The fourth film in a superhero franchise isn’t supposed to make you fall more in love with the titular character, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day does.
Tom Holland is Spidey. No disrespect to Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, or Nicholas Hammond, but Holland nails the plucky smarts of Peter Parker and the hard-earned (via sacrifice) confidence of Spider-Man.
You can tell Jacob Batalon, Zendaya, and Tom Holland are friends off-screen. Even when their characters were meant to have forgotten about Peter, their chemistry was undeniable. You could feel the confusion in his friends, and the painful longing in Peter. It was character work.
It would be incredibly easy to paint the film as overblown. And, yes. It was a lot. Some story threads kind of evaporated, some characters were shoehorned in who probably would’ve been served better in a different kind of story. And the ostensible “big bad?” Not showing the world that the character is connected to was a miss, in my humble opinion. I kept waiting for it to happen. Nope.
However, what we did get was pure Lee and Ditko on the screen. The amount of 1960s/‘70s Spider-Man covers/splash page Easter eggs were dizzying.
This was a Spider-Man that bridged long-term fans and brand new converts — it is incredibly hard to serve two audiences, and satisfy them both. But Spider-Man: Brand New Day pulled it off.
In this movie, Spider-Man was moving differently than in any other iteration. The fight choreography was stunning. We see Spider-Man cut loose when he has to, and restrain himself when necessary. The last time someone on screen looked and felt like how Spider-Man would fight, was in the second Garfield film. Miles Morales most definitely did his thing, but I’m talking about live action interpretations.
And most of all the movie was fun. We saw it in 3D and swinging through New York with Spider-Man was a joy to experience. There were a couple of genuinely thrilling drops that made the entire theater gasp.
Humor+Thrills+Heart = Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Highly Recommended.
