Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Rated PG-13 • Theaters

Superhero fatigue might be real, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the box-office receipts for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth Spider-Man movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It didn’t merely surpass earlier Spider-Man films. In its opening weekend, it snagged $360 million in North America, making it the biggest domestic box-office opening of all time.

But the film’s success shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The previous film in the franchise, Spider-Man: No Way Home, raked in almost $2 billion worldwide, despite debuting during the pandemic lockdowns of 2021. That film ended on something of a cliff-hanger, in which the world forgets Peter Parker existed. Even his girlfriend MJ and his best friend Ned don’t remember him. Fans obviously wanted to see the resolution to the heartbreaking ending.

Brand New Day begins four years after the events of No Way Home, and Peter has resigned himself to being alone. He pours himself into the work of being Spider-Man—fighting crime and cleaning up the streets of New York City. He thinks he’s satisfied with life despite his loneliness, but soon everything comes crashing down. A mysterious villain with the ability to hijack other people’s minds shows up, putting MJ and Ned in danger, and Peter loses his sense of control as his body starts to mutate.

Tom Holland once again stars, bringing an innocence and vulnerability to Peter Parker, and his real-life wife Zendaya plays MJ, the old girlfriend who no longer remembers him. Jacob Batalon also returns as best friend Ned. Like many recent MCU movies, the film contains some crossover appearances: Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk; Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, the Punisher; and Florence Pugh as the new Black Widow. And Sadie Sink makes her MCU debut as a new character that will excite many comics fans.

There’s also a new guy behind the camera, director Destin Daniel Cretton, who was homeschooled as a child and graduated from Point Loma Nazarene University. He manages to preserve the franchise’s appealing aspects while adding some nice touches of his own. Even though Brand New Day contains plenty of high-flying action—these are some of the best fight scenes in any Marvel movie—the story stays close to the ground. Peter isn’t saving the world in this movie. He’s saving people. This film leans into his identity as a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and even though Peter’s friends no longer remember who he is, his interactions with them form the plot’s emotional core. The many fans who are more invested in Peter’s relationships than his heroics won’t be disappointed.

At the same time, this film feels more grown-up than previous Spider-Man movies. Peter’s biggest personal concern used to be whether he would get to sit next to his crush. Now he’s dealing with loneliness and mental struggles. The film definitely contains some commentary about our atomized society.

The content is also more mature than that of earlier movies. Most of this comes from the inclusion of Frank Castle. He’s a hardheaded vigilante, not a superhero, and he pushes the boundaries of the PG-13 rating with his profanity-laden language. But Frank provides the story with an interesting contrast to Peter. Frank is more interested in exacting vengeance than saving the world, and he believes every problem can be solved with a gun. Peter respects Frank as a person, but he thinks putting a ­bullet in the bad guys is the easy way out. This movie doubles down on the theme of redemption from the previous film in which Peter decides a hero should try to save everyone, not just the innocent. It’s a surprisingly Christian attitude. After all, while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

So, considering the recent string of superhero flops—Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and Supergirl—is Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s success merely a blip? Or perhaps moviegoers don’t have superhero fatigue after all; they’re just tired of the second-­tier slop that studios have force-fed audiences since the end of MCU’s Infinity War Saga in 2019. Brand New Day seems to point to an exciting future for the MCU. But if the MCU is going to get back on track and if comic-book movies are going to be great again, studios must learn the right lesson from Brand New Day’s success: Audiences demand strong stories with characters they care about.