Spider-man: Brand New Day
directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
An emotionally damaging Spider-man movie
I did not think last Saturday that within seven days I would see two movies starring Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal and Zendaya. I did not think that the Superhero movie directed by someone I had never heard of (this is to be understood as a statement of my ignorance of show business, not a knock on Cretton) would be deeper and more emotionally damaging than the movie based on one of the most famous of classical sources directed by a man so famous that even I know his name: Christopher Nolan.
I am not running down Nolan’s Odyssey, which in fact I liked a lot. I tell you therefore with considerable surprise that in my opinion Cretton’s Spider-man: Brand New Day is a better film than Nolan’s Odyssey.
It’s a difficult film to review, because there are so many surprises. Almost anything I tell you will be a spoiler. I will therefore begin with some spoiler-free glittering generalities. I’ll continue the review below the picture of Jon Bernthal I have inserted as a spoiler space. There will be some spoilers down there.
At the end of Spider-man: No Way Home our hero Peter had, with an assist from Doctor Strange, who really ought to have known better, screwed up his own neck of the multiverse in a disastrous and not easily reversible way that was going to make it a dangerous place for Peter himself and for any friends of his. Peter then asks Strange to perform a spell that will erase Peter’s name from all records and memories. That means that, post-spell, neither Peter’s best friend Ned nor his lover MJ know him.
Ned and MJ go off to MIT, their dream school. (It’s a thing worth noting that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has its own Hogwarts. But the magic school of the MCU is one that really exists in our branch of the multiverse: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As one who spent some years studying at MIT, I approve.) Meanwhile Peter goes back to New York City. He spends the next four years Spider-manning around New York, cleaning up the city. In the process he has become famous and well-loved—by the populace of New York, that is. He is still alone without any real friends.
Now, MIT is inconveniently located some 200 miles from New York City, the beating heart of the MCU. To get Ned and MJ back to the center of All Things MCU, Cretton waits until they have graduated from MIT.
And that’s where we start. Peter crashes a house-warming party when they move into the new apartment they share. (MJ and Ned’s friendship remains platonic.) Peter has emotions.
At the same time, a new criminal is messing up his New York. Since it is hinted in the trailer, I think I can mention without spoiling that the new danger in the city is a person or thing that can possess ordinary people and direct their actions.
The film as a whole had a very serious feel. Although it has humorous moments and made me laugh out loud at points, it was not the light-hearted story previous Spider-man films had prepared me for. (The darker tone is faithful to the source material, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s comics.) I called it emotionally damaging in my title, because that’s how it felt to me. Not everyone gets out whole.
In fact, I felt that this new Spider-man film borrowed its tone and emotional weight from Marvel Tv series, especially Daredevil, The Defenders, and The Punisher.
Spoilers below
There are two main plot lines in the film. The first is Peter’s attempt to deal with the criminal telepath. Huge spoiler number 1: it is Jean Grey, of X-Men fame. Jean Grey is probably the most powerful of the mutants, having telepathic and telekinetic powers. She gets into Peter’s head enough to know about him and MJ, and she threatens MJ.
Plot line 2, of course, is Peter and MJ’s relationship. Peter comes to MJ as Spider-man and takes her away to keep her safe. It is at this point that He recruits Frank Castle, AKA the Punisher, to help him keep MJ safe. And MJ learns that Spider-man is Peter Parker, a name she doesn’t know, and learns that he loved her and she him in another version of this world.
If you know the X-Men, you know that Jean Grey is most typically on the side of the good guys, at least when she has control of herself. Like Peter, Jean Grey is a damaged personality. Peter forms a sort of friendship with her.
I expect Peter and Jean’s friendship to be a major point of future Spider-man films.
Haven’t checked in on the Marvel cinematic and tv show universe in a while, and wow are things moving along!
Excellent review!
That’s intense merely that the Punisher was brought into things. And I can tell by reading your review that there’s definitely a lot of emotionally damaging material in the movie, for sure.
I’m glad that excellent Spider-Man movies are still being made! 🕷️💯
Oh, this is a very encouraging review! I stopped following Marvel movies a couple of years after Avengers: Endgame. Even then, it was mostly out of habit — it was obvious that the quality had dropped, and after the departure of the characters I loved, my interest became much weaker. The new ones just didn’t quite capture my heart.
But when I watched the trailer for the new Spider-Man, I started to wonder... Of course, a trailer is not always a good indicator, but this one just felt right somehow. It even reminded me a little of the 1994 animated series (that’s actually how I first discovered and fell in love with this character). Judging by what I read in your review, my intuition didn’t let me down after all.
I decided not to read the spoilers — now I’m definitely going to see it in the cinema))))