SPIDER MAN: BRAND NEW DAY

PREMISE

A forgotten Peter Parker lives alone as a full-time Spider-Man until mounting pressure triggers a dangerous change and a powerful new enemy emerges.

THE GOOD STUFF

TOM HOLLAND- After this film, I don’t necessarily know how there can be an argument as to who the best Spider-Man of all time is. We’ve seen Holland in SEVEN different movies as Spider-Man up until this point, and he’s just covered a lot more ground than Maguire or Garfield ever had the chance to. It’s almost not even fair to compare. Everything he did up until SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME was primarily a comedic version of the character, and between that film and this one he has covered a LOT of weighty emotional stuff with this character.

This is the most dramatic Spider-Man film to date. At this point in his life, this version of Peter Parker has lost a whole f lot of people who mattered to him. And a lot of this performance is about portraying the internal struggle of Peter Parker. A lot of that is done in silence, in observing the physicality of Holland’s performance. And it’s there. He has run the full gamut. To hell with the sentimental attachments. This man is the best at this role.

DESTIN CRETTON- A lot of these directors who come and do MCU movies kind of feel like people who show up, usually do everything that the job requires them to do, and do that without adding any of their own stylistic flair to the proceedings. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that if the movie is good, but this Multiverse Saga has given us a lot of films that feel like they’re just kind of…there. To look at what Cretton has done with SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS, WONDER MAN, and this, he is showing serious versatility where a lot of other directors who have directed multiple MCU things simply have not.

One could say that this is the best-looking live-action Spider-Man movie and also has the best-looking action of ANY live-action Spider-Man movie, and I wouldn’t really give an argument to that. The technical aspects of this movie are superior to a lot of what’s come out, and I like those other movies. Cretton is a real talent, and the MCU is lucky to have him around.

THE BAD STUFF

ALL THE SIDE CHARACTERS- Hey, remember the problem that everybody had with SPIDER-MAN 3 and how it has been said that there were just way too many side characters distracting from the main story? Remember how we complained about how there were just too many villains lying around and how things really didn’t seem as centered as they should be? Well, this movie has the same exact problem, but it’s not nearly as disastrous, because of time constraints.

SPIDER-MAN 3 had three villains; this movie technically has five antagonists, and that’s not even mentioning a group of ninjas called The Hand. On top of that, we have other notable characters from other movies and TV shows who are here simply to distract more than they add to anything that goes on. It’s a lot. Entirely too much, actually.

THE UGLY STUFF

CONNECTIVITY- Once upon a time there existed a show called SECRET INVASION. A show that had so many different elements from so many other MCU things in it that it could have been a real foundational piece to set the ENTIRE cinematic universe going forward… And it really didn’t do a damn thing. Like, at all.

This movie is in the same position SECRET INVASION was. There are so many different elements tied to other things that have existed within the MCU, both in movies and on television. Unlike SECRET INVASION, we don’t get zero of what we’re looking for, but what we do get is a lot of vagueness. We get a lot of stuff being vaguely alluded to for future projects that we don’t even know are in development. I’m not saying that we need answers to questions before AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY pops up, but I do not think it’s asking too much to get a little bit more connectivity within the MCU. And I don’t think we got that here, unless you really want to go into conspiracy-theory tin-foil-hat mode.

(And I know a lot of people really REALLY like to do that anyway. I’m not here to kink-shame the internet conspiracy guys, so if they do want to get deep into MCU conspiracy theories, this movie is definitely for them.)

Can an MCU movie truly be great if it’s not moving the cinematic universe forward? That is the big question here. My answer to that is no. An MCU project, regardless of TV or film, cannot be great if it’s NOT EXTENDING THE UNIVERSE.

However, in just acknowledging SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY as a standalone Spider-Man film, in comparing it with all of the other live-action Spider-Man films that came before it (because let’s keep it real, this isn’t even close to the SPIDER-VERSE movies), this is clearly the bronze medal to SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME and SPIDER-MAN 2. It did have the potential to eclipse those movies, and sadly, it did not.

SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY is in theaters now.