Spider-Man: Brand New Day

New York’s sweetheart is back, slinging through skyscrapers with almost nothing left to lose.

And somehow, in the runtime of a single commercial superhero movie, Peter Parker receives more life lessons than Aunt May, Uncle Ben, and probably every motivational speech across the MCU multiverse combined could have prepared him for.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day begins in the aftermath of No Way Home, where Peter technically saved the world but destroyed his own place in it. Nobody remembers Peter Parker. His friendships are gone. MJ has forgotten him. The future he imagined for himself has effectively disappeared.

There is something particularly cruel about watching someone you once loved look at you with complete indifference.

When MJ looks at Peter without recognition, the cinema I was sitting in collectively reacted like somebody had punched the entire audience in the stomach. It was one of those rare superhero moments where nobody needed a spaceship exploding in the background.

Just a face was enough.

Maybe that scene hit me harder than it should because, unfortunately, it is a look I can relate to very deeply.

For Peter, all that history is still alive. For MJ, it simply does not exist anymore. One person is looking at years of memories while the other is looking at a stranger.

That imbalance is horrific.

And because apparently losing everyone who remembers you wasn’t depressing enough, Peter is also grieving Aunt May.

The movie allows that grief to sit there. Occasionally it borders on redundancy, but maybe that is the point. Grief itself is repetitive. You don’t receive a beautifully structured three-act mourning period and then continue with your life. The same thoughts come back. Ordinary things suddenly become reminders.

Peter’s new reality isn’t something most of us would wish upon our fiercest enemies, let alone ourselves.

Visually, the movie reflects that.

Brand New Day is sometimes deliberately ugly. Not badly made—ugly. Peter’s world has lost some of the glossy cleanliness that defines so much modern Marvel filmmaking. His streets, rooms, fights and quiet moments feel harsher and more physical.

There is dirt here.

Awkwardness.

Loneliness.

Peter isn’t learning how to become Spider-Man anymore.

He already knows how to be Spider-Man.

The question is whether he still knows how to be Peter Parker.

That becomes more complicated with Jean Grey.

Jean initially appears to occupy the convenient antagonist-shaped hole superhero movies usually need filled, but the film slowly complicates her. Her story, particularly the injustices experienced by her and her sister, makes things considerably harder to divide into Good People and Bad People.

Devastating news for the average twelve-year-old Marvel fan: at certain points you may actually have to think about who is right.

Jean isn’t Thanos. Peter isn’t Anti-Thanos. Nobody has conveniently written their ethical position across their forehead.

Instead, Jean and Peter recognise something in each other.

Damage.

Their connection works because they understand what it means to have something taken away from you. It creates an uncomfortable intimacy between them that feels more convincing than simply introducing another woman because Peter Parker apparently requires a romantic subplot every few years.

You could call it trauma bonding, although calling what happens between these two merely “trauma bonding” feels like describing a hurricane as slightly inconvenient weather.

Peter, however, remains Peter.

He has already abandoned MIT, something he once desperately wanted. He gave up the future he imagined partly because of friendship, partly because of MJ, and partly because Peter Parker has always possessed a spectacular ability to sacrifice his own happiness before anybody even asks him to.

Whether that is love, loyalty or immaturity probably depends on your own life experience.

I suspect it is all three.

But despite losing his future, his identity and almost everyone he cares about, Peter doesn’t suddenly decide Gotham City’s approach to crime prevention looks attractive.

There is no Batmanesque transformation.

No “perhaps breaking people’s spines will fix my emotional problems.”

Spider-Man’s greatest strength has never really been climbing walls. It is that Peter Parker keeps getting punished for being good and somehow continues choosing to be good anyway.

The action finally understands Spider-Man as well.

Peter moves like a spider. He swings, twists, crawls and changes direction with a physicality that makes him feel like an actual body reacting to momentum instead of a digital superhero floating through a computer-generated environment.

The practical suit helps enormously.

It has wrinkles. Weight. Texture.

