“I don’t have a phone. Do you mind taking me home?” At one point in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Zendaya’s MJ makes this request of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. Without batting an eye, our boy leaps out of the window with her confidently clutching his arms, as if it were the most normal thing to ask and receive, like a faster alternative to the Uber she couldn’t call. Maybe for New York dwellers in the Marvel Universe, it is a common sight to see Spidey all over town, strolling around if he isn’t saving them from the constant rain of villains.
This is where Destin Daniel Cretton’s film revisits a question that previous Spider-Man films have asked as well: can our superhero be vulnerable, too? Can he grieve his own tragic losses?
Before diving into these questions, I couldn’t help but feel that New York’s friendly neighborhood superhero doesn’t count his blessings enough. Come on, he has an entire city parading to wish for his well-being. He might get a permanent room in many of their homes. There are apps built merely to track his sightings. At least in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, these aren’t everyday occurrences. Peter Parker is gifted. If only he could acknowledge it enough. The film’s central message, however grave, comes off at times like a celebrity’s regret over not being able to ride the subway alone.
This is not to say Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a bad or mediocre film. It isn’t one by any measure. It is just that we tend to buy into the guy’s peculiar grief because we, by default, love the superhero and the actor very much. So, we choose to happily be sad even when there is so much real tragedy in the world: a plight that is even more pronounced in the world designed by writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (based on Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original comics).
This time around, Jean Grey (Sadie Sink) becomes less of a conventional villain and more of a mirror reflecting Peter’s own struggle with power. In search of the mysterious “V-Max,” the girl, with astounding telekinetic and telepathic skills, breaks into the United States Department of Damage Control (DODC). Spider-Man joins the hunt alongside Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), who serves the role Tony Stark once would have if we were still in that era of MCU productions. It’s all fun and games until Spider-Man: Brand New Day shifts into a mode where everybody gets serious, the audience included.
ALSO READ: ‘The Odyssey’ review – Christopher Nolan turns Homer’s epic into his own
What begins as a pursuit for Peter to rekindle ties with his best friend and ex-girlfriend soon becomes a mini ‘Gifted Person Emancipation Programme’. There are tearful flashbacks, mind-reading, miraculous escapes from death, and all kinds of standard coming-of-age prerequisites that would make many diehard Spider-Man fans weep.
For all the intensity it packs, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also a pretty adorable film for its underlying innocence. The party sequence where Peter shows up at MJ’s to introduce himself as “Maynard” is so Gen-Z-coded that you’ll root for this sweet family-of-choice to unite as soon as possible.
Cretton’s direction, while not overly ambitious, contains all the trappings of a genuine superhero banger. The vertigo-inducing 3D visuals are better than ever, as is our leading man (Holland), who has literally grown up in front of a generation of film lovers. Zendaya gets far too little to work with here, although the screen shines a tad brighter whenever she is on it. Bernthal shares fun chemistry with Spidey, and his individual quirks, too, are noteworthy. Jacob Batalon, as always, sparkles as the best friend we would all hate to lose.
With so many emotions packed in, and with May Parker appearing in haunting memories, Spider-Man: Brand New Day knows exactly what it wants to be. While doing justice to its comic book roots, the film addresses complex themes like a superhero’s mental health. Whether a villain exists or not isn’t the film’s top priority this time. It’s about how those with immense power suffer in their own ways. We even get the Incredible Hulk in a brief rage spell, with Mark Ruffalo sharing a wonderful scene with Holland prior to it.
As Spider-Man: Brand New Day walks us through their miseries, I found myself putting aside my own daydream of having superpowers. Maybe swinging across New York sounds magical, but what happens when every fall carries the weight of an entire city watching you? And perhaps the greatest tragedy of being Spider-Man is not that Peter Parker cannot live a normal life of riding the subway and drinking the weekend away with friends. It is that he can never experience one. If a superhero’s life comes at such a mammoth cost, maybe I’d rather not be gifted at all.
VERDICT: ★★★ 1/2
Read the reviews of Spider-Man: Brand New Day by the Film Critics Guild HERE.
