For the past several months, we’ve known the leading cast list for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. Naturally, it’s a plethora of established Marvel mainstays alongside relative newcomers and old favorites dating all the way back to the Bryan Singer era. But one name was conspicuously absent: Tom Holland. How could we possibly have an Avengers film without Spider-Man?
Answer: Because Spider-Man was getting his own massive crossover picture with seismic implications for the future of Marvel on film. Yes, we’re getting two of them within six months.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day picks up a few years after the events of No Way Home. We’re treated to an extended montage of Spider-Man earning his reputation as New York City’s favorite superhero, our friendly neighborhood web-slinger rescuing civilians and beating up villains from the B-tier of his rogues gallery. (Scorpion and Tombstone get especially prominent spotlighting, respectively played by Michael Mando and Marvin Jones III.) I might add that Peter Parker’s got his own base of operations in a run-down apartment attic, he’s got a neat 3D printer to maintain his suit, and he even built his own AI sidekick voiced by Naomi Watts.
No word on how he’s paying for all of this. And if J. Jonah Jameson is still raising a stink somewhere, we never hear about it. Whatever.
The important thing is that our hero is kicking ass at being Spider-Man, to the point where Peter Parker basically doesn’t exist. After all, his last surviving relative (Aunt May, played by Marisa Tomei, more on her later) is now dead, his girlfriend and his best friend (M.J. and Ned, respectively played by Zendaya and Jacob Batalon) have no memory of him, and Peter has been magically scrubbed from any official memory or record.
(Side note: I appreciate the film commandeering the Marvel Studios bumper to serve as a quick and subtle recap. Clever and practical. Kudos.)
Peter has spent every day of the past few years trying to convince himself that he’s better off alone. Especially if it means nobody else gets hurt simply for being too close to him, and there’s less to distract him from crime-fighting. Predictably, this does serious harm to his mental/emotional health. Especially since he still hasn’t gotten over May’s death and the loss of the other two people dearest to him, and he can’t discuss any of that with anybody. But it also has some knock-on effects that are highly unpredictable.
Turns out all the compounded stress and trauma leads directly to the activation of new hormones produced by Peter’s mutated spider DNA. Which means that his genetic-based powers (heightened senses, super strength, etc.) have been augmented through the roof. It also means psychotic mood swings and — get this — organic web-shooters! Yes, Petey is shooting white stuff out of his wrists just like he did in the Sam Raimi era. And if you thought the puberty metaphor was ham-fisted in that first Raimi flick, it’s on a whole ‘nother level here.
Unfortunately, due to contrived reasons the film barely even bothers to explain, Peter can’t use or even wear his mechanical spinnerets while the organic ones are active. Which means that Spider-Man has to start all over again and relearn how to use his webbing. The timing is sub-optimal.
See, part of why Spider-Man is doing so well as a crime-fighter is because he’s nurtured a decent relationship with the U.S. Department of Damage Control. (As a reminder, this is the government agency that’s been responsible for dealing with supers ever since SHIELD disbanded and the Superhero Registration Act failed.) Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colon-Wayans) is the closest thing Peter’s got to a trusted friend, Director Metzger (Tramell Tillman) seems like a stand-up guy, and everything about this shadowy paramilitary government organization seems on the level. (Provided you don’t have a Disney+ subscription, anyway.)
Naturally, our antagonist (played by Sadie Sink) has some kind of vendetta against Damage Control. Nobody knows who she is, what she is, what she wants, or why she hates Damage Control so much. All that’s known is that she’s got no problem going through innocent people to get what she wants. Literally, she can mentally possess people and “jump” from one mind to another, thus committing acts of outright terrorism without getting her own hands dirty.
Except she can’t get into Peter’s head, for some reason. There’s no clear explanation for this, but given the hyperactive state of his spider DNA and his uniquely unstable physical/mental state, we can let that slide.
(NOTE: Even by their usual standards, Marvel did an exceptional job keeping the identity and nature of our antagonist secret. For good reason. This was an outstanding reveal and it sucks that it’s already been spoiled through pop culture osmosis. Even so, I’m going to do my level best not to say too much about exactly who and what the antagonist is. She’s not typically known as a Spider-Man villain, I can tell you that.)
Here’s the problem: Spider-Man can’t win. Given what we learn about the players involved, the nature of their conflict, and the stakes involved, Peter is stuck in a no-win scenario. Typically, this would be enough to kill the plot stone-cold dead for lack of tension. On the other hand, this is Peter Parker we’re talking about here. He never wins. He exists only to suffer, and to keep going despite his suffering.
