Spider-Man Franchise Grows Up In Brand New Day

One of the best things about the very good Spider-Man: Brand New Day is that it marks the moment when the franchise grows up from stories aimed at teens to one clearly for adults. And not just because of all the cursing by Frank Castle, which is quite a lot for a PG-13 movie to be fair. Which isn’t to say the movie doesn’t have plenty of humor. Spidey still has plenty of quips and there is even better group dynamic humor than in other movies in the franchise. But the tone of the film is very much more of an adult dealing with adult problems in a (mostly) adult way.

This review will be free of spoilers, and in a week or so the spoilery review from Kat Chinetti will go live. I won’t mention any speculated-upon characters or plot points except to say; you are likely right about some things and wrong about more.

Right from the start, it is clear that Brand New Day is just that, with director Destin Daniel Cretton and director of photography Brett Pawlak giving us a distinct look and feel that separates it from the previous Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. And it must be the influence of these two people that makes this latest Spider-Man flick feel so different. Brand New Day was written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, the team that wrote all three previous Spider-Man movies for Sony, made by Marvel Studios.

Cretton gets best-in-franchise performances out of Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds and Zendaya as MJ, and possibly a best-in-career performance from Tom Holland. The chemistry between pretty much all the cast members is so good, that when a stinker of a piece of dialogue (and yes, those do exist in this otherwise excellent movie) pops up it stands out like a skunk on a summer evening.

While there are plenty of CG effects in the movie — until someone invents real web shooters, that has to be CG — there is also a focus on real stunt work and practical effects whenever possible. So, the fight scenes have much more weight to them than previous entries, which can undoubtedly be laid at Cretton’s feet again, since he directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Tonally, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is much like The Thunderbolts* in that it focuses on how mental health issues can affect people with superpowers in ways that can make them even more damaging to themselves and others than people without such abilities — and reality shows us just how damaging unpowered people can be in those circumstances. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Peter’s issue is how damaging isolation can be, since that isolation is the ultimate outcome of the previous movie. But, continuing with the theme of this being a more adult movie than previous ones, the resolution to that problem for Peter isn’t as simple as you might expect.

The pacing is excellent, and despite its two hour and 25-minute runtime, my old man bladder never once complained.

One final note of excellence (pun intended) is Michael Giacchino’s score. It is exactly my favorite kind — unobtrusive but, when I remembered it at all, beautiful.

I give Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Sony, Marvel Studios; PG-13; 2hrs 25mins) an 8 out of 10.

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