Spider-Man: Brand New Day review — Tom Holland and Sadie Sink prop up new Marvel movie that's big, bright, and bold, but isn't… — TechRadar

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

Spider-Man: Brand New Day review — Tom Holland and Sadie Sink prop up new Marvel movie that's big, bright, and bold, but isn't… — TechRadar | AIPROPX

Light spoilers follow for Spider-Man: Brand New Day .

Spider-Man: Brand New Day was meant to signal a fresh era for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. With 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home effectively clearing the narrative slate and stripping away his safety net, this latest chapter had a golden opportunity to chart a bold, unburdened new course for a character whose cinematic journey now enters its 24th year.

And yet, tripped up by familiar Marvel Cinematic Universe ( MCU ) shortcomings and weighed down by my own sky-high expectations, Brand New Day yields a final product that is undeniably fun, but ultimately falls short of greatness.

Web of lies

"What's going on with you, Spider-Man?" (Image credit: Sony Pictures/Marvel Entertainment)

Four years have passed in-universe since No Way Home , whose ending saw Doctor Strange cast a multiverse-saving spell to make everyone, including Parker's girlfriend M.J. (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), forget that he was Spider-Man .

Since then, our friendly neighborhood hero has fully committed to cleaning up the streets of New York City. While that mission has been incredibly successful, it's come at a cost — that being said, the webslinger is practically shedding his civilian identity and becoming a social recluse.

Brand New Day yields a final product that is undeniable fun, but ultimately falls short of greatness

That long-term, self-imposed isolation has seemingly dire consequences for Spider-Man, whose world is not only upended after he sees M.J. with a new man, but also by a sudden metamorphosis — one that super-charges his arachnid-like abilities — that he struggles to control.

Throw in the emergence of a powerful and invisible new threat that only Spidey can apparently stop, and the Marvel icon must turn detective, determine if this new superpowered being is as bad as he's been led to believe, and once again realize that with great power comes great responsibility.

Brand New Day's action is well worth the entry fee (Image credit: Sony Pictures/Marvel Entertainment)

That infamous slogan is one that Holland and director Destin Daniel Cretton hung their proverbial hats on throughout development.

The pair have spoken at length about making a Spider-Man movie unlike anything we've seen before, and that's especially true from an action spectacle standpoint. Whether it's the fights that Spidey's involved in — the Hulk and The Hand battles deserve special mention for being intense and imaginative — or simply giving us a first-person view of him swinging through his hometown, Spider-Man 4 is the webslinger at his acrobatic, wily, and inventive best. Full credit to Cretton, stunt co-ordinator and second unit director Peng Zhang, and his team for delivering some of the best action in a Spider-Man film to date.

I was disappointed that Spider-Man 4 didn't examine Parker's hermit lifestyle more thoroughly

Brand New Day isn't as adept at depicting loneliness and other mental health issues, mind you. Indeed, for all of the talk that Brand New Day puts Peter Parker in a mental and emotional echo chamber, that's not entirely accurate.

Sure, Parker spends much of the first two acts lying to himself about why he has to maintain his lone wolf status, a storytelling quirk that allows Holland to further tap into Parker's guilt complex and the volitional burden of responsibility he carries. Even so, he still interacts — and characteristically quips — with everyone who appears in the Marvel Phase 6 flick, and, while it would be a puzzlingly dialog-light film for a usually extroverted character if he didn't, I was disappointed that Spider-Man 4 didn't examine Parker's hermit lifestyle more thoroughly throughout its 142-minute runtime.

M.J. and Ned have slightly smaller rolls in Spider-Man 4 compared to their previous MCU film outings (Image credit: Sony Pictures/Marvel Entertainment)

In fact, the movie's broader emotional impact didn't hit me as hard as I'd hoped.

Yes, there are myriad moving moments — particularly in the third act — where Holland, Zendaya, and MCU newcomer Sadie Sink deliver emotional gravitas aplenty. Sink, whose much-discussed mystery character in Spider-Man 4 I’ll come back to shortly, gives a performance that easily leaves a lump in the throat

Nevertheless, Thunderbolts* tackles its weightier themes — particularly around mental health — with a sensitivity that Spider-Man 4 lacks. Heck, I'd even say No Way Home and another of Holland's previous MCU outings in Spider-Man: Far From Home hit me much harder emotionally than this fourth entry; a take I certainly didn't expect to have prior to my Brand New Day screening.

Lost souls

Spider-Man and The Punisher's crowd-pleasing odd-couple dynamic is a sight to behold (Image credit: Sony Pictures/Marvel Entertainment)

Its action notwithstanding, Spider-Man: Brand New Day does a much better job at making New York feel like a city populated by more than one hero and villain at any given time.

It's no coincidence that sequences involving Bernthal and Holland are some of the funniest and most memorable

That might sound silly for a shared universe like the MCU and for a film franchise that's seen the wallcrawler mingle with other Marvel characters. Still, the fact that he shares the screen with individuals who haven't operated in his orbit before is a positive, especially when, the Avengers movies aside, Marvel appears determined to keep its heroes apart despite their situational proximity.

It's an ingredient characterized best by Spider-Man's quarrelsome, sibling-like dynamic with Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle, aka The Punisher.

Ordinarily, Bernthal's foul-mouthed, unhinged anti-hero would have no place in a family-friendly MCU flick. However, his inclusion in Brand New Day allows Bernthal and Holland's incredibly natural chemistry to shine, and it's no coincidence that sequences involving the pair are some of the funniest and most memorable that Spider-Man 4 has to offer.

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