Spider-Man: Brand New Day shouldn’t work. It tells too many stories with too many characters who have too many problems to all work in a single movie. Except it does. Somehow, someway, director Destin Daniel Cretton magically balances all of those things into a wholly satisfying and entertaining experience. There are some teeny tiny blips along the way, but ultimately they don’t take away from the whole. This is an awesome movie with a huge heart.
In Brand New Day, Peter Parker, played by Tom Holland, is still very much dealing with the consequences of the last film, No Way Home. In that film, he had to make everyone who ever knew him forget about him, so his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) went to college without him. Meanwhile, Peter became reclusive and focused on nothing but being Spider-Man. And so, Brand New Day opens with those first threads: Peter dealing with the loss of his friends, his friends growing up without him, and Spider-Man’s growth as a hero.
From there, we very quickly meet the threat of the movie, a mysterious character eventually revealed to be played by Sadie Sink. The character has the ability to jump from person to person, see inside their mind, and she’s using the power to look for something. Spider-Man wants to stop her, and while he tries to do it on his own, he will eventually have to seek out the help of two characters who also have had to deal with trauma and loss: Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, played by Jon Bernthal, as well as Dr. Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo.
Cretton, working from a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, effortlessly bounces between these stories and more. Everything develops in tandem, and the film’s tone always feels grounded and cohesive. It’s almost a miracle how, in every single scene, everything in Brand New Day feels like it fits. New characters, new settings, new problems, it’s all held together by that strong tone. A tone that oddly makes it okay to get so wrapped up in one story you almost forget about the others, because you always know those are coming back around too. Brand New Day always feels like it’s moving forward even though so many things are happening simultaneously.
Among those are, of course, some excellent action set pieces in which Cretton moves the camera and stages Spidey’s moves in ways we haven’t seen before, especially in the Tom Holland films. There are subtle nods to the previous Spideys in there but, for the most part, the action in this film is shot with a real eye on innovation and energy. It’s fresh, it’s visceral, and each scene has several shots that will make you smile ear to ear with their beauty.
Action set pieces aren’t the core of the movie, however. That honor goes to Tom Holland’s performance, which is both more vulnerable than ever but also more assured. In almost every single scene, you see a Peter Parker that has lived a fuller, more grown-up life than before. He’s filled with purpose and pain, which then grow and evolve as he faces new challenges. Holland’s performance even elevates the other actors around him, especially Batalon and Zendaya. They have to act like they don’t have chemistry with Holland when, after three movies, they clearly do. As a result, the scenes between any combo of the trio are some of the best in the film because of this unique balance of dramatic irony, humor, and sadness.
Beyond Peter’s personal issues, the narrative itself is also built around the mystery of who Sadie Sink’s character is and what she wants. Of course, we won’t spoil it here, but once the mystery is revealed, it unlocks Brand New Day and the whole thing becomes almost an entirely new movie. A movie that, for a few seconds here or there, almost falls off course, but eventually webs itself back together.
There are also one or two throughlines that pay off, but maybe aren’t as complete as some others. For example, in the trailers we see that Peter is having some sort of physical spider issues. It’s a big part of the film and, if you wrote down all the ways the film develops that from A to Z, it makes sense. In practice, though, that thread does make a few leaps that could have been a little more developed. It works, but it’s not tied in as neat a bow as the rest.
And yet, even when the film’s third act does stumble a tiny bit or skip a few character steps, it builds to several moments that are so beautiful, you can’t help but think it was all worth it. I wrote the word “wow” down in my notes three times in its final 20 or so minutes, and that might be underselling it.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t have three Spider-Men all fighting together to save the multiverse, but it does have this Spider-Man, our Spider-Man, struggling with himself and his past to keep a city safe from a mysterious evil. What it lacks in narrative surprise it more than makes up for in emotional ambition. Plus, don’t worry, there are some very fun MCU connections woven into the complex tapestry as well. Five years felt like a long time between Spider-Man movies, but once you watch Brand New Day, you’ll realize why it took so long. It’s a whole lot of movie, but it works incredibly well and was worth the wait.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31.
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