Nobody remembers Peter Parker.
That’s the gut-punch premise driving Marvel’s newest Spider-Man outing, and somehow it works better than it has any right to.
Picking up in the wreckage left by No Way Home, the film strips Peter of everything, including friends, family, and a single soul who knows what he sacrificed. What’s left is a guy in a mask, swinging through New York with nothing to go home to. It’s a bold choice, and it pays off.
Tom Holland has never been better. He’s spent three films playing the eager kid who wanted to be a hero; here, he plays a man figuring out who he is when nobody’s watching. The jokes still land, the warmth is still there, but underneath it is something rawer; a loneliness that Holland doesn’t oversell. When the action kicks in, though, he’s all confident, and you can feel how far he’s come since the webbed onesie days.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton doesn’t rush any of it.
At 145 minutes, the film gives its quieter scenes room to breathe without ever going slack. Every fight raises the stakes a little higher, building toward a finale that had the whole theatre leaning forward.
And what a finale! The action in this movie is some of the best the franchise has produced – inventive, kinetic, gorgeously shot. New York has never looked like a better place to swing through. The new villain, who I won’t spoil, gives Peter a fight that isn’t just about muscle; it’s about the stuff he can’t punch his way out of: grief, guilt, the question of who he becomes next.
MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) get less screen time this round, but they don’t need much…a look, a line, and you remember exactly what Peter lost.
What makes Brand New Day worth the ticket price isn’t the spectacle, though there’s plenty of it. It’s that this is a movie about starting over with nothing, and choosing to keep going anyway. That’s a story worth watching on the biggest screen you can find.
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
Rated: PG- 13
Distributor: Sony Pictures Entertainment
In cinemas July 30
