Spider-Man: Brand New Day review: Solid superhero outing goes back to basics
The previous solo Spider-Man outing, 2021’s No Way Home, was the perfect conclusion to Tom Holland‘s run as the web-slinger so I was surprised when this fourth chapter was announced. Brand New Day doesn’t live up to the previous three films but it’s a solid enough effort.
Set four years after the events of No Way Home, when Dr. Strange cast a spell so everyone would forget Peter Parker (Holland) was Spider-Man, he is now living an anonymous existence as a full-time volunteer crime-fighter. Other than his AI assistant E.V. (voiced by Naomi Watts) and his alliance with police detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colon-Zayas), Peter has no company and is grieving the life he wanted with girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best bud Ned (Jacob Batalon) before the spell. A new threat comes onto the scene as his powers undergo a surprising and inconvenient evolution.
As the title suggests, Brand New Day heralds a new era and effectively reboots the story by bringing it back to basics with Spider-Man once again living a solitary existence as an NYC crime-fighter. It’s not a complete reset though – Holland is still Parker, MJ and Ned are still core cast members and Aunt May is still dead – but at least we’re done with the multiverse madness and have a more grounded story with emotional depth. As a result, it does re-tread a few story beats from previous Spideys (and other superhero movies in general) but I enjoyed seeing Peter dealing with the consequences of his great sacrifice and trying to suppress his body’s unexpected changes.
Brand New Day, directed by Shang-Chi’s Destin Daniel Cretton, is a mix of Peter’s personal drama, cool action setpieces (the ninja fight is the standout) and a buddy comedy with Peter and Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal). It’s not as funny as the previous three, but there’s still a decent amount of humour peppered throughout, particularly when Ned is on the scene. The film is pretty long at almost two and a half hours, but it justifies that runtime by packing so much in – catching up with Peter, MJ and Ned’s lives, the evolution of Spidey’s powers, the new characters and/or threats on the scene and setting up a bunch of threads for upcoming Marvel movies.
But unfortunately, I just never felt excited by it like I used to with superhero movies. Is it superhero fatigue? Are my standards now too high? Or did it need to do more? Even though the performances are good (Sadie Sink, Zendaya and Holland are excellent) and the action setpieces are well choreographed, I never felt the urge to clap like some people in the audience. In addition, the resolution of the central villain conflict is weak and underwhelming and there is a cameo that makes no sense and feels just in there for cameo’s sake.
As much as I love Holland as Spider-Man, Brand New Day undoes the perfect conclusion of No Way Home to some degree. It’s simply fine and enjoyable enough and does what it needs to do to further the Spidey films and MCU at large. I just wish it made me feel more.
In cinemas from Wednesday 29th July