Hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since Spider-Man was introduced in the MCU. Spider-Man: Brand New Day takes place four years after No Way Home. After Dr. Strange’s spell in the last film erases everyone’s memories of him including his best friend Ned and girlfriend MJ. Peter Parker now lives on his own and dedicates his life to now being Spider-Man and New York City’s protector. Due to how much he overworks himself being Spider-Man and seeing MJ with a new boyfriend, he starts gaining mutant spider powers that he has difficulty controlling. Now he must learn to control these new powers while also dealing with a new mysterious telepathic threat.
Tom Holland has always been my favorite live action Spider-Man since his introduction in Captain America Civil War and his character arc in Brand New Day is probably his most mature and emotional character wise. The film really shows how isolating yourself in order to protect the people you care about is understandable but still extremely unhealthy. It reminded me a lot of Spider-Man 2 from 2004 where Peter Parker also struggles trying to balance his normal life with his superhero life. I also like that Peter learns to embrace his new mutant powers instead of trying to restrain them which is also unhealthy. I also really liked the cameos in this film that actually serve their important role in the story and didn’t feel too forced like cameos from other Marvel films. Frank Castle aka the Punisher played by John Bernthal was very entertaining and the way he works off of Peter is very fun. Mark Ruffalo was also great as Bruce Banner and his fight between him and Peter and Frank was epic. I love the scene where Yelena Belova points out to Peter the different levels of Marvel threats and how he is just little potatoes in comparison.
SPOILER WARNING: The marketing for this film tried very hard to hide who the main villain was. They made it look like anyone could be the villain such as the Scorpion, the Hulk, and the Hand (they had main villain vibes). When the film finally released the main villain was confirmed to be Jean Grey which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, Sadie Sink does a fantastic job being both threatening and tragic. On the other hand, making Jean Grey who is a usually a hero (except when she’s the Phoenix) from X-Men and almost never involved with Spider-Man (unless it’s a giant Marvel crossover event) was such a very odd choice. It would be like having a Flash film where Starfire from Teen Titans was the villain (in fairness that would be much better film than the one we got a few years ago). I do like how she can only control one person telepathically at a time so she has to jump from to another person closer to the one she’s controlling. It’s a very unique portrayal of telepathy.
I will say the post credit scene which is just Ned’s Spider-Man tracker going off was very weak. I thought Spider-Man: Brand New Day would end up being the unnecessary fourth film in an already well-done trilogy but this film ended up being one of the best live-action Spider-Man films. It’s going to be very difficult for Avengers Doomsday to top this.
Verdict:
+Peter’s character arc
+The cameos
+Tom Holland as Peter Parker
+/- Jean Grey
-Weak post credit scene
Score: A-
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