A Little Body Horror and Back to Street-Level Action for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

Best MCU movie in years without grading on a scale. Seriously, Spider-Man: Brand New Day has delivered. If I had any faith in the MCU as a whole, I’d say that Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps were moves in the right direction and that SM:BND is a full-on course correction, but the Marvel Beast has grown into an unwieldy animal, misshapen, clumsy, and sporting more wrinkles (in development and execution) than any critter its age should. 

That said, those previous two films, for all their faults and honestly, there aren’t that many, delivered a semblance of why Marvel flicks are worth going to. Sure, there is some serious plot-armor, motivations that don’t always make sense, relationships that feel more contrived than organic, but they delivered overall in the areas that matter. 

The previous two films had well-developed characters and reasonable but not-Earth-shattering stakes (sorry, but Galactus is still not getting the role he should be playing; he’s a God-tier Marvel character and yet, really didn’t carry much of a threat; we know the FF will defeat him, and we don’t really have a sense of scale of what he’s done over billions of years of existence, and so on). To be sure, having seen the Hawkeye, Falcon and the Winter Soldier series and the standalone Black Widow movie no doubt helps with Thunderbolts*, but even without that background, I felt like the actors made plain who their characters were and the script was strong enough to see how they come together and perform as a team. 

Thus, I could say that last year’s MCU offerings fit the bill better than most of their recent output, but then you see our current flick-at-hand and you realize how much those are “nice efforts” compared to a triple (I’d almost say Brand New Day is a home run, but I have quibbles, as usual).

Again, even though the film has raked in over a billion dollars at this point, here’s my obligatory SPOILERS alert. 

Just right off, Holland, Zendaya, and Batalon deliver something remarkable here. They’ve all grown - both as actors and as their characters - and I don’t know that the movie would work without their lived-in chemistry. 

We meet Peter four years after Dr. Strange’s universal(?) mind-wipe and it’s not difficult to see the toll that isolation and working alone has taken on him. It makes for a number of rich thematic arcs and how well-structured the relationships as we encounter them. 

Peter’s been following Ned and MJ’s lives via Ned’s Instagram and when they return to New York, he attends their housewarming. The consequences of Strange’s action (at Peter’s request, of course) are tragic and for a second, I wanted something different. When Peter re-introduces himself to Ned and MJ, it’s like a shade longing to come back to the world of the living but it in some ways carries that sense of irrelevancy to the lives of old friends with whom you’ve lost touch and aren’t sure if you should contact them.

Thankfully, Peter does. Ned and MJ are (platonic) roommates and best friends; it’s entirely possible that if Peter never saw them again, they would continue having lovely lives. However, this is where another relationship comes into play that I really didn’t think would work.

Frank Castle aka The Punisher shows up as Spidey is in hot pursuit of a bad guy driving a tank en route to Damage Control where alien tech and criminals who have proved too unruly for general population are held. Most of these bad guys were put away by Spidey (and Daredevil? Or the Defenders? I’ll circle back to this in the additional/random thoughts section). 

Frank is in hot pursuit and literally runs Spider-Man over with a van and through conversation we learn that Peter saved Frank’s bacon on Staten Island at some point. It’s a humorous intro of a hard-R Netflix character into the PG world of the Disney-Marvel world and surprise! It works. Frank winds up with webbing across his mouth when he’s about to utter a mother-effer, but any foreboding I had regarding the introduction of Castle into this world vanished pretty quickly. 

Where Charlie Cox’s Daredevil and Jon Bernthal’s Castle are a more antagonistic pairing with degrees of mutual respect, there’s something else happening here. Peter is as murder-averse as Matt Murdock and repeatedly demands Frank to stand down, but that only goes so far. The more salient aspect is that I feel like Peter as Spider-Man is regarded more favorably by Frank. I think he innately recognizes that this powerful meta-human is still a kid who’s attempting to do the right thing. Unlike Murdock, Parker isn’t jaded or tortured by doing the right thing; he simply does it with minimal agonizing. 

Of course, when your powers seem to be growing with you and you can handily lift vehicles, pry open two-foot thick tank doors and pretty much hold your own against the Hulk, you can afford to not agonize about doing the right thing. Who’s gonna stop you? 

