Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the fourth installment of the MCU’s Spider-Man franchise starring Tom Halland, and it’s the best of the bunch, instantly becoming my favorite Spider-Man movie since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 starring Tobey Maguire back in 2004.
I enjoyed the first three Holland-starring Spidey films, but I always felt they were held back by their locations. Spider-Man: Homecoming was largely set in the suburbs or on a class trip to DC, Spider-Man: Far From Home was set in Europe, and Spider-Man: No Way Home was set in New York but it was really shot on a green screen in Atlanta due to COVID restrictions. This means Brand New Day gets to be the first of Holland’s films to take place fully on the real streets of New York City, where Spider-Man traditionally roams, and the movie makes glorious use of the city for a grittier, more street-level Spider-Man adventure.
For Brand New Day, director Destin Daniel Cretton replaces Jon Watts and instantly gave the series more humanity and emotional stakes than any of Watts’ previous entries. The Peter Parker of Brand New Day is perfectly lonely, defeated, and single-mindedly motivated, just like he is in the comics. The Spider-Man of Brand New Day is fully competent and powerful, no longer the little kid dreaming of riding Iron Man’s coattails. And the resulting film is a movie audiences love, setting box office records and proving that while America might have superhero fatigue, the world’s most famous web-slinger is an emphatic exception to that trend.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in theaters now.
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