Spider-Man: Brand New Day Delivers The Refreshing Reset Marvel Needed

No cinematic Spider-Man has had a weirder arc than Tom Holland’s webslinger. Introduced in Captain America: Civil War as Tony Stark’s ace up his sleeve, Holland’s Peter Parker has been everything from glorified sidekick to wide-eyed protégé, even in his own movies. It wasn’t until his third solo movie, No Way Home, that Holland’s Spider-Man felt like he started to come into his own — and he was still sharing the screen with two other Spider-Men and three legacy villains. So it’s no surprise that his fourth film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, offers a much-needed reset.

After being deprived of his origins, his street-level conflicts, and his own internality, Destin Daniel Cretton’s Brand New Day gives us all of that. It’s a deeply emotional, beautifully grounded new adventure for Holland’s Spider-Man, who is finally given the spotlight he deserves. Is it too little too late? Yes and no — but it’s Spider-Man, so of course you’re going to love it.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day picks up four years after the events of No Way Home erased Peter Parker from the memories of everyone in the entire world. In that time, Peter has embedded himself further into his work as Spider-Man, isolating himself from all of his former loved ones until the only person he can call up to chat is police detective Jean DeWolff (The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas). But as Spider-Man, he’s become beloved — he regularly puts away bad guys, he’s in the good books with the Department of Damage Control (DODC), and he’s even got the keys to the city. But he’s painfully lonely — something that becomes all too real when he runs into Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) after years of watching them afar. Upon spotting MJ with her new boyfriend, Peter experiences an intense emotional crisis that triggers his latent “arachnid hormones,” which suddenly supercharge his powers. His senses are hypersensitive, he’s got organic webbing, his eyes become pitch-black, and he develops a sudden ruthlessness whenever his emotions are heightened.

But these newly developed powers also deprive him of his sensitivity to a mysterious new body-hopping villain that has been regularly attacking the DODC searching for…something. Charged with helping to find the culprit by DODC head Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), Peter is forced to confront everything that he’s been repressing for years — and the nature of his own superpowers.

There’s no way to talk about Brand New Day without at least mentioning Sadie Sink’s mystery character. A telepath with the ability to briefly possess people, she’s the main antagonist for the film, but also a crucial foil for a spiraling Peter. Sink, once she finally gets to shed the hood that hides her identity for half the movie, gives one of the standout performances of the movie, delivering an alternately vulnerable and wrathful turn. She effectively dominates the third act of the movie, which may be the biggest flaw of the movie (apart from its shaggy, overlong runtime): it pulls the focus away from Peter. While it’s impressive that the movie manages to squeeze in what is effectively a speedrun of an origin story, dedicating so much time to its mysterious villain also undercuts the soft reboot of Peter Parker that the franchise sorely needed. Which is a shame, because up until that point, Brand New Day was living up to its name beautifully.

Cretton, who steps into the director’s chair after Jon Watts directed the last three Spider-Man movies, is the first MCU director to really respect Peter Parker’s internal life. He homes in on his isolation, his loneliness, his turmoil — and without Nick Fury speaking in his ear or Happy Hogan flying in to pick him up in a private jet, it feels like Peter Parker is finally, truly on his own. Cretton, who directs a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (though I suspect some of the more nuanced character moments come courtesy of the punch-ups from Challengers scribe Justin Kuritzkes) displays the strength for character drama that he honed in his early indie days. Peter and MJ, for example, finally show the chemistry that had been fairly absent from the last three films, while even supporting characters like Colón-Zayas’ Detective DeWolff feel warm and lived-in. The comedic beats too, mostly supplied by the hilarious brotherly banter between Spider-Man and Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle, are a boon too, and feel like a miraculous use of Bernthal’s mostly self-serious Punisher.

By giving these characters that we’ve lived with for almost a decade (!) some much-needed depth, Cretton also manages to foster some of the best performances that Holland and Zendaya have ever given. Holland finally gets some dramatic meat to chew on, really selling Peter’s turmoil and loneliness. And Zendaya gets to finally do something apart from the “apathetic brainiac” that her MJ had been previously reduced to.

But where Cretton really thrives is in the direction, which he injects with an energy and kineticism that we haven’t seen in a Spider-Man movie since the Sam Raimi days. The camera twirls and spins 360 degrees alongside Spider-Man, performing as many acrobatics as the webslinger. And you can tell that Cretton has a devotion to practical sets and effects, with the fights rivaling his fight sequences in Shang-Chi, but with an extra dose of that heightened action that comes with a Spidey movie. It looks and plays like gangbusters, especially compared to the grey drabness of previous MCU Spider-Man movies.

Cretton does fall back on familiar retreads of Spider-Man beats, especially those Raimi-era ones. Unlike the blatant rip-offs of Raimi’s emotional beats in No Way Home, Brand New Day’s homages to the Spider-Man we love are a bit more subtle, though they are retreads all the same. There’s the discovery of the new powers, and the goofy sequences of Peter trying to gain control of his organic webbing. But there is a certain “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” feeling to these retreads — we get a warm, nostalgic feeling of seeing Holland’s Spider-Man go through these things again, but that also prevents us from accepting anything new.

But Cretton is keenly aware of that, and delivers a movie that splits the difference: It’s an emotionally stirring, dynamically directed Spider-Man movie that gives us the Spidey we want. He’s grounded, he’s isolated, he’s lost — but he’ll overcome all that (and even share the spotlight a bit), because he’s Spider-Man. And what’s not to love about that?

Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in theaters July 31.