We’ll get to that. But back to Frank. Refreshingly, this is the first time in Holland’s iteration of the character that he doesn’t seem to be looking for a Tony Stark/Daddy replacement. We’ll see later in the story how much of a resonance there is with Frank when he calls Peter out for his chosen solitary/workaholic life and what he, Frank, would give, to get just one more moment back with the family he lost. Naturally, the resonances here go even deeper, as we see Peter’s devotion to Aunt May and how deeply that loss is still felt and how it’s molded him.

And yet, the movie is never a melodramatic slog! 

Destin Daniel Cretton has brought a steady focus and deft hand with the relationships here in Chris McKenna’s and Erik Sommers’ script. I suspect that the uncredited Justin Kuritzkes’s work that remains in the film (as well as touch-ups, I understand) anchors a lot of what goes on between the characters, but I’m willing to guess is even more key to the Peter/MJ/Ned nexus. This is, after all, the guy who wrote Challengers. On the other hand, McKenna and Sommers have been with Spidey since Homecoming(and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, The Lego Batman Movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and was a script doctor on Captain America: the Winter Soldier). Sommers is McKenna’s writing partner and both also worked on Community, so that Russo brothers connection goes way back.

The point is that given the principals here and their bonafides, it’s hard to see how this wouldn’t work. Plus, apparently, Tom Holland had a lot of input in the writers’ room and Cretton welcomed collaboration along the way from all his actors. As he said in a recent interview, it’s a big film that was shot very much like an indie. It shows.

Somehow, the big set pieces work and aren’t as obnoxious as other Marvel Moments(TM) and those are integrated well enough so that the human moments don’t feel shoehorned. In fact, this is precisely where this film shows just how much the MCU has strayed. The intimate, human moments of the earlier films were the glue that held the stories together, that made the action sequences somehow more than Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Not always, but at their best, there was a balance between scales in the MCU’s pre-Endgame work. 

Sure, it still shows up in pieces like Shang-Chi (also directed by Cretton), in the Sony-MCU Spider-Man flicks post-Endgame, and in Thunderbolts* (more so than in the Fantastic Four flick). However, aside from a handful of other moments in other films, that balance just hasn’t been there. Plus, there’s the ubiquitous linking to other movies either for homework because of characters in whatever the current movie is or as set-ups for other movies to come. Thankfully, much of that is avoided here.

On this last part, some might object. Yes, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova shows up. Yes, Ruffalo’s Hulk shows up. However, each one of these appearances is at the service of the current narrative. In both cases, Spidey goes to them for help. He seeks out Yelena for intel on who commandeered that tank and apparently wants to crash Damage Control. Something happens to Pete’s body that requires him to do some consulting with Bruce Banner about Bruce’s inhibitor to suppress the Green Guy appearing. Even here, even with these slightly more than walk-ons, there is a sense of the urgency of a guy in a crisis who knows he can’t do it all alone.

What underscores this in the less fraught and less intimately urgent meeting with Yelena are two things that struck me. One is how readily she picks up on Spider-Man’s solo issues; if anyone else in this movie could relate to Peter, it would be Yelena (and honestly? If things didn’t work out with MJ, would I be interested in seeing what that pairing would look like? Hmmm, see random thoughts at the end). For that matter, Banner would likely understand, too, but of course, in both cases, Peter would have to eventually unmask (though I’d think that if there’s two people in the world who could handle any threat to their personal well-being, it would be a Black Widow and a Hulk). 

As it is, Yelena has intel: someone’s been trying to hack into Damage Control targeting something called V-Max. Who? No one knows. Yelena considers Spidey’s mission as “small potatoes” while she, of course, as a member of Thunderbolts the New Avengers only deals with big spuds. And her office? A Russian bath! Girl, you are so gangsta!!! (Seriously, it’s such a great touch.)

As for his request to Banner? 

Remember how, in No Way Home, both Garfield and Holland’s Peters (so to speak) recoiled at Toby Maguire’s Peter saying that he shoots webs from spinnerets in his wrist? Remember, how in Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, we see the close-up shots of the bristles on Peter’s hands that allow him to scale buildings and if you’re like me, you relished that because it’s Sam Raimi bringing the Raimification to the super-hero genre for the first time. 

