It’s been a while since I watched a MCU film. This is not necessarily due to burnout with superhero films, and more due to wanting to watch a few other genres of film. I’ve returned to the MCU with the latest Spider-Man movie, Spider Man: Brand New Day, and it feels like a pretty good place to come back. There will be some spoilers below the cut.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day picks up a few years after Spider-Man: No Way Home, with Ned and M.J. (who have lost their memories of Peter at the end of that film) having graduated from M.I.T. and Peter basically getting consumed by being Spider-Man, with no social life to speak of. While dealing with Ned and M.J. moving back to New York after graduation, he ends up going up against a mysterious super-powered woman (it’s Jean Grey) who has an axe to grind against the Department of Damage Control. Then, on top of all of that, Peter is starting to develop further enhancements to his senses, along with organic web-shooters like Toby McGuire’s Spider-Man, but also running into anger issues.
Now, if you’ve watched Wonder Man, you know that the Department of Damage Control is secretly up to no good. When you add the knowledge that the seeming antagonist is Jean Grey, you definitely can make the reasonable assumption that there’s something more going on. There are some other little hints sprinkled in as well, up to and including the fact that in the opening montage Spidey takes on The Hand, and then they’re later shown as working for Damage Control, with the explanation that oh, they’re just misguided young people (when they’ve been established in the Daredevil series that they’re very much not that.)
Related to that, there are a few minor bits that bugged me with the plot. Spidey ends up teaming up with The Punisher for much of the story, when first the involvement of The Hand, and also the sensory issues would have felt like a great time to get Daredevil involved as well, though with the inclusion of The Hulk would likely also have made the film a little overcrowded.
That said, while the film is two and a half hours long, it doesn’t feel like it. The plot moves at a brisk pace, with any down time being used for character development. I also appreciate that compared to Homecoming and No Way Home, this felt much more like a New York City movie – the City felt like a character in the story in ways that it didn’t in those earlier films. Having Punisher be Peter’s main team up partner definitely leaned into that – probably Daredevil or Luke Cage would have been the other close options in ways Dr. Strange or the other Avengers aren’t.
I’m very glad I saw this in the theater, and I’m definitely going to get around to finishing my MCU backlog (except maybe not Secret Invasion.)
As of the initial publication, Spider-Man Brand New Day is still in theaters, and when it goes up for streaming it’ll be on Disney+.
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