Even the long-awaited team-up “Deadpool & Wolverine” couldn’t keep up: thunderous fan cheers in the cinemas (and not just for the brilliant comeback of the ex-Spideys Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield), a euphoric press response and ultimately an incredible box office result of 1.92 billion dollars (mind you in a cinema time with Corona restrictions!) made “Spider-Man: No Way Home” closed THE Marvel event since the mega spectacle “Avengers: Endgame”. But how the hell are you supposed to build on that?
Five years later, “Shang-Chi” director Destin Daniel Cretton, who took over from Jon Watts, finds the only right answer in the sequel “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”: with a new beginning! At least more or less. Because even if the fourth solo adventure with Tom Holland takes the title hero away from his usual environment and takes a slightly different direction in terms of tone, it still combines the greatest strengths of its predecessors into a brilliant blockbuster highlight – with a surprising new Marvel dream duo!
Peter’s love for MJ (Zendaya) is again the emotional center in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” ended with a dramatic bang: In order to avert the impending chaos in the multiverse, Spider-Man (Tom Holland) has decided with a heavy heart to take a momentous step: A magic spell from Doctor Strange has made the entire world forget the existence of Peter Parker – which, of course, is very damaging to the now anonymous superhero, especially in the case of his great love MJ (Zendaya) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon). Completely on his own for the first time, Spider-Man takes on crime in his neighborhood, where he plays a key role in driving the crime rate to a new record low.
But just as he seems to have come to terms with his new existence, several mysterious attacks shake the Department of Damage Control, which is responsible for superhuman activities. The unknown attacker can apparently control people via mind control and is always one step ahead of Spidey. He tries to find out who is behind the new threat – but at the same time he also has to come to terms with the fact that his spider powers are changing him in unexpected ways…
Everything is new and yet a lot is the same
There may be a certain break between “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”, but the chosen path will still be consistently continued. And that despite the fact that there was a very crucial change behind the scenes: For the first time in Tom Holland’s Spider-Man era, Destin Daniel Cretton, director of the 5-star masterpiece “Short Term 12”, took over the production of a comic blockbuster about the friendly spider – and this is particularly reflected in the action, after all, Cretton probably gave us the cracking fights in “Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings”. best choreographed stunts in the MCU. Unfortunately, “Brand New Day” doesn’t quite come close to that, but the action is sometimes a bit too cut up. Nevertheless, “Spider-Man 4” offers a wealth of variety that we haven’t seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a long time.
Hardly any fight is the same as the other – and each time Spidey has to use different tricks from his skills, gadgets or moves repertoire to get the bad guy under control. This is also thanks to the many different opponents. While Spidey knocks out his easier rivals with fleet-footed skill combos that bring back fond memories of the fantastic recent Spider-Man video games, he has to bring up a completely different set of guns for other enemies like the ninjas of the Hand or a certain Marvel veteran with anger issues. And don’t worry: Despite the large number of adversaries, we don’t get villain overkill here like in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 3”, as a large part of them (thankfully!) only serve as cannon fodder to illustrate Spidey’s career in quick succession over the past few years (very similar to what we last saw with the Marvel Family in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”). The focus is then quite clearly on the mysterious new danger in the background, which the Marvel hero hardly seems to be able to cope with.
Peter’s inner trauma is soon reflected in many physical changes.
In all of this, the dynamic camerawork by Cretton’s old confidant Brett Pawlak (“Wonder Man”), which equally playfully follows Spider-Man’s movements, plays a key role in ensuring that there is no boredom. Even with the obligatory flying scenes, which are right up there with the best swings of all of Spider-Man’s cinematic appearances, “Brand New Day” goes all out with first-person perspectives, glimpses into Spider-Man’s mask and dizzying free-fall tower sequences. It’s just a shame that the origin of the washed-out backgrounds from the computer often stands out all too clearly, as the picturesque city shots in the end credits actually offer a more homely New York feeling.
But not only visually, but also emotionally we come closer to Spider-Man or rather Peter Parker in “Brand New Day” than ever before. Peter is still clearly struggling with the fact that he had to leave MJ and Ned behind him, and he throws himself into his heroic activities more than ever to distract himself from it – until it finally threatens to wear him down completely. Even if Peter himself doesn’t want to admit it for a long time, the trauma he suffered at the end of “No Way Home” is catching up with him more and more. As a result, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” largely foregoes the typical tongue-in-cheek Marvel humor (which makes an unnecessarily silly scene with another MCU returnee with a penchant for spiders even more annoying in this context). Even with the melancholic sounds of regular composer Michael Giacchino at the Marvel Studios logo right at the beginning, it becomes clear that we’re probably not going to be served a feel-good party filled with throwaway gags.
More adult, but no less entertaining
Despite the occasional one-liner, which of course is a must for Spidey, this Spider-Man is definitely more mature and noticeably marked by the tragedies of his past. The path to processing and self-discovery via all sorts of puberty analogies is of course anything but subtle in a comic blockbuster of the “Spider-Man” brand, but is still incredibly effective emotionally. Especially when Peter meets his former girlfriend MJ and snippets of memories of their (somewhat) carefree time together in the previous three films are regularly intercut, it is absolutely heartbreaking, also thanks to the usual wonderful chemistry between Tom Holland and his real-life wife Zendaya.
The whole thing is mirrored quite smartly by the film’s antagonist, played by Sadie Sink, who is on her own painful trip to self-determination. Although we don’t (yet) know much about the background of the “Stranger Things” star’s previously kept secret role, her ordeal becomes more and more tangible as the film progresses. And the parallelism of Peter and her character ultimately enables a touching and deserved resolution to the conflict, which is more based on the grandiose “Thunderbolts*” finale than on the tiring material battles of most other MCU adventures.
A buddy duo for Marvel eternity: Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal)
Unlike Sadie Sink’s character, Spider-Man in “Brand New Day” is not quite as alone as he first seems – and that is one of the greatest gifts of the 38th MCU film. There was great skepticism about how Frank Castle, aka The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), of all people, who had just mercilessly showcased his bloody vigilante justice again in his Disney+ special “One Last Kill,” would fit in with the family-friendly Spider-Man. But this pairing actually works surprisingly well. Of course, Frank doesn’t go around killing people on a mass scale, but Jon Bernthal, who once again shows off his star role, is able to fully exploit his grumpy anti-hero charm, even with a youth rating.
His encounters with Spider-Man are much more than just a clash of opposing ideologies in the fight against crime (which is already very entertaining in itself). Not least as a result of his own sad backstory with the loss of his family, Frank unexpectedly steps into the mentoring footsteps of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) – and thus plays a crucial role in Peter’s development without diluting the core of the trigger-happy cult figure. After “Brand New Day,” we really hope that this isn’t the last time the unlikely duo will work together.
Conclusion: “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” achieves a fantastic balancing act between adult depth and pure blockbuster fun. “Shang-Chi” director Destin Daniel Cretton continues the drama from “No Way Home” consistently and emotionally, but thanks to imaginative action, he adds enough fresh accents to ensure that his significantly matured hero doesn’t miss out on the fun. Plus, we don’t want to miss the dream combination of Spidey and the Punisher, which came out of nowhere, in any of the wall crawler’s subsequent adventures!