Cretton here goes even further, adding a touch of Cronenberg to Spidey. Peter’s body is changing and by gum, what do you suppose happens when he passes out and wakes up outside his walk-up in New York cocooned in spider webs? When he returns to his apartment, it looks like a Halloween Store gone wrong. But it’s wonderfully gross when Peter shoots webs from his body (let alone when he wakes up in it). We learn that spiders have three life-cycles and from what I understand, this is puberty (I’m guessing this is the second life-cycle since Peter’s had “spider sense” and the proportional strength of a spider since he first gained his powers). 

In addition to having issues with being able to generate webs at command, we find out later that the arachnid DNA seems to replicate very quickly in a greater ratio to his human DNA and he goes a little Brundlefly on us. See? Cronenberg, kids. Sticky fingerprints all over the place. 

How this plays out is not as devastating as it could have been, but we come close to seeing Spider-Man reviled as a vigilante when the arachnid in him takes over and thrashes the Scorpion (Michael Mando!!! Nacho for the win! Well, not here…), in the meantime, almost killing a cop in the process. Once the arachnid spike has receded, Peter is recalcitrant when he discovers what he’s done and DeWolff is rightfully angry and tells him to get a handle on this or she’s not going to cover for him anymore.

Peter seeks out Dr. Banner after one of his classes to ask him about how his inhibitor works to keep the gamma radiation in his system from triggering a Hulk outbreak…or break-out, I guess. 

The sequence is great fun as you can read the boredom of the kids as Bruce realizes how badly his students want to hear Hulk stories (is this undergrad? The hell is wrong with these kids?) and Peter approaches after class to discuss the mechanics of Bruce’s device. In short order, Banner deduces Peter is not one of his students and when he asks Peter’s name, Pete says, “Ned Leeds”. He palms himself off as a grad student and sets to work on his own device.

The mystery of who is trying to breach Damage Control is Spidey’s main task now and all he has to go on is a perp who can take over other bodies by entering their minds (but not Peter’s) and wants access to something called V-Max. 

At this point, it’s about time to mention Detective Joan DeWolff, played by Liza Colón-Zayas (go watch The Bear now. I’ll wait). Spider-Man has his own Commissioner Gordon! DeWolff is a great character. She knows Spidey’s a young man who seems alone and drowns himself in work. She also knows he’s using tech illegally by tracking police calls and dispatches (and who knows what else…what Peter’s got in that apartment is S.H.I.E.L.D. on a budget).

While on the phone, she says he needs friends and a social life and he replies with “we’re friends” and she counters with him never having asked about her personal life or what her kids’ names are (though they are Spidey fans). 

These reads on Peter would be redundant except they ring so true. How many times do we not see what our issues are regardless of how many other people do? 

As becomes readily apparent, Spider-Man has colleagues like Detective Wolff, Frank Castle, and even Yelena, all of whom at one point or another see him doing his solo act to the exclusion of genuine closeness while he, at least in Wolff’s case and probably Frank’s, sees something like friends. And we always circle back to Ned. And MJ. To borrow from Tony Stark, “it’s always you.”

Peter cannot let them go. When he goes to the housewarming, the introductions are suitably awkward and we see how MJ has a suitor and Ned? Well, Ned’s got a wall on which he’s working on discovering who Spider-Man is. He even developed a Spidey-tracking device. It’s endearing and wistful when they see each other. MJ is another story and it’s gutting. Every moment they spend as strangers cuts a bit deeper. 

At one point, Peter digs up a letter to MJ that he wrote after the mind-wipe. It lays out everything that happened and it’s one of two Chekhov’s guns in the story. This one lands with greater dramatic weight. 

As for Peter’s solving of the Damage Control mystery, he gets closer when has his first encounter with the entity. We hear Sadie Sink’s voice frustrated that she can’t get into Peter’s head, though enough that she is able to see one memory: Peter and Aunt May sitting on his bed and Aunt May telling him that he can’t do it all alone. By the way, if you can hold it together when you see Marisa Tomei again, you’re a stronger person than I. 

