Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the fourth Spider-Man film starring Tom Holland picks up after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home. The world no longer remembers Peter Parker, who is now living a lonely life, dedicating himself entirely to being Spider-Man. But as he faces a mysterious new threat, he also undergoes a strange transformation that puts both his identity and the city at risk. The film also stars Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Sadie Sink, Michael Mando, Tramell Tillman, and Mark Ruffalo.

One of the themes in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the singular ache of adulting. That time in your 20s when the built-in camaraderie of college is done, when circumstances impose isolation, when relationships are casually sidelined as life takes over, when work becomes the oxygen that fuels long days and lonely nights. To add to Peter Parker’s melancholy, there’s also memory loss. If you recall, in the last film Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange saves the universe from catastrophe by making the world forget Peter and his secret identity. This is done at Peter’s request and it includes his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya). So now, Peter is in an extreme version of Saiyaara; the woman he loves has no clue who he is.

It’s the seventh film Tom Holland is in as Spider-Man, the fourth as a solo superhero. And while the 30-year-old actor who began this a decade ago can still pass as just-past-teens, the Marvel franchise shows a tear in its spandex. Less Brand New Day, more New Branding Day. Director Destin Daniel Cretton and old Spidey hands Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers could have actually made something of ‘been there, done that, and moving-on’. However, except for some mild stretching and a mention that he is no longer in high school, there is no suggestion that Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland) needs anyone or anything. That, in fact, is one of the premises driving Brand New Day – can Peter really continue as he insists he can, ridding New York city of crime and returning home to a garage-like room, only to fiddle with machines and science (he handles this too on his own), with no one to talk to but a virtual assistant, and nothing to entertain him but videos posted by old friends Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya).

Not so long back, post the release of Avengers: Endgame, the world declared it was suffering from superhero fatigue. As Marvel Studios churned out stand alone shows of all its characters- heroes, side heroes and villains alike- and introduced new superheroes on screen, the audience felt jaded watching the same stories. Clearly, Marvel Studios took note of the fatigue, reassessed its content and then reinvented a new template. Films like Thunderbolts and the series Loki have all attempted to explore the inner demons more than villains in physical form. Thus, MCU’s latest Spider-Man: Brand New Day fits right into the same framework where the friendly neighbourhood superhero is no longer a funny, slightly reckless but humorous high schooler, but a grown-up man, fighting loneliness and warding off evil from New York City in equal measures. Tom Holland returns as the web-slinging superhero along with his wife, actress Zendaya, who plays MJ and Jacob Batalon as his buddy Ned Leeds. But the trio, unlike the previous films, are not together anymore thanks to Doctor Strange setting things differently in No Way Home.

Through comics and cinema, the cornerstone of the story of men (and women) in spandex is common — it is no cakewalk being a superhero. For decades, our superheroes — even as they have fought fierily and rescued humankind over and over again — have wrestled with self-doubt, isolation, guilt and the pitfalls of leading a double life. All of these feelings explode in the latest Spider-Man outing, with Brand New Day being a crowd-pleasing as well as cerebral film, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (drawn, of course, from characters originally created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko).

The new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a mixed bag. It’s both conventional and kinetic, sombre and silly. Under the stewardship of director Destin Daniel Cretton, the movie isn’t as synthetic as the franchise’s previous instalments — especially the previous two films starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man. Brand New Day is more grounded than those movies, less bothered by multiverses and mayhem and more concerned with the characters. The action is spectacular (and most definitely inspired by the popular Spider-Man video games by Insomniac), the superhero shenanigans are reliably rote, but Brand New Day is at its best when it’s being a Bollywood emotional drama from the mid-2000s

Tom Holland’s Peter Parker grows up in Brand New Day, a melancholic, grief-stricken Spider-Man story that trades humour for humanity. Following the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), New York’s friendly neighborhood hero is no longer a bumbling teenager. With his high school years behind him, Peter Parker enters a new chapter of his life, confronting its defining realities—grief, loss, loneliness, and a profound journey of self-reflection. Having lost Aunt May and the two people closest to him, Ned and MJ, whose memories of Peter have been erased, he is left to navigate adulthood alone. Now a full-time masked vigilante, he fights crime while battling the isolation within. Melancholy lingers where humor once prevailed. Already wrestling with his inner demons, Peter is forced to take on a formidable nemesis who can manipulate the minds of others. (Hint: the origin of an iconic X-Men character played by Sadie Sink).

Once the nostalgia of watching a new Spider-Man movie after nearly five years wears off, a worrying thought emerges: Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day really just Spider-Man: All Over Again in disguise? Is Destin Daniel Cretton’s film just a factory reset of the New York-based comic-book superhero tale, but with the same actor? Does anything ever truly end in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? Will my trust issues ever subside? Every new MCU cycle feels like a post-concert encore of the previous one. The framework is not foolproof. Dr Strange’s spell in the admittedly sweet Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) means that the world no longer remembers Spidey’s secret identity, Peter Parker. Young Peter hoped the spell could be customised, but nobody had the memory-wiping machine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.