After years of world-ending stakes and multiversal shenanigans, Spider-Man: Brand New Day reminds audiences why Tom Holland’s Peter Parker became Marvel’s most beloved hero. By trading cosmic-level threats for a personal journey of growth and change, director Destin Daniel Cretton delivers the most impactful and emotional Spider-Man film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The creative team behind Brand New Day have been very open about how they made this film for the fans, and took a more grounded approach to the character of Spider-Man. After the huge multiversal event that was Spider-Man: No Way Home, the more grounded take was a much-needed change of pace for the franchise.
The film takes place four years after the events of No Way Home, in which Doctor Strange had cast a spell to make the entire planet forget that Spider-Man was Peter Parker — including Parker’s loved ones. Peter writes a note explaining to his friends, M.J. Watson (Zendaya) and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), what happened so they can stay together. He never shares it, deeming it safer for them if he were never in their lives.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day explores ideas of change and loneliness. If the previous home trilogy was about learning your responsibility in youth, the new film is about accepting responsibility in early adulthood.
Now, Spider-Man is better than ever, bringing down NYC’s crime rate and all of the big, superpowered villains. Spider-Man begins forming a strong relationship with New York Police Department Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas) and official government agency, Damage Control. Parker builds working relationships with other Marvel heroes, such as the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Black Widow (Florence Pugh) of the New Avengers.
The film succeeds as a Spider-Man film. Some viewers will be able to relate to the struggles Parker faces. Parker is consistently balancing multiple lives—school, work, friends, family, and romantic partners. Spider-Man’s double life is far from fiction to most of us.
Spider-Man has always been a relatable superhero, and maybe because I’m now at the age where I’m broke and balancing responsibilities, this film captures the responsibility of adulthood almost perfectly.
Throughout the film, Parker tries to resist the change of adulthood by isolating himself. Parker becomes afraid of what his life would look like if he let people back into his life. When you lose people in your life, the hardest part isn’t the loss — it’s accepting that you can’t go back, at least not exactly as it was before.
You’ve changed, and those around you do as well. That doesn’t mean everything is lost. Everything we go through in life shapes us into who we become. That’s what Spider-Man: Brand New Day wants us to understand: it’s the lesson that Peter Parker has learned time and time again in the Spider-Man comics.
Where this movie excels isn’t through the superficial superhero stuff — it’s what’s in the title — no matter how bad life can get, no matter how much you want to deny it, change will always find you. And you’ll always have a brand new day to try again.