By this point, though, Peter has been working with Bill Metzger,director of Damage Control, who is immensely supportive of and grateful to Spider-Man for all his work and yes, Tramell Tillman is s good here as he is in Severance (and a lot of other stuff). Metzger trusts Spidey to find the perp, but has no clue what “V-Max” is when Spidey mentions it. It’s also at this point when I drew back from the movie for a bit.

Look, at different points, the MCU has played footsie with the Department of Defense (for consulting on things like aviation, weapons, deployment, etc.) going back to the first Iron Man. I’ve opined that most comic book politics is often diffuse and toothless but there are moments when the MCU has bucked the trend (as has Marvel Comics at different points) and done a reasonable job of questioning the ethics of the organizations they support or even the rightness of their own actions as “heroes”. Here, in this instance, my Spidey sense began tingling. 

Not because I was worried that Metzger was going to turn heel (spoiler - but I said that earlier), but that I’m hoping Peter learns not to put his trust in any given organization because it says crime-fighting. We might have to wait for the next entry to see what Peter’s institutional trust issues are like after this, but sometimes ACAB is a thing that I’d like to see the MCU explore more.

I forget how, exactly, but Peter is able to get a visual on Sadie Sink’s character and a name and along the way, he’s able to piece together that she’s able to do what she does. He also discovers that she has a thirty-three foot radius limit to how far she can jump from body to body. Nevertheless, at the point where she does ascertain Peter’s identity and put his relationship with MJ together, things ramp up and the first crest of the wave is when she - okay, JEAN GREY!!! - threatens MJ, Spidey heads over to MJ and Ned’s apartment to get MJ to safety. 

In an echo of Maguire and Dunst (and sure, they’ve done this before) or maybe even Reeves and Kidder, Spider-Man takes MJ to a rooftop where MJ says she does remember Peter, and they kiss. And it’s not MJ. Easily one of the most evil acts I’ve ever seen on film. Jean leaves MJ’s body and Peter decides that she’d be safest at Frank’s booby-trapped-laden hideout in an abandoned ship in an abandoned shipyard. Man, New York must be snoozing on immanent domain. 

The meeting of Frank and MJ is in itself worth the movie, but the tension between Peter and MJ (from Peter’s side) provides something like a low-level charge to each scene they share. Peter is developing a “universal inhibitor” to apply to Jean when he encounters her next and is having issues with it when MJ steps in and helps him out. These kids. So damned smart. 

It’s a cute scene but thankfully, Cretton doesn’t exploit this or other moments for some ersatz rom-com beats. Peter gets word that Damage Control has been severely breached and he heads off to end this. Of course, when he gets there, he doesn’t plan on encountering the Hulk. Obviously, Jean got into Banner’s head and got him to remove the inhibitor and then used the Hulk’s body to break into Damage Control. By the time Spidey shows up, there is “no Banner, no girl, only HULK!” And oh, shit is on. 

Just a quick note on how clear the action sequences are here. There’s no CGI artifacts, no blurring to try to cover up dodgy rendering. And frankly, that Spider-Man comes out of this so well, actually makes sense. While Spidey and the Jolly Green Giant duke it out, Frank is possessed by Jean and breaches the vault where the Damage Control team is hiding. Peter is able to calm the Hulk down enough to where he falls storeys down and we discover later, Banner has returned.

Once Spider-Man gets to the vault area, he’s able to apply the universal inhibitor to Jean and she passes out muttering “Sara.” Metzger mentions that he was thinking of a colleague by that name when Jean briefly possessed him.

Well. That’s a hell of a lot of incident. By this point, I was super impressed that I didn’t find the action sequences tedious. I was even more impressed that they actually moved the story along, and that each sequence had consequences. The Scorpion sequence led to Peter developing his inhibitor to restrain the arachnid DNA surge, for example. The last set-piece showed poor Banner being carted off to a psych ward for evaluation, worried that he may have harmed people, and of course, to Jean Grey being rendered harmless by Peter’s tech.

Back at Frank’s place, MJ has discovered Peter’s letter (yes, he took it with him) and she asked him if he intended her to find it. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. Was he going to tell her? Because it’s not his place to do so; she’s been living her own life and frankly, doesn’t remember him. When he declares his love, she flatly replies that she doesn’t love him. The appearance of Banner as Hulk was one gun. The letter is Chekhov’s other one and it’s much more brutal. 

