RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 13 sourcesWith great corporate intellectual property comes great responsibility, and Spider-Man : Brand New Day has a lot to carry a lot on its red-and-blue-suited shoulders. It's coming off a Spidey film, 2019's Spider-Man: No Way Home, that was a highlight of the series, but left our friendly neighborhood hero and the narrative in a weird place (memory erasing, M.J. pining, multiverse yadda yadda yadda). It has to tee up the Marvel Cinematic Universe's next big swing, the all-hands-on-deck Avengers: Doomsday . And it needs to remind folks why they initially fell in love with the MCU 's grand storytelling experiment after several years of superhero fatigue, brand over-extension and way too many brick shots, as well as ensure the financial stability of not one but two conglomerate-owned studios.
There are a few other things on Brand New Day 's to-do list, which we can't quite get into for reasons to do with spoilers and plot twists and the standard fan-service-surprise ballyhoo. What we can say is that all the manic business on display, all the cross-franchise cameos and referencing, all the shoehorned bits of human contact and attempts at emotional connection in between big bang-pow-boom set pieces — none of it does this fourth Spidey flick any favors. The movie keeps getting tangled in a complicated web of its own making, one that feels all too familiar after several decades of superhero cinema sucking up the cultural oxygen. Calling this Brand New Day feels like a cosmic joke. It's the same old MCU B.S., coasting by on the considerable charm of its two resident stars and a legacy of good will. There's nothing new here whatsoever.
Well, there is one new thing, but again, decorum prevents an open discussion about a major element. Before that throws everything into a tizzy, we get to swing around New York with Peter Parker ( Tom Holland , once again doing a lot of literal and figurative heavy lifting) and see a montage of famous comic covers and splash pages get recreated before our very eyes. Everyone lives in a post- No Way Home state of collective amnesia about Spider-Man's real identity, which allows him to lead a life of full-time crimestopping. But it also means that his true love M.J. ( Zendaya ) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) no longer know him. This leaves Parker in a state of perpetual moodiness when he's not, say, talking shop with a police detective named DeWolff ( The Bear 's Liza Colón-Zayas) or keeping the Scorpion ( Better Call Saul 's Michael Mando) from causing chaos. He still continually reads the note he wrote M.J. but never gave her, explaining how they were once inseparable. He still keeps the paper coffee cup he got from his soulmate at a donut shop . Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
Yet some strange — lower-case strange, not upper-case Strange — occurrences are happening both around and to Spider-Man that are cause for serious concern. Some sort of mutation seems to be occuring, which involves the amount of arachnid hormones in Parker's bloodstream spiking to dangerously levels. Symptoms include migraines, muscles seizing up, his eyes turning completely black, and steroidal toxic-male rage. "The spider is trying to eat the man," one characters says, and should Parker not find a way to inhibit this "monster" within, he runs the risk of becoming his worst possible self. Even Bruce Banner ( Mark Ruffalo ), a guy who's gone to great lengths to control his own raging id, is more than a little worried.
Even more troubling is a series of robberies centered around the Department of Damage Control, a government facility dedicated to containing and controlling supper-happenings, that's run by a bureaucrat named Metzger. He's played by Tramell Tillman, in what can only be described as a casting coup. The actor earned breakout status thanks to perfecting a mix of faux-friendliness and corporate shadiness on Severance , and that combo is put to extremely good use here. Someone or something keeps trying to break into the fortress-like building and find something. The term "V-Max" keeps getting thrown around. Sometimes they hack the data files; other times they commandeer a tank and bust right though the walls. Related Content ‘If People Get Mad, I Can’t Control That’: The Making of ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Goes Big — REALLY Big — to Go Home J.K. Simmons Has Never Met Tom Holland Despite Being in Two ‘Spider-Man’ Films Together Timothée Chalamet Is a Megalomaniacal Paul Atreides in ‘Dune: Part Three’ Official Trailer
What's truly unnerving, however, is that whoever is perpetrating these crimes has the ability to control minds. Even worse: they can jump from brain to brain, like they're skipping from one landing pad to the next. Cue: a whole lotta scenes of random passerbys suddenly jerking around, grinning maniacally, and taunting Spidey about his inability to catch whoever is possessing them. The identity of the culprit is a mystery. All Spider-Man knows is that he needs to stop this person or persons before they go after M.J. or, y'know, destroy all of NYC in an attempt to take the department down.
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