SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY Review: MCU's Superhero Shines in Fourth Essential Entry

Marvel and DC’s declining fortunes provide ample, if indirect, evidence that superhero fatigue is real and here to stay, the not unexpected result of market saturation.

But for every rule or sweeping generalization, there’s an exception: On the DC side, it’s Batman or, to a lesser extent, Superman. On the Marvel side, it’s generally not one superhero, but superhero team-ups (the Avengers).

Even exceptions have exceptions of their own, though, and in the MCU’s (Marvel Cinematic Universe) case, it’s Spider-Man.

Since writer and publisher Stan Lee (Fantastic Four, The X-Men) and artist Steve Ditko (Doctor Strange, The Question) introduced Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy No. 15 (1962), he’s been a perennial favorite, a Silver Age exemplar and trope-setter. Spider-Man was, is, and will be a teen superhero with down-to-earth, relatable problems of his own apart from his superhero antics: Love, work, and friends. Making Peter Parker an otherwise typical teenager with typical teenage problems was, in retrospect, a genius move, one that’s paid off not just commercially, but artistically and generationally, too.

As Peter Parker/Spider-Man aged at a glacial pace — or, once an adult with a fulltime job and married to the second love of his life (after Gwen Stacy), Mary-Jane Watson — elementary school comic-book readers aged out and new elementary school readers aged in, resulting in constant, continual renewal, of old and new (and newer) comic-book fans united by their love and/or close identification (mostly male, but not exclusively) of their favorite superhero.

Not surprisingly, Spider-Man’s eventual translation to wide-screen superheroics proved incredibly fruitful, first with the Sam Raimi-directed, Toby Maguire-starring trilogy in the oughts for Sony Pictures (2002-2007), later a slightly less successful duology with Andrew Garfield as the titular superhero (2012-2014), and finally, Tom Holland (The Odyssey) as the MCU’s Spider-Man in a trilogy of his own that seemingly ended in 2021 with a major reset, an erasure of Spider-Man’s secret identity and with that erasure, the loss of his best friend, Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), and the love of his life, Michelle “MJ” Jones-Watson (Zendaya).

That reset similarly paralleled 2007's "One More Day" story arc in Marvel Comics, a reboot written by J. Michael Straczynski and illustrated by Joe Quesada. It erased a twenty-something Peter Parker's marriage to MJ and returned him to the problem-plagued teen who casual superhero comic-book fans knew best and loved more. A not uncontroversial, regressive decision at the time, it didn’t so much win over longtime fans as it wore them down into grudging acceptance of the status quo.

Smartly, the new live-action status quo found in Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t reset Peter Parker to his teen years or high school. Instead, the fourth entry in the MCU’s Spider-Man series follows the natural consequences of the last film’s multiverse-restoring decision: Although they remain close, even best friends, Ned and MJ no longer remember Peter. They’ve moved on with their lives, attending MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), graduating four years later, and moving back to New York City, where they’ve continued their longtime friendship as roommates.

For Peter, life hasn’t been as kind or generous. Still traumatized by the loss of his only biological relative, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), and friendless (mostly by choice), Peter has thrown himself head- and feet-first into protecting New York City (mostly Queens, the borough where he was born and raised) from a random assortment of superpowered and non-superpowered criminals. He’s become so successful, however, that he’s practically running out of criminals to stop, catch, and hand over to his new contact, Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), an NYPD detective and a single mother of two.

But before Peter can relax and refocus his attentions elsewhere, Ned and MJ are back in New York City, and he’s stumbling into their housewarming party and revisiting the barely suppressed feelings about his friendship with Ned, his onetime “Guy in a Chair,” and MJ, his one-and-only, his soul mate. To them, he’s just a friendly neighborhood dude, maybe a little on the intense, brooding side, but basically alright.

Ned’s obsession, though, with unmasking the “real” Spider-Man remains, as do their respective personalities, interests (science, tech, and so forth). They’re largely defined by the optimism and positivity typical of twenty-something college grads: Professional and personal disappointments, if any, don’t even cross their minds.

The escape of one of Spider-Man’s minor foes, Mac Gargan / Scorpion (Michael Mando), from a U.S.-run facility in NYC, alerts Spider-Man to a new, potentially much more dangerous villain, a body-hopping telepath with a massive grudge against Damage Control, a government-owned department tasked with clean-up duties, alien tech retrieval and storage, and other assorted, ill-defined duties. To stop the new, seemingly faceless villain and their plans to retrieve or unleash something called “V-Max” from Damage Control’s possession, Spider-Man allies himself with Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), the head of Damage Control’s NYC office.

Energetically directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Just Mercy, Short Term 12), Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens with a cleanly choreographed sequence set to TV On the Radio’s all-time banger, “Wolf Like Me.” That early set piece throws Spider-Man against Frank Castle / The Punisher (John Bernthal), less an ally than a general nuisance who creates unwanted obstacles for Spider-Man’s superheroics. Frank’s singular belief in violence as the answer to all problems doesn’t work for a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man or, more importantly, a PG-13 entry like Spider-Man: Brand New Day. (Frank, of course, returns later on when needed.)

Jumping from Peter’s twenty-something malaise — as relatable as anything in the current incarnation of the MCU — and his superheroics as Spider-Man gives both Peter and his alter-ego the emotional stakes often missing from mega-sized punch-ups in the MCU (DC too). Peter finding himself back to Ned, and especially MJ, grounds Spider-Man: Brand New Day in an identifiable, relatable emotional truth. Peter and MJ’s scenes together (she means everything to him, he’s a stranger to her) as they haltingly navigate their way to a new equilibrium in their relationship are among the most memorable in the MCU’s two-decade long, 38-film series, perhaps rivaled only by Sony’s Miles Morales-led animated Spider-Man series.

If anything, the MCU’s emphasis on long-form serialized storytelling, once an unqualified positive, has become a negative, hampering Spider-Man: Brand New Day from entering the pantheon of top live-action superhero films. The lore-building around the telepath’s origins and future in the MCU often feels like a distraction or diversion from the centrality of Spider-Man’s story arc here.

Not surprisingly, that borderline extraneous universe-building leads to a “false” climax around the two-hour mark, a reset based on newly discovered knowledge, and finally, a second, real climax almost a half hour later. It’s only there, though, that the audience will start to notice Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s two-and-one-half-hour running time.

Holland, Zendaya, and Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink (in a role that will remain unspoiled here) acquit themselves extremely well, bringing depth and nuance to what could have easily been perfunctory, paycheck roles. Whatever happens next for Spider-Man, MJ, Ned, and the others in the MCU — Avengers: Doomsday arrives in multiplexes in December — the story here of Peter’s growth and maturity, of navigating inevitable twenty-something ups-and-downs, and recalibrating yourself for an uncertain future, is a worthwhile addition to Spider-Man canon in the MCU.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens Friday, July 31, only in movie theaters. Check the official site for showtimes.