By now, it’s idiotic to not remark on how goddamned good Holland and Zendaya are. He’s a fine actor and outside of Spidey, he’s acquitted himself well in material that he’s better than. His turn as Telemachus in The Odyssey and here in the role he’s most known for, show how he’s grown as an actor and the depth he can bring, particularly in moments that don’t require him to do much. His silence in facing Zendaya when she questions him is deafening.

And Zendaya? Aw, c’mon. She’s proving herself to be one of the finest actors of her generation. Her filmography is littered with great turns,from Euphoria to Challengers to the Dune series and more, and she’s a joy to watch because she doesn’t do the expected. Plus, we’re deeply invested in these characters and both she and Holland more so. They have to commit and explore Peter and MJ and get to the truth of the characters or they’re going to frankly lose us. I don’t ever see that happening, but the work both of them turned in here is superlative.

As Spidey swings through the canyons of NYC with MJ (she forgot her phone and needed a lift back home) is silent and tense and sad. When they land, she pauses and invites Peter in - as Spider-Man - to “meet” Ned (again). Ned’s Spidey-tracker works and his surprise at seeing Spider-Man in the doorway is a fine call-back to Spider-Man: Homecoming when Ned discovers Peter is Spider-Man. In the background, as if to echo their shared love of Star Wars, an At-At can be seen trudging into frame on Ned’s monitor. 

The three bond in the living room as Ned asks questions about Spider-Man’s tech and bright guy that he is, figures out what that tech is when Peter asks him to guess. Of our Three Musketeers, I feel Jacob Batalon doesn’t get quite the respect he deserves. It’s not just that without him, the dynamic would be different, it’s that these would be completely different and perhaps lesser movies. Batalon brings such joy and enthusiasm to Ned and the kind of goodheartedness that you could see matching with Peter’s and that actually gives Peter as much a reason to continue doing what he does as MJ. 

As we’ve seen, Ned is equally as brilliant as Peter, and I really hope there is something of a greater integration of him as a kind of partner in tech at some point. If Spider-Man can have his Commissioner Gordon, why can’t he also have his own Lucius Fox? 

In the course of conversation, MJ says she doesn’t remember anything while possessed by Jean, and Peter figures out from that that Metzger lied. He gets in touch with Yelena (again, if MJ doesn’t come around…) and after reviewing Damage Control’s files, Sara is Jean’s sister, who has the same powers as Jean.

Well, hell. Here we go toward one of the best denouements in the MCU. While Spidey is en route to Damage Control, Metzger is torturing Jean to get at the source of her power. We see images of brain scans as she attempts to fight back and at some point, Metzger lets slip about “Sara’s sacrifice” at which point, Jean looks up at the ceiling and discovers that he last thing Sara saw was a label on the AC vent overhead that read V[ent] Max. This was the last thing Sara saw and she communicated it to Jean before she died. This is the stimulus she needed to unleash her powers in a blast from the facility at Roosevelt Island across the river and partially into Manhattan (and Queens?), I guess? 

In the meantime, Frank helped Peter locate where Jean was being held and told Peter he’d handle this his way. Peter again tells Frank to stand down and let him deal with Jean. 

Peter makes it into the compound, apologizes to Jean for using the inhibitor and she basically is having none of it. She sics The Hand on Spider-Man and — oh, I forgot to mention The Hand. A quick digression. One of the biggest issues many of us had with Daredevil’s second season on Netflix was The Hand, the shadowy criminal organization of ninjas that, well, frankly, I found really silly. Here, Metzger said that Damage Control believes in rehabilitation and all they needed was some guidance. All he needed was to be played by Pat O’Brian and say something like, “they’re not bad fellas, ya see, just youngsters who need a gentle hand to guide them.” I still think they’re silly. 

Peter removes his inhibitor and through force of will begins to control his new powers. He pretty much sweeps the facility with the Hand (make of that sentence what you will) and proceeds to confront Jean who has Metzger frozen with shards of glass at the ready to puncture and slice him. Peter allows Jean into his mind where he draws her back to that memory of Aunt May I’d mentioned above and I’m just going to let Marisa Tomei’s dialog do the work here. She starts out talking to Peter but subtly, we see Jean sitting in Peter’s place.