Spider-Man once again looks like someone wearing a Spider-Man suit rather than an extremely expensive animated interpretation of Tom Holland.

Then we have the elephant in the room.

A very large, green elephant.

Mark Ruffalo straps back in as Hulk, except this Hulk appears to have misplaced Bruce Banner somewhere on the way to set.

There is Hulk.

There is anger.

There are things available to smash.

Problem solved.

And somehow it works brilliantly.

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The movie allows Hulk to become frightening again. He isn’t merely Marvel’s lovable green uncle taking selfies with children. When he loses control, having several tonnes of radioactive rage sprinting through Manhattan finally feels like the serious municipal problem it probably should be.

The Hulk–Spider-Man–Punisher combination produces some of the movie’s funniest action.

Punisher, naturally, responds to an enormous nearly indestructible green man by shooting him.

It accomplishes approximately nothing.

This does not appear to affect Punisher’s enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Peter is desperately improvising increasingly ridiculous ways of containing Hulk without killing anybody while Hulk seems personally offended by the concept of architecture.

Punisher’s solution is force.

Hulk’s solution is significantly more force.

Peter’s solution is physics, webs, improvisation and a desperate prayer that whatever he just invented survives longer than seven seconds.

That is Spider-Man action done properly.

But the moment that stayed with me most didn’t involve Hulk.

It wasn’t really an action scene at all.

Peter takes a bullet protecting Jean Grey.

Of course he does.

This man was apparently born with a golden heart and then cursed to spend the rest of his life discovering increasingly painful consequences for having one.

Spider-Man is taken to hospital.

And New York reacts.

This is the same city that had distrusted him, questioned him, labelled him dangerous and treated Spider-Man almost like a domestic threat operating outside the law.

Suddenly everyone is anxious.

People gather.

They wait.

They hope.

They chant for Spider-Man.

The man behind the mask is finally receiving the love of the city.

And Peter Parker is essentially invisible.

That image stayed with me.

Peter moves through people who desperately want Spider-Man to survive, surrounded by strangers expressing love for him without having the slightest idea who he actually is.

For years, Peter struggled to balance Peter Parker and Spider-Man. He had friends, ambitions, relationships and a future outside the costume. Spider-Man constantly interfered with Peter’s life, but Peter’s life still existed.

Now the balance is gone.

Spider-Man survived.

Peter Parker didn’t.

The world remembers the hero perfectly while forgetting the person who made the hero possible.

There is something beautiful about New York finally embracing Spider-Man. There is also something horrifying about Peter witnessing that love while knowing none of it belongs to his face.

It belongs to the mask.

And that, more than any villain or fight sequence, is why Brand New Day works for me.

The best Spider-Man stories have never really been about whether Peter can defeat somebody stronger than him.

Of course he can.

He’ll get thrown through six buildings, remember something Aunt May told him fifteen years ago, construct a scientifically questionable solution using two web cartridges and probably a microwave, and somehow survive.

We know the routine.

The interesting question is what surviving costs Peter Parker.

This movie gives him admiration while taking away recognition. It gives him purpose while taking away certainty. It introduces the possibility of love while forcing him to confront the ghost of another. It gives him an entire city cheering his name—

except it isn’t actually his name.

That is what superhero movies should be able to do.

The explosions, costumes and multiversal insanity are decoration.

The person inside the suit is the movie.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives at exactly the right time because Spider-Man still has something many franchises eventually lose: a character worth caring about even when nobody is punching anybody.

Peter doesn’t need another universe-ending threat.

His greatest enemy right now might simply be waking up every morning as somebody nobody remembers.

By the end, the irony is almost perfect.

Peter Parker has practically nothing.

Spider-Man has never been more loved.

Maybe that’s the real curse of the mask.

Anyway, enough emotional maturity.

Spider-Man from Universe X is obviously returning in Doomsday.

Just kidding.

Give me Tobey Maguire’s natural-web-producing forty-something Spider-Man fighting Doctor Doom and I will immediately forget every sophisticated argument I just made.