‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Spoiler Review: With Great Power Comes Much Cross-Pollination
The Plot: A mind-hopping villain invades Spider-Man’s NYC as the web-slinger mutates and laughs in the face of superhero fatigue, to the tune of a billion dollars.
The Verdict: Spider-Man: Brand New Day is one of the better post-Endgame MCU films, featuring strong character work from Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Sadie Sink. However, even with the box-office records it’s broken in its first week, there’s a lingering narrative sense that the party is over, and we’re living through the longest cinematic epilogue ever (with the exception, perhaps, of Fox’s X-Men movie universe, which has been in epilogue mode for over a decade).
It’s been five years since Spider-Man: No Way Home and seven years since Avengers: Endgame, and we’re still dealing with the fallout of those two movies. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to see a superhero film series where world-altering actions have lasting consequences. It’s also nice to finally see a Spider-Man movie where Holland’s protagonist feels like the real star, even though he’s still surrounded by guest stars galore, including the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and the new Black Widow (Florence Pugh).
On the other hand, this is still a blockbuster with a serious case of Marvelitis. Hulk’s multi-movie subplot is a mess—he’s reverted from smart to savage again, erasing any progress he made—and it’s weird to see the Punisher go from the kill-crazy rampage of One Last Kill to a PG-13 bromance with Spidey. The best parts of the movie are the tear-jerker moments where Peter Parker has to reckon with the fact that the love of his life, MJ, and his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon), no longer remember him or love him in return.
The final pre-credits scene—with Peter breaking out his old secret handshake with Ned—is staged in a somewhat confusing manner. If you think about it, it would make sense that this is just Ned recognizing the name Peter, since he overheard MJ calling Spider-Man that earlier in the movie. However, I know I’m not the only audience member who came away with a different first impression: namely, that the handshake was somehow reactivating Ned’s memory of Peter, in a way that Peter’s kiss with MJ didn’t.
“Spider-Man Will Return” … in space. For now, the Marvelitis extends especially to Brand New Day’s nominal villains. It’s no secret that the MCU has long had a villain problem, with well-drawn baddies like Thanos being the exception rather than the rule. However, Brand New Day does this thing that Fantastic Four did, where it treats some classic villains as cameos, not characters, relegating them to lame little Easter eggs in a crimefighting montage. Here’s looking at you, Tombstone (Marvin Jones III).
With Scorpion, they at least make the effort to bring him back later in the movie, finally paying off the post-credits scene with Michael Mando from nine years ago in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Yet Scorpion in this isn’t much more than a tech-enabled henchman with the face of Nacho from Better Call Saul. How he got the suit with the stinger tail is never explained, and other than perfunctorily delivering on an old, dead-end credits scene, there’s no reason for him to be here with a hodgepodge of red ninjas. (I vaguely recall The Hand appearing in Netflix’s Marvel shows, but the through line from there to here eludes me, just as it will with other moviegoers, I suspect).
In the never-ending game of set-up that is the MCU, we’ve also reached the point where the villain of one movie is the hero of the next movie. Sink’s casting as Jean Grey, a role previously inhabited by Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner in the X-Men films, is one of those poorly kept movie secrets where the internet could guess the obvious but had to wait for the studio’s pomp and circumstance to catch up. In that respect, she’s reminiscent of Blofield in Spectre (another Sony Pictures release) and Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness (played by No Way Home’s Benedict Cumberbatch).
In her defense, Sink’s portrayal of Jean Grey is a much better character than either of those goobers. The backstory with her sister (a deep-cut character from the comics) helps develop her in an interesting way, enough to make her perhaps the best version of Jean Grey that we’ve seen yet. What’s still slightly sad, despite her charm, is that I’ve spent the last two paragraphs of my Spider-Man movie review talking about an X-Men character.