“You really are a special person. And I would hope that that will make you feel really great about yourself, but I know sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you’ll be really lonely. And sometimes, because you’re special, people can do dark and monstrous things to you. But this is what I want you to know: you’re beautiful, and the people who love you, they love you not because you’re special, we love you because you’re you. Remember that even when it feels like you’re totally alone. That’s your deepest responsibility. Never forget that. No matter how powerful you become.”

Afterward, Peter and Jean have a chat. “Sorry about your sister.” “I’m sorry about your aunt.” “You would have loved her. Just because we lost someone it doesn’t mean we have to do this alone. I mean…we can’t. Believe me, I’ve been trying. It doesn’t work.” “Even if that’s true, I have no one.” 

“You have me.”

Look, I need a tissue. You need a tissue? Here’s a tissue.

While this has been going on, Frank has set up a high-powered rifle to take Jean out and Peter senses it and puts himself in between the bullet and Jean. I know this is Spider-Man and it’s too big an IP, but if they could kill off Tony Stark, for a brief moment I wondered if this was Holland’s way of getting out his contract. I didn’t. Really. 

However, this moment landed so brutally, so…truthfully, it took my breath away and you could hear gasps in the the theater. 

Sadie Sink. Sadie Sink. Sadie Sink. On second thought, if things don’t work with MJ or Yelena…hmmm. Peter and Jean Grey? Okay, I’m being facetious or fatuous, depending. I’ve written plenty about Sadie Sink and she brings her best to everything I’ve seen her in and it is, quite simply, the best. Stranger Things, The Whale, Fear Street, and more, I think we’ll be watching her grow and command the screen (and likely, the stage since she’s a Broadway kid) for years to come. 

Her Jean Grey is unlike Framke Janssen or Sophie Turner’s take on the character. Here, she’s younger, rawer, and more human. Of course, as part of the future development, which is outside this film and there are no Easter Eggs or cutesy-pie tie-ins to that future, this is pre-X-Men and all I can say is that I don’t care about what the MCU does with that team or how they’re introduced, if Sink is Grey, I’m there. 

She joins a stellar cast of women here. Tomei, Colón-Zayas, Pugh, Zendaya, and Sink? This is a murderers row of talent. And yes, each woman was fully fleshed out with strong performances.

We left Spider-Man shot in the back and bleeding out and Jean leaning in over him, doing something (we can safely assume that at this stage, Jean may have healing powers in addition to telepathy and psionic abilities). We eventually cut to Frank carrying Spidey into a hospital and when he comes to, Frank Castle is waiting. Again, the dialog is too good to not recount here:

Peter wakes up asks Frank where his mask is. Frank says it’s okay, he’s got Peter covered. He also tells Peter that Jean “maybe she just left” and was “using her magic voodoo” to keep Peter alive.

“Yeah, she’s alright…I’m sorry.”

“Frank, Frank. It’s okay.”

“Just…I’m really sorry for what I did.”

“No, Frank. It’s okay.”

“And. It’s. No. It’s a lot of things… but it sure as shit is not okay, all right? I’ve seen real bravery, kid, in my day. But that…that was something else.”

“You crying, Frank?”

Brilliant. 

Okay. Jon Bernthal. I recently mentioned to someone who hadn’t seen him in much that I thought he might well be his generation’s Harvey Keitel. He can play a normal guy or bloody psychopath (or in Castle’s case, a not so high-functioning sociopath). To me, it’s outstanding that Holland, Zendaya, and Bernthal wound up working together both in this and the Nolan film and that there are such ties among all three. 

There are tons of people outside the hospital holding vigil for Spider-Man and Frank puts on the mask so Peter can walk out unnoticed into the crowd. He’s tickled pink at the outpouring of love toward the man in the webbed mask with the white eyes waving at them from the hospital window.

Later, Peter is on the phone with DeWolff and cedes going after a bank robbery to the police. He admits he’s going to try to take it easier now. And he asks after her kids by name.

The coda is in a sandwich shop where Ned comes in and sits down. Peter looks over at him and stops himself before leaving and walks over to him and re-re-introduces himself only this time, in a sequence of cross-cuts between their special handshake from Homecoming, they “rebuild” it here and at the end, Ned looks up with a beatific smile and says, “Peter.”

