Spider-Man or not, watching this in the cinemas wasn’t a sure thing for me as I’m just too burned out by the superhero genre. Brand New Day being the critical and commercial success that it has with fans raving about it being possibly the best Spider-Man film ever, makes it hard to ignore. Like everyone says, its action set-pieces are great and I’m especially ticked that it borrows visuals from the game that I’ve played through just recently. It’s good too that it focuses more on Peter Parker’s personal life but the story beats feel like retreads of earlier iterations of the character. In the end it’s still a thoroughly conventional superhero movie.
With his civilian identity erased from the minds of the world by Dr. Strange’s spell in the last movie, Peter Parker is Spider-Man full-time. Working out of an attic and with the help of advanced technology, he protects New York City against multiple threats over the course of four years, winning the trust of the people and police detective Jean DeWolff. He elects not to make contact with MJ Watson and Ned Leeds in order to protect them from retaliation. One day he pursues a tank crashing through the the streets while preventing Frank Castle from using lethal force doing the same. The tank crashes into a prison operated by Damage Control but the driver turns out to be an innocent woman being possessed by a telepath and the previously imprisoned Scorpion escapes in the chaos. Spider-Man approaches the current Black WidowYelena Belova for information. He learns that multiple Damage Control facilities have been attacked and the assailant’s objective is something called V-Max. Meanwhile Peter runs into Ned and follows him to his new apartment he shares with MJ. At the housewarming party, he witnesses her kissing her new boyfriend. The distress exacerbates his psychological issues, causing a surge in his arachnid hormones and a loss of control of his powers. He goes to Bruce Banner to learn more about the inhibitor device the professor uses to suppress the Hulk.
The opening scenes are a real banger with spectacular web-swinging scenes the recall the very first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie. The montage of four years passing has the character speed-running from neophyte to veteran hero, defeating multiple villains as an aside. The shots of him kicking henchmen off skyscrapers and then webbing them seems directly lifted from the games. When the story proper starts, the casual inclusion of characters like Belova and Banner establish it as smack bang in the MCU. It’s amusing that Belova doesn’t offer more help beyond intel as the New Avengers are more concerned with big potatoes stuff. As for the Hulk, he makes for a good secondary antagonist but unfortunate that it means he’s stuck in character development stasis. The Punisher is a strange choice as a partner but I suppose it avoids having someone too powerful who makes Spider-Man irrelevant. I do like that there isn’t one single big fight in the movie as the real villain here isn’t one who can be defeated in a physical confrontation. Instead, there are multiple smaller battles building up to it.
Having Peter Parker losing control of his powers due to being isolated and having no personal life of his own isn’t a bad theme to build the film around. But isn’t this a variation of the second Maguire movie except that the Holland version enjoys a power-up instead? Perhaps enough time has passed that audiences are no longer expected to have watched the original trilogy. Missing out on four years of life with his friends actually is horrific. If anything, the film undersells it by glossing over the passage of time and showing his suffering mostly through being overwhelmed by the sensory overload of his powers being amplified. His rapport with the real villain of the film is a bit of a stretch and I dislike how easily he forgives the villain. Reading his mind and manipulating his memories of MJ is a frighteningly cruel level of malevolence, not something that can be dismissed as self-defense. Finally, I’m getting really tired of every institution in the MCU being evil. It’s the easy way out and so predictable and boring.
People hailing this a return to form of the MCU but it’s a pretty shallow superhero popcorn movie to me. It looks impressive, cleverly mines the wider setting for supporting characters and does have an emotional core. But it’s also in a hurry to get from one story beat to the next, hoping that the brisk pace is enough to mask incongruities in the plot and avoids any real pathos. I’d note that this is a less grounded, more fantastically superheroic version of the character. Tom Holland has noticeably bulked himself up for the role, moving away from the traditionally leaner look of Spider-Man. He has easy access to incredible technology and has no apparent money problems. He doesn’t seem like a very relatable character to me but maybe the real world currently so depressing that audiences prefer the fantasy.