Yet what’s interesting about this movie is that it raises the possibility that maybe he doesn’t have to suffer. Maybe he doesn’t have to go through all this alone. Hell, given what his self-imposed isolation is doing to his mind and body, it’s entirely possible that he can’t do this alone. Sure, his loved ones can and have been put in danger, but maybe that’s a risk worth taking. And as the trailers have already spoiled, not even the planet-wide memory wipe could keep MJ out of danger by association, so it’s not like the isolation is doing any good there anyway.
Which brings us to the crossover aspect. We’ve got Florence Pugh reprising Yelena to serve as a bit of comic relief while dispensing exposition. Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner shows up to help with a magic plot device, while Hulk fucks things up in a huge action set piece. Jon Bernthal gets a prominent supporting role, playing the Punisher as a cynical counterpoint while also providing some heavy explosives.
Looking back at all of these guest characters (plus the antagonist), there’s a clear pattern in that each of them have their own history with grief and loss. Each of them is a lone wolf by nature, with long and extensive histories of balancing their superpowered lives and dual identities with their mental/emotional needs. Each of them, in their own way, has struggled to change. Put simply, all of them have varying degrees of experience with exactly the same thematic issues that Spider-Man grapples with all throughout the picture.
To be clear, this is hardly an exhaustive list of all the Marvel characters who’ve ever had to deal with these topics. The very heart of the Marvel brand is the notion that their superheroes are built to be three-dimensional people with relatable flaws and internal struggles. And here we have the Hulk, the Punisher, Black Widow II, and [REDACTED] all in a Spider-Man film. It’s all done in such a way that the film doesn’t just demonstrate what makes Spider-Man such a compelling character — it demonstrates how and why Spider-Man is such a foundational pillar in the House of Ideas.
To nobody’s surprise, all the established Marvel talents are as rock-solid as they’ve ever been after so many years of playing their respective characters. At this point, the Holland/Zendaya/Batalon trinity have such effortless chemistry that it goes a long way toward selling the notion that Peter is better off with them than without them. Tramell Tillman is quite famously practiced at playing a two-faced snake on “Severance”, and that pays huge dividends here. Likewise, Sadie Sink’s casting here makes all kinds of sense after her turn in The Whale. In that movie, she did her best to try and play an irredeemably shrill and insufferably bratty piece of shit, but she was too innately sympathetic to really sell it — that same balance is a much better fit here.
But the true secret weapon here is Marisa Tomei. Yes, despite being previously killed off, Aunt May does put in a brief appearance here. And it’s Aunt May’s influence — her love for Peter and what she taught him — that ultimately saves the day. It’s a powerful moment that serves as a beautiful thematic capstone for the film. And I don’t even care that Thunderbolts* did the exact same thing, it’s too damned effective.
So, are there any nitpicks? To start with, don’t even bother staying through the credits. There’s no mid-credits stinger and the post-credits stinger is worthless.
The Hand is in here, and it still baffles me that Marvel Studios could make a team of ninjas so boring. The pacing is a little wonky in places, and there are a couple of montages that could’ve used some pruning. Which is especially frustrating, given certain plot points that could use some additional clarification.
Even so, I would personally argue that Spider-Man: Brand New Day is an even better Peter Parker movie than either of the first two Raimi pictures. Yes, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 did an elegant job of portraying what makes Spider-Man unique and iconic and important. But BND does all of that while also showing why Spider-Man matters so much in the greater context of the Marvel Universe, something Raimi was unable to do. Perhaps more importantly, all three movies films were tightly focused stories with deeply personal stakes on an epic scale. Granted, the Raimi films were a little bit more intimate while BND was a little more epic.
With this, the stage has effectively been set for two game-changing events for Marvel on film. On the Sony side of things, we still have Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse to look forward to. It’s anyone’s guess what’s next for Spidey on film after that epic conclusion, especially now that Sony has finally and officially given up on their doomed spinoff efforts. I don’t know if they’ll bring Holland in for that third Spider-Verse movie or find some way of using it to bring Miles into the MCU, but it’s now or never.
As for Marvel, the stage is set to finally bring the mutants into the MCU. And they’re doing it with a clever blend of old and new, paying tribute to the Fox era by way of Deadpool & Wolverine and the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. As for the newer efforts, we know Jake Schreier is hard at work putting together a new X-Men film, and he recently cast Samara Weaving as Emma Frost. Even better, the MCU has already established two of the most notoriously OP mutants in all of Marvel comics, and using them to set the baseline was certainly a bold choice.
If No Way Home was an epilogue for the pre-Endgame MCU (and the Sony-exclusive era of Spider-Man), BND feels like the prologue for the post-Doomsday MCU. It’s a fun and exciting movie that will hopefully kick off a fun and exciting new era for superhero cinema.