And it’s a wrap. Shit, Kleenex, please. Thanks.

Afterword(s)

Okay. So like Kevin Smith, I’m such a mark for Marvel, even now. Yes, I’m not crazy about how sloppy the past few years have been, but when they nail it, they nail it.

I’ve had quibbles with Spider-Man across the MCU for a bit, but mostly, it’s just about plot armor and how much suspension of disbelief can you have to get through this? As a friend of mine said regarding Mysterio, for instance: “Hey, I know that guy! Used to see him in the cafeteria all the time!” Or “I went out with him once.” Because, look, Jake Gyllenhaal’s face is plastered all over the internet by that point and no one recognized him? And as much as I really do like No Way Home, Strange’s spell was really the only way to solve Peter’s identity issue? I guess it was clever enough, but it either shows what an egotistical idiot Strange is or frankly, it’s his pride getting in the way again or let’s be real, both. But ya know, I’m GLAD Wong is the Sorcerer Supreme! 

It’s the aftermath of the mind-wipe that gets me. What about documentation of Peter Parker? Not necessarily birth certificates or driver’s license, but what about school records? We see the GED prep book in his apartment at the end of No Way Home, so is it a matter of his entire academic life being wiped out? I don’t want to spend too much time on this stuff because, as many have said, comic book logic and plot armor is extremely malleable.

Now onto Additional Thoughts

Dude, Holland is JACKED. Additionally, it’s good to see him get a level up here. Not that this means anything; he’ll be as invincible as the writers need him to be or not. But all I could think of was a panel from The Amazing Spiderman #14 when he first met the Hulk:

Just like in the movies!

A larger issue is with the MCU that is thankfully avoided here. Cretton directing this reminded me that we’re still waiting for Shang-Chi’s return. 

But we’re also waiting for all the other dropped balls: we know that Blade isn’t happening and very likely, neither is the Black Knight (end of Eternals). We know that Kang is gone, but what about the drop of symbiote from No Way Home? And what of She-Hulk and Moon Knight? And, well, you get the idea. I don’t have high hopes for Avengers: Doomsday, but it sounds like there’s a factory reset on the way and it looks like Disney and Marvel have decided to halt development on all live action streaming after VisionQuest. 

Quibbles with Brand New Day specifically:

Not really many, but I was reminded of just how - “chaste” is the only word I can come up with, these flicks are. Yelena’s flirting with Peter in Spider-drag seems to be both a commentary on that and a reinforcement of it, as well. I yearn for Guillermo Del Toro telling Tom Holland what he told Tom Hiddleston while filming Crimson Peak: “Time to show your buns!”

That post-credits teaser of Ned’s Spidey-tracker pointing to our boy being off-world. Yes, I know he’s in Avengers: Secret Wars, but really, I just want him to stay grounded longer. It’s not the worst thing, I suppose, but gee whiz. I guess the idea is that he’s had four years Earthbound and street level, so it’s time to head back to space. 

I thought I had more, but maybe not. This is the first MCU flick in a long time where it felt as though the filmmakers had enough confidence in the material to show, not tell. Exposition was saved for how things work, like inhibitors and web-shooters and we saw how the characters developed through their dialog. 

Usually, I find the action annoying and this time around, as I mentioned above, it felt organic and integrated. 

Additional thoughts/observations

Okay, I really don’t need to see a Yelena/Peter meet-up. She’d eat that boy for lunch or they’d have to render her more of an ingenue. Here’s the problem I have with the MCU and anything smacking of genuine attraction or just sex. We know that Natasha Romanov was not above using her charms to extract information and yes, certainly early on, she was presented as a sexual being (almost as mere eye-candy, though I’m not sure I ever bought that because Scarlet Johansson could transcend that laziness through sheer force of acting). In any case, I could believe that if the assignment required it, Natasha could do it. 

Yelena, on the other hand? We’re told in Black Widow that she hadn’t really had a normal life and the character, certainly not Pugh, doesn’t read as someone who would handle a relationship very well and not even that, I’m uncertain that as written, Yelena Belova would be a seductress. I mean, sure, it’s part of espionage and we can reasonably assume she’s been trained in it in the Red Room, but I’m not feeling it.

