“Are you Peter Parker, or are you Spider-Man?”
That question, asked in the final act of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, is the film’s narrative and thematic engine. It’s also a unique one within the MCU, where its heroes are often free from the high-wire act of balancing public and private identities.
For Peter Parker (Tom Holland), the high-wire act is particularly fraught. Four years have passed since the conclusion of No Way Home, where Peter chose to erase people’s knowledge of him to save the multiverse. Everyone, including his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), has moved on without him. Rather than deal with the high psychological cost of his sacrifice, Peter fully throws himself into heroism, becoming a beloved New York City staple in the process. Peter’s state of avoidance collides with the emergence of a mysterious new threat, played by Sadie Sink, who’s on a mission to infiltrate the city’s Department of Damage Control. She takes advantage of Peter’s fragile condition and activates a physiological response that sends his arachnid gene expression into overdrive, putting him at risk of a catastrophic breakdown.
With Brand New Day, director Daniel Destin Cretton lasers in on the wear and tear of Peter’s psyche, and how it manifests in his powers. Peter’s swinging is a key mechanism for examining his mental state. They range from tight and fluid when he’s fine to chaotic and uncontrolled when his genes go haywire. Cretton’s framing communicates in a way that Peter can’t, pulling us in when Peter is at his most joyous, and jerking us about when he’s at his breaking point. There is plenty of levity to be found in Peter’s physical struggles, and it plays very well. (The Juicy Couture outfit is a brilliant sight gag.) However, there are darker implications of his stressors, like the palpable dread born from Peter’s eyes fully blackening, paid off with shocking exertions of violence and Peter’s subsequent panic. The tension between them is the film at its best.
Brand New Day can be ruthless in toying with Peter, especially involving his loved ones. Sadie Sink’s character taps directly into Peter’s love for MJ, staging a fake-out scenario that is one of the most gutting in a Spider-Man film. That moment firmly establishes the stakes in dealing with this mysterious character and highlights the critical importance of Peter’s interpersonal connections. Even without that inciting incident, Peter’s breakdown feels inevitable. He would’ve eventually slammed against this physiological wall without people to support him through the burden of heroism. His realization that his strength comes from that support is dazzling, emotionally and physically, which leads to spellbinding, innovative, and staggeringly cool uses of his powers.
Ironically, Peter’s isolation comes in a film where his surrounding universe feels truly lived-in. A common criticism of modern superhero films is the indiscriminate mistreatment of their environments. Brand New Day, remarkably, never falls into that trap. Spider-Man feels like an integral, day-by-day part of New York, and the rallying of New Yorkers around him feels authentic. He has allies, like Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), villains like Scorpion (Michael Mando), and non-villain antagonists, like Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), and they all come together to make New York feel like a real community and not a backdrop of destruction. Just as strong is the presence of several NYC MCU characters, who pop up in ways that make narrative sense rather than being merely fan service.
Not everything in Brand New Day is fully integrated. With the film’s strongest element being Peter trying to balance his two identities, the weakest is how Sadie Sink’s character fits within the larger emotional narrative. The film spends a significant amount of time setting up her backstory and motivations, which are largely separate from Peter. It slows down the momentum at a critical juncture, especially after a full-scale action set piece featuring her, Peter, the Punisher, and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) that plays like a third-act final battle. Cretton takes a big swing with the character’s place in the film, a huge risk given who she is revealed to be. It’s a risk that almost doesn’t land, but Cretton does come to a satisfying resolution for her and Peter that bodes well for her MCU future.
The unique fleshing out of Peter Parker in Brand New Day is a boon to Tom Holland. Playing Spider-Man is old hat for him, but Cretton manages to push him to new emotional spaces. He delivers splendidly. Holland retains Peter’s youthful joie de vivre, but it is wearier and more flippant, which is an excellent, effective character progression. He brilliantly conveys that Peter has been going through it all on his own, and he’s worn out. That exhaustion is even more impactful when Holland is playing against Zendaya as MJ. The chemistry between them is effortless, and you can see that he trusts her to help him explore the existential dread of being disconnected from the woman Peter loves. There is one particular scene between them that ranks among his best work, his eyes carrying a deep well of unburdened, honest agony.
Brand New Day is easily the most narratively, thematically, and psychologically mature take on Spider-Man, carrying the kind of emotional stakes and impact that films in the post-Endgame canon have struggled to attain. The film builds an intimate, vibrant world around Peter Parker, while simultaneously trusting him, for the first time in the Holland era, to (mostly) stand on his own. While he doesn’t always reach his most ambitious aims, Cretton has breathed new, complex life into the veteran, demonstrating that it’s never too late for our web-slinging superhero to grow up. When Peter answers that question when it’s posed to him, you truly feel like he’s earned it.
Leave a Reply