inward, Parker’s body and psyche begin to shift in ways he cannot fully control. It is a risky metaphor about choosing the comfort of loneliness over the uneasiness of intimacy and change, flirting with body horror and psychological thriller territory, but Cretton’s steady hand and Holland’s vulnerability keep it from tipping into camp.
