Joel on Film

When we last saw this iteration of Peter Parker, he had teamed up with a pair of alternate versions of himself to fix a multiversal mess he unintentionally caused, with the result being that a superhero sorcerer had to cast a spell to make everyone forget who was under the tights and mask. It was a testament to just how good and decent this Peter is, as well as to the plucky and likeable performance by Tom Holland, that we found the move quite affecting and genuinely meaningful. That’s how Spider-Man: Brand New Day finds the friendly, neighborhood webslinger: an unknown variable in the lives of New Yorkers whom he has saved but to whom he can never reveal his identity.

The movie is also trying to do a lot more than that, and it’s not only the attempted study of guilt and regret that winds up forking off in two different directions here. That stuff is perfectly fine and even affecting, if only because we’ve always liked the chemistry between this Peter and Zendaya’s MJ (of course, it helps that the two actors are wedded in real life, almost entirely because of their shared time with this franchise). That takes on a different role in this story, because MJ—alongside Ned (Jacob Batalon), Peter’s best friend and confidante—is among those whom the spell affected.

Everything that the two lovebirds, in addition to the two best friends and the trio at large, has ever done together is simply inaccessible—lost in some part of their brain that knows Spider-Man rescued them a few times in high school but cannot remember anything else. That’s a somber and loaded idea, and the best parts of director Destin Daniel Cretton’s film are the early stretches in which Peter is simply forced to live with the aftermath of that decision. They are quickly pushed aside, though, for all the other business of this plot, which is a bit too cluttered for the effect of the heartfelt side to really connect.

The resulting movie feels like one that is consistently trying not to be about what it’s about, mainly because it has a really good, thoughtful hook right there to be explored—albeit one that probably wouldn’t involve action sequences or any obvious reason to call it an event of the summer movie season. A plot does develop around Peter, more as an interruption in his routine of interfering in crimes and collaborating with a police detective (played by a good Liza Colón-Zayas) to bring down the criminals. A short montage at the beginning announces a few of the criminals and groups he’s disarmed, and then it informs us that Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), the hardened vigilante imported over from a few streaming series, is something of a rival on the streets of New York.

Castle’s involvement here is one of a couple in the movie that merely feel out of place, although that shouldn’t read as much of a criticism of the actor himself, who brings all the intense energy and the sardonic wit to this role (edited for content, of course, including by Peter’s tensile web in one amusing moment). He feels a bit arbitrary in this world, offering assistance but no real narrative reason to include him as much more than an Easter egg. That is doubly true of the eventual involvement of Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), whose confused and increasingly threadbare role in the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe has become something of a nuisance.

Banner and his angrier half are only here to explain some things about DNA inhibition, before being taken over by some mysterious force, leading to a cleverly constructed action set piece (the film’s best one, if only because it also offers a few minor revelations in the process). That force is the movie’s antagonist, a mysterious figure who can jump between the consciences of random people. That effect, by the way, is both eerie and slightly comical, because it offers some acting extra the chance to jerk violently in the middle of a large crowd for no reason that is readily apparent.

Whoever this figure is, there is a source, although to reveal any further—even to identify the actor credited in the role, which belongs to a name familiar within the legion of superheroes—would be to ruin a pretty neat little surprise (if, of course, one has avoided a lot of internet chatter, of which there is quite a lot). Then again, it morphs from a little surprise to the guiding point in the plot by the time the third act comes around. Indeed, we even get essentially the whole backstory of the character in a late-film flashback, and it seems that the powers-that-be at Marvel Studios just decided to forego an entire movie or series or “special presentation” that would have done the same.

On one hand, that’s probably for the best, since this world and this franchise have so diluted their sense of efficiency that a Spider-Man story cannot simply remain his own. On the other hand, well, this Spider-Man story definitely does not remain his own—not with all this business to cover and the future of a franchise to tease (the postcredits scene here isn’t so much a scene as it is a true and pretty clever gimmick of sorts). Returning screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers populate the plot with so much business that the meat of the story—Peter’s fight to get back to a normal life with MJ and Ned—starts to feel like a distraction from the rest of it—a grassroots investigation into the villain and some alarming biochemical changes for Peter, while a governmental agency (Tramell Tillman plays its director with a few too many welcoming smiles) battens down the hatches.

The parts of Spider-Man: Brand New Day that work are genuinely intriguing, and that includes the high-flying action, which might subtly reinvent how we all want to see Spider-Man’s web-slinging acrobatics across New York in the future. As for the parts that don’t work, well, they’re enough of a drag on everything else that the movie largely is a mixed-bag with a few too many missed opportunities.

Rating: **½ (out of ****)