There’s nothing better than a Tom Holland Spider-Man movie.
The past three have packed more emotional heft into them than most comic book films. And even with all of the fancy Stark tech, his Spider-Man has always felt like the most grounded and relatable. He gets hurt. He screws up. He makes decisions he thinks are right that end up making everything infinitely worse. Basically, he’s Peter Parker.
With Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that doesn’t change. In fact, it might pack even more emotional weight than the previous films.
Set four years after No Way Home, Peter Parker is alone and lonely. No one remembers him. Aunt May is gone and, thanks to Doctor Strange, he’s been completely erased from the memories of his two best friends, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon). He’s basically living life one day at a time, working, keeping his head down and saving people because, well, he’s our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Spider-Man has become a fixture around New York City, stopping everything from everyday criminals to guys like Scorpion (Michael Mando), who finally gets his chance to become more than the guy sitting in prison at the end of Homecoming.
There are still people trying to look out for him, though. Namely Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), who has developed a nice relationship with Spider-Man and is absolutely lovely here. At one point she basically tells him that maybe he should slow down and take some time for himself. You get the feeling she can see what Peter refuses to admit: underneath the mask is someone who is completely exhausted and using the job to avoid dealing with everything he’s lost.
But with Scorpion, Tombstone and The Hand all causing trouble around New York, Peter continually gets pulled back into hero mode. And when Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), the head of the Department of Damage Control, asks Spider-Man for help dealing with a mysterious telepath played by Sadie Sink, he readily agrees.
But things aren’t always what they seem.
Meanwhile, Peter has slowly reintroduced himself into the lives of MJ and Ned, who have both moved on without him. They don’t know that this slightly awkward guy hovering around the edges of their lives was once one of the most important people in them. Peter does, though. Holland is so good in these scenes because you can see everything Peter wants to tell them sitting right behind his eyes. He wants his life back, but he also knows exactly what could happen if he lets himself have it.
Along the way, Spider-Man crosses paths with the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Bruce Banner, which means we finally get to see Mark Ruffalo‘s Hulk rampage again.
This is one of the first comic book movies in a long time that actually feels like a comic book brought to life. You’ve got Spider-Man swinging through New York, street-level villains popping up, cops chasing criminals, Marvel heroes wandering in and out of Peter’s life and this bigger mystery slowly building in the background. Yet none of it feels forced. It feels like you picked up an issue of Amazing Spider-Man where a half-dozen different things are going on in Peter Parker’s life at the same time.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton, working from a screenplay by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, was such a great choice for this. Cretton already proved with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings that he knows how to handle huge action scenes without losing the characters inside them. Here, he somehow takes that up another notch because the action sequences are fantastic.
Some of my favorite moments aren’t even the giant battles. They’re the shots of Spider-Man diving off buildings, flipping through the air and slinging between the streets of Manhattan. Those images have been running on a loop through my head since I saw the movie. I could watch that stuff all day.
But as great as the action is, it’s the quieter moments that make the movie work. Like the previous Holland films, this is really about family and friendship. Spider-Man might have powers, but Peter Parker needs people.
Spider-Man isn’t amazing just because he can climb walls, lift cars or swing between skyscrapers. He’s amazing because of the people around him. And after four movies, Brand New Day might finally be the one where Peter Parker begins to realize that too.
