Spiderman: Brand New Day review

"Marvel is cooked," they said. Idiots.

The 4th MCU Spiderman entry, Brand New Day picks up shortly after the end of No Way Home, where everybody forgot who Peter Parker is.

Peter is still Spiderman, and still fighting bad guys, and working with the police. Good. It's a tired trope to have the cops hate Spiderman. But he has no friends, and still stalks MJ and Ned on social media (not in a weird way). The only people he sort of has are a friendly police chief, and Frank Castle! Yes! Jon Bernthal's Punisher is in this, and quite a bit. Obviously, he is toned down from his show, and there's a lot more comedy in his testy relationship with Peter. 

The early part of the movie is kind of an extended montage, pushing through about 4 years, just long enough for MJ and Ned to finish college, return to NY, and be involved in the plot.

The main plot involves a mystery figure or entity or something taking people over, and going after Damage Control, the government agency that has appeared in a few MCU things. DC and Spiderman are on good terms, and he appears to be the only one immune to this thing, so he is tasked with finding out what's going on. 

Peter is also having some weird body changes, which are manifesting by making him violent, overloading his senses, and giving him organic web shooters. So this part of the story involves him trying to create a device to tamp down these new powers, with a little help from Bruce Banner, who himself wears an "inhibitor" that keeps him in Mark Ruffalo form full time.

The mystery figure is soon revealed as Sadie Sink, who is soon revealed (not that surprisingly tbh) as Jean Grey.

Brand New Day is hampered a little bit by us having to wait a very long time to find out that Damage Control is bad (like they've been in all other MCU appearances) and Jean is actually not a villain (duh...X-Men). 

I don't think this movie matches No Way Home, an ambitious homerun that is probably the best post-Endgame MCU film. It does have that franchise seuql thing where it's kind of overstuffed with characters. 

But it's stuffed with GOOD things. I haven't even mentioned the glorious Florence Pugh popping up for a couple of fun scenes. And the movie occasionally harkens back to early MCU, where sometimes a lot of the fun was just "Hey, what if this character fought that character?"

The film earns the return of MJ and Ned. It isn't done just because they were important characters before, and Zendaya is a big star. Similar to how Endgame makes you really sit in a post-snap world for a long time, BND doesn't just let Peter reconnect quickly, or have him get MJ back. But the characters do interact a lot, and that's some of the best stuff in the movie. It gets you in the feels a few times. 

Tom Holland does some of his best work yet as Peter. Sadie Sink is AWESOME, instantly making me very excited for that particular bit of future MCU.

And next up will be Doomsday, which I am crazy excited for. The MCU isn't cooked. It's cooking. 


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