In fact, I rather feel that almost all of the characters in the MCU are rather like Ken and Barbie dolls anatomically. I’m not trying to be prurient, but aside from Peter and MJ, Tony and Pepper, some of the pairings in Eternals, and yes, Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter, I’m hard-pressed to imagine much of the sexy time among them. And this is just het stuff. Thankfully, Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos has settled down with his husband on Earth to domestic bliss and I really wanted there to be a hook-up with Valkyrie and Jane in Thor: Love and Thunder, but that’s not the story. Still, stranding poor Valkyrie just seems mean. Maybe Carol Danvers?

 I know. I also mentioned Jean Grey if MJ doesn’t work out and I’m not sure but I thought Peter and Jean did meet in the comics. That said, what I genuinely relished about Peter and Jean’s dialog at the end is that they gave him the chance to be the mentor.

Which leads me to another stray thought. As Holland grows deeper into his thirties, they have a chance to deepen this character more. Even if he doesn’t wind up with MJ or anyone steady, Holland is doing such a fine job of embodying Peter Parker, I could see him being sucked into a younger Spidey’s adventures the same way Toby and Andrew were in No Way Home. 

I love JK Simmons, but I’m so happy Jameson didn’t show up here. 

Originally, I’d thought that Peter’s tech in his apartment had to have been gifted or borrowed from Stark Industries, but then, it seems that after the mind-wipe, he lost his suit and had to create a new one. Soooo, he spent a lot of time bargaining for special components or did Damage Control opt to share some tech with him as payment? 

Some of that stuff has to have rare metals; where’d those come from? 

I suppose Peter has elected to stay out of higher ed? My guess is that his sense of isolation is such that it’s easier for him to do independent research and he’s almost Reed Richards smart? Again, who knows? 

I’m bristling at criticisms that Jean is the villain. Admittedly, she abused her powers but then, it’s Metzger who put all this into motion by kidnapping Sara, torturing and killing her. By contrast, Jean Grey is very much an anti-hero (and by definition). 

It’s also impressive that this is one of the rare on of these that didn’t climax with the third act battle. The resolution came from Peter and Jean meeting and talking things through. Yes, Peter getting shot was a shock, but it was genuinely integral to end of the movie.

So happy that they were able to bring Marisa Tomei back. Flashbacks can come in handy.

It’s one of the better looking Marvel movies. Kudos to Cretton’s cinematographer, Brett Pawlak. He’s worked with Cretton since Short Term 12 and has an interesting filmography, including a movie that my sister and I really like, even though it’s a little hokey but it’s so endearing: Unicorn Store, directed by Brie Larson and seems to be an excuse mostly for her and her bud Samuel L. Jackson to work together. 

Wouldn’t it be cool to see them go full Man-Spider? Apparently, the writers suggested it, but as Holland said, it’s a gruesome storyline and Spider-Man is (so far) more family oriented. But somewhere, Brandon Cronenberg, if not his dad, should just have a script at the ready. Or bring back Raimi!!!

Where is Daredevil? Where is Iron Fist? Jessica Jones? Okay, I haven’t caught Daredevil: Born Again, so I’m no doubt missing plot points. However, I wonder if the reason we haven’t or won’t see DD is because his conflicts might be more specific to the neighborhood around Hell’s Kitchen. Hornhead is likely ill-equipped to go toe-to-toe with someone like Scorpion, let alone Hulk. I wonder if there are plans to bring them into the MCU’s Spiderverse.

Ah, yes, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. That’s the movie I’m really waiting for in 2027. I was tickled when Holland said in an interview that he’d love to insert some of the Spider-Verse magic into his films. I really loved it when he enthusiastically said they’re the best. I don’t know if he meant that they’re the best Spider-Man films (I would agree; Raimi’s second film excepted) or if he was just being excited and saying that they’re the best in a general sense. 

This has been inordinately long, I know, and for that, I apologize. However, I am toying with the idea of switching to Substack and wondering if it wouldn’t be better to write longer essays, articles, recaps and reviews only a couple of times a week. I took an extensive amount of time off to consider that and do some research for another project. Plus, frankly, if I could pick up subscribers, that would be lovely. 

Naturally, I’ll post something to let y’all know. In the meantime, save me some popcorn!