Director Destin Daniel Cretton succeeds in reinvigorating Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and making him the focus in a complex storyline that reinvents the character as a street-level hero while laying seeds for the long-term future of the MCU.
SPIDER-MAN BRAND NEW DAY(2026)
★★★★ & 1/2 ★ OF ★★★★★ stars
I’ll go on record as saying that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is one of the best post-Avengers: Endgame Marvel films and I think a lot of people would agree with that. It has a lot to do, introduce a somewhat oscure character and position him as a strong Avengers level character. It has to tie in a lot of odds and ends from past Marvel movies involving The Mandarin from Iron Man 3 and the character who is pretending to be him, as well as retcon the meaning behind the Ten Rings terrorist organization from the first Iron Man movie and make it work, as well as introducing a lot of wuxia style Chinese Opera type origins for characters here and still giving us a street level story where San Francisco is its own character. Director Destin Daniel Cretton succeeded in tying all these disperate elements together and giving us a story where the hero Shang-Chi still managed to be the focus.
I have to imagine that’s a big part of why Cretton was tapped here to replace Jon Watts in the 4th Sony Spider-Man film. This movie has a LOT of moving parts as its setting up Peter Parker in a world where no one remembers him due to the events of Spider-Man No Way Home; a world where even MJ and Ned go to MIT and have their entire college experience while Peter just embeds himself into being a solo Spider-Man for four years. It also introduces Damage Control as a more central focus of a villain for street-level heroes after the Daredevil show and here with Spider-Man as he’s repositioned as more of a street-level hero versus an Avengers-type hero. We also have the film;’s big mystery antagonist which sets up a future for the MCU beyond the Avengers Doomsday and Secret Wars films to come in the next few years.
The film basically deals with Holland’s Spider-Man undergoing a secondary mutation, as he develops even more enhanced senses and organic webbing he is struggling to control his strength, his rage and his heightended senses and that is making him dangerous. He realizes this after he almost kills a cop when beating Scirpion, who is under the thrall of a mystery villain. Spider-Man seeks answers from Damage Control and even the New Avengers but is left with more questions than answers. He seeks out Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner as he feels like the answer might be in creating an inhibitor to block his arachnid DNA and maybe any non-human DNA in his genome that could be negative to his evolution and strength and Banner questions how he could know what DNA is good or bad; is mutation mecessarily something he should try and block. All this while trying to build a new relationship with MJ and Ned and struggling to keep other street level characters like The Punisher in check.
This is a lot to balance and Cretton and the script do it well. This is the best Spider-Man and even The Hulk have ever looked on the big screen and you can see Marvel invested A LOT into the CGI for this movie. It looks like a billion bucks and channels a lot from the PS5 Spider-Man game, the comics and even SpiderVerse into creating a wholly unique new look for Spider-Man on the big screen. Tom Holland has the most real acting to do in this film that he has ever done as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. He’s a fully realiuzed character and his struggle with who he is and who is Spider-Man plays fully into the conflict in himself between his secondary mutation and how he needs the human side to balance the Spider in Spider-Man. He and Jon Bernthal continue their good on screen chemistry from The Odyssey here as at times their relationship here as The Punisher and Spider-Man feels like a buddy movie. It works and their relationship is one of the best things in this film, alongside his chemistry with Mark Ruffalo who has never really shared screen-time with him. But the scenes between MJ and Peter are the best between them in any of these films. Cretton and his team stayed true to these characters as established and didnt dumb them down, but gave them even more character moments and strong scenes to reinforce their relationships. Sadie Sink and Holland also have great chemistry as her character’s abilities really dig into the core of who Spider-Man is and helps forge a bond between them and also sets up a very Spider-Man story where he deals with his shortcomings and his failures and tries to make right from her. Who Sink plays is going to be a topic of interest for the long term but she works here in developing an established character who is never really known for their backstory all that much, so it works in giving her this expanded origin. It makes me excited to see what she represents for the future of the MCU since she makes the story of who and what she is for the long term really tantalizing.
Overall, this is one of the strongest MCU films period. People like comics and their related media because of the character behind the costume. This delivers that in spades. There are a ton of interesting Easter Egg characters here, but ultimately the star is Spider-Man and for a character in their 4th solo film, that says a lot for the craft behind the making of the film. This film impresses.
Spider-Man Brand New Day hits theaters on July 31st.
—
VIDEO REVIEW
—