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‘God, that’s cool,’ sighs Tom Holland’s Spider-Man as a bunch of ninjas descend on him in Marvel’s well-established slo-mo, camera-wheeling style. At this delicate stage in the Marvelverse – somewhere between the lumpen offerings of Phase 5 and the promised team-up bonanza of Avengers: Doomsday – the question needs to be asked: is it, though? Still?
In the summer of The Odyssey, Backrooms and Obsession, a new Marvel movie was always going to be in danger of feeling old hat, even with Spidey, the studio’s A-list character, headlining it. Holland, now 30 but as fresh-faced as ever, remains the most likeable and exuberant of the on-screen Spider-Men, but he suffers in a movie that opts to sideline the web slinger in favour of a storyline that involves another character that could have been borrowed from Stranger Things. A whole chunk of the final act plays like a tribute act to the Netflix hit.
Like its hero, leading a solitary New York existence after 2021’s No Way Home erased his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned’s (Jacob Batalon) memories of him, Brand New Day runs the gamut of moods: at times, dark; at others, brooding. This is not the most fun of the recent Spidey outings, even with his gruff old pal The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) turning up to rampage unhelpfully about and grumble about life, Florence Pugh gleefully hamming it up as Thunderbolts*’s Yelena Belova, and the dependable Mark Ruffalo back as Bruce Banner/The Hulk.
The trio’s scenes together are a delight
Director Destin Daniel Cretton, who made his MCU debut with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, finds unlikely connective tissue with his first film, indie care-home drama Short Term 12, as his young hero finds that with great power comes a lot of empty pizza boxes and heartache. Aided by some immersive set design (the film was shot in the UK) and the always huggable Holland, Cretton does a nice job of intro’ing this sad new Peter Parker. There’s lonely trips to the bodega to pick up flowers for Aunt May’s grave (Marisa Tomei is back in flashbacks), and a lot of extra hours poured into the day job. Old nemesis Scorpion (Michael Mando) is back to take his mind off the ex.
The action comes in long, weightless stretches. Spider-Man’s flights between New York skyscrapers are losing their novelty, while a truck chase through the city kicks a plot involving a mind-hopping villain into gear. But the fact that Peter is living in a different emotional multiverse from MJ is the movie’s strongest idea and frankly, more should have been made of it. Zendaya is fabulous, an energy force in her scenes with Holland, and Batalon is a blast as the ex-bestie who channels his Spider-Man obsession into an app that tracks his sightings. The trio’s scenes together are a delight. If only there were more of them.
In cinemas worldwide Fri Jul 31.