WEB-WIDE-WORLD: MARVEL gives the old BRAND a NEW DAY…
It’s been four years since Peter Parker pleaded with Doctor Strange to cast a spell that would make the world forget who Peter was. Even to the likes of his love MJ and friend Ned Leeds, Peter’s face and name are lost to time, even if their interactions with Spider-man remain memorable.
Now, Spider-man has never been more popular with the people of New York (take that J. Jonah Jameson!) but Peter’s personal life is becalmed and lonely. During one of Peter’s exploits taking down the various super-villains still menacing New York City, he becomes aware that some of them are being mid-controlled or ‘possessed’ by an unseen figure.
Peter teams up with Damage Control to find the true culprit and their intentions. But it triggers doubt about the motives of the perpetrator and questions about Peter’s own status quo as his powers begin to fluctuate.
Peter seeks help and guidance from some of Spider-man’s old superhero friends, but what is the real secret and significance of ‘V-Max’ and what will be the cost of finding out?
*selective spoilers*
While there’s much anticipation for the next Avengers movie, there’s plenty of time before those debut. In the meantime, there’s the latest Spider-man movie – one that’s also been hard to miss given the extensive promotional campaign and premiere tour over recent days and weeks. In some ways, the streetwise Brand New Day almost has more to prove than its cosmic cousins.
Taking its name from the controversial Spider-man comics where Marvel decided to wipe out years of personal continuity and erase Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane through a deal with Mephisto (and leave them slightly-estranged friends who’d broken up but still existed in each other’s orbits), there’s very little of that specific story on view here. Instead, we reflect on another part of the webhead’s comic-book career when memory of who he was, was removed from the general population of the Marvel Universe after he’d previously revealed his identity during the ‘Civil War‘ story-arc.
The film is a mixture of Peter navigating his current emotional and physical status quo and the impact that someone with a powerful set of skills inflicts on him. It is packed with a checklist of recognisable MCU elements but for all it gets right it’s also unevenly-paced. (There’s a point, about fifteen minutes before the conclusion where you wonder if the movie is going to end there, leaving much more to be resolved at some later date?) There’s certainly an argument to be made that the film is more concerned with wider factors than Spider-man himself. Nowadays it does seem that even some of the tentpole titles don’t want to put all their radioactive eggs in one superhero basket and so you’re likely to know before you settle down in the auditorium that Spidey’s costumed co-stars include the Punisher (John Bernthal) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). Teasers did their job of teasing that Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink also plays a prominent role (is she an existing character or a version of a new one, we’re not telling) and there’s an assortment of heroes and villains that make cameos and decent supporting acts (which again we won’t spoil).
Holland – now an established and confident cinema presence – gives us a more troubled and older Spider-man than we’ve seen in his incarnation so far. There are still moments of youthful geeky glee in the mix but a majority of the film demonstrates a far more weathered persona, one that finds it easier to be a beloved Spider-man than the lonely Peter Parker. The evolution of the physical-side of Spider-man also plays a significant part, though the introduction of the organic webshooters (hardly a secret at this point) is an unapologetic and convenient swerve to please fans than an element that feels essential to wider proceedings.
Jon Bernthal’s Punisher fits in as a ‘guest-star’ far better than you might expect. Bernthal and Holland are genuinely long-term buddies in real life and they play into that with aplomb. Frank Castle’s violence and language isn’t so much watered down here as fully intact but as an R-rated character viewed through a 15-certification lens (Honestly, you could almost have had him using real bad words but getting bleeped out to similar effect). He’s very much there for the action-punctuation, but it’s hard to argue that a satisfying Spider-man/Punisher/Hulk face-off doesn’t deliver with fanboy style.
Sink, now gliding up that hill after that seminal Stranger Things moment (Run, Max, RUN!!!!), has some fun stuff to play with as the backstory to her apparently villainous role evolves. Certainly, that role is more morally fluid than you’d expect – despite protestations of her not being a killer’ her actions and the casual use of them hurts people (and logically there could have been outright fatalities in some of the scenes we see). Even in the moments that generate sympathy it’s hard not to feel that she could be as legitimately dangerous as some characters claim even if she’s also been wronged. Pragmatically, the specific abilities of Sink’s character make it interesting to play-out on screen, relying less on constant VFX and more on camera-work and choreography and actor physicality. We’ll likely see more of her as the MCU evolves.
Ruffalo’s Hulk sails very close to merely being a gamma/testosterone-fueled cameo and literal punchline, but the action sequences are as good as ever and aspects of Banner’s state of affairs do legitimately dovetail into the wider plot
Zendaya and Jacob Batalon are back as MJ and Ned Leeds respectively, anchoring the emotional part of the film as Peter goes through four years without them (and without them remembering him) but also finding ways for Peter to keep tabs on them. It’s an arms-length situation doomed for angst, but as MJ, the real-life Mrs. Holland feels like the mature half of the equation, making many of the points the audience will be doing about the reality of the situation.
Damage Control, the morally-dubious in-universe agency charged with analysing and controlling superhero dangers and which featured as a major obstacle in Wonder Man (the tv show that surprisingly cancelled its second-season plans this week in an unexpected U-turn by Disney/Marvel) get a more active screen presence here. For the most part it feels like more of a set up as something of which to be wary in the future, but it suffers from not having a greater build-up or presence until recently, having interchangeable bigwigs and it’s actually not entirely clear their status after this movie. More notably, the Hand – supposedly the masterclass ninja force that has given Daredevil, Elektra and others so much trouble over the years, are reduced to wussy, submissive henchmen posers that are more decorative than dangerous (though even Peter notes the poses are cool).
The pre-publicity certainly made Brand New Day a must-see summer blockbuster and the result is certainly thoroughly enjoyable, more so for existing die-hard fans than anyone coming in cold (though nowadays it’s likely most people will be aware of the mythological basics). But it’s just too busy and earnestly scattershot for its own good, a mini-series worth of development squeezed into nearly two and a half hours and as if every good idea had been put in there and is now fighting for prominence.
Ultimately, director Destin Daniel Cretton (who helmed Shang-Chi and was supposed to be directing Avengers: The Kang Dynasty before plans were scrapped and reworked) gives us a solid street-level MCU movie and a thoroughly decent Spider-man entry – particularly for the die-hard fans. But it’s those forthcoming Avengers movies and our knowledge of them that provide the problem of foreshadowing. Doomsday and Secret Wars have a remit to play mix-and-match with the multiverse of the characters we know and love. The change to the current chessboard will likely be massive by default. So, while Brand New Day feels like an earnest world-building exercise, a re-organising of the status quo and a mythologically-deep love letter to the wider world of Spider-man, there’s a feeling that it’ll all be moot within a few months.
(One final note… there is an after-credits scene, but while it poses an interesting question, it’s not really an essential or compelling addition worth sitting through ten minutes to get to it…)
8/10
Marvel Studios/SONY’s Spider-man: Brand New Day is now on general release…