FILM REVIEWS SACHIN CHATTE
Film: Spiderman: Brand New Day
Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya,
Directed by: Destin Daniel Cretton
Duration: 2 hours 25 minutes
Rating: * * *
It may be a brand-new day in Spider-Man’s life, but he is still doing more or less what he has always done—swinging off buildings, fighting crime, nursing a broken heart and grappling with an identity crisis. The last two may be relatively new, but the core remains unchanged. Marvel Studios entrusted Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of the remarkable indie Short Term 12 (2013), with bringing a more human touch to the web-slinger, and that is perhaps the film’s only real novelty. The problem is that it stretches to two and a half hours on the strength of a rather flimsy plot.
The previous Spider-Man film, No Way Home (2021), went straight for the jugular by bringing together all three cinematic Spider-Men. It was the ultimate buy-one-get-two-free proposition, and audiences lapped it up, turning it into a
box-office juggernaut.
That film ended with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose magical abilities proved especially useful, casting a spell at Peter Parker’s request to erase the world’s memory of both Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Knowing his identity had become too dangerous, particularly for the people he loved, leaving him to face a life of complete solitude.
The new film opens with Peter, aka Spider-Man (Tom Holland), doing what he does best—and what audiences have seen him do countless times before: stopping crime. A gadget alerts him to an armed robbery in progress, and off he swings to take down the bad guys and save the innocent. Even the city’s police chief has regular conversations with him, blissfully unaware of who is behind the mask.
Peter now lives alone in a cramped studio apartment cluttered with gadgets and half-finished experiments. His routine is interrupted when the Department of Damage Control comes under attack. Behind the assault is a mysterious figure with the ability to control people’s minds, forcing them to obey and even jumping from one host to another. To tackle the threat, Spider-Man takes the help of Black Widow (Florence Pugh), who makes a brief appearance. Familiar faces such as Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) also return, and it wouldn’t be a Bruce Banner appearance without the Hulk emerging.
Running parallel to the superhero crisis is Peter’s personal one. He remains haunted by the fact that MJ (Zendaya) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) have no memory of him. He spends his time watching MJ’s social media reels and, at one point, even starts following her out of sheer curiosity. When his emotional baggage collides with the larger crisis—and MJ becomes entangled in it—the stakes are raised. It sounds compelling on paper, but the film never quite finds the balance between spectacle and emotion. The transitions are clunky, the emotional beats feel undercooked, and the pseudo-scientific exposition complete with lines like “gamma radiation affects the mutating DNA”, only adds to the muddle.
The cast does what it can. Tom Holland remains an immensely likeable Spider-Man, though he delivered a stronger performance as Telemachus in The Odyssey, largely because that film gave him better material to work with. Zendaya has limited screen time but makes an impact whenever she appears.
After an unusually long wait, the post-credit scene offers little more than the obligatory tease: “Spider-Man will return”. At this point, perhaps he deserves a little time off.
