Another Spider-Man film, another miserable time for Peter Parker. Some things never change.
Major spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day follow.
Peter keeps going #
Spider-Man: Brand New Day finds Peter living with the consequences of losing everyone closest to him. Aunt May is gone, while MJ and Ned no longer remember who he is. He carries on being Spider-Man, but he’s clearly struggling to move forward. That’s the Peter Parker I’ve always known: capable of saving everyone else, yet rarely able to sort his own life out.
Something is also changing in his spider powers. Peter is becoming more spider. He’s cocooning, gaining strength and new senses, and at times everything around him seems to move more slowly. But he’s also losing control of himself.
I immediately thought of Spider-Man: The Animated Series from the 1990s, when Peter’s mutation goes completely bonkers. He grows additional arms and eventually turns into the horrifying Man-Spider, an eight-limbed humanoid spider monster. The film doesn’t go anywhere near that far; Peter mostly gains new abilities while his mind starts slipping. Still, knowing how far the cartoon took the idea made me wonder where this version was heading.
Familiar faces, missing chapters #
Meanwhile, something is targeting a Damage Control facility, and Spider-Man ends up in the middle of the trouble. During the chase involving a tank, Peter and Frank Castle, the Punisher, bicker away like old mates.
And I’m thinking: Hang on, when did these two become best buds?
Their conversation is hilarious. They sound like brothers who’ve been winding each other up for years. Did I skip a film? A television series? I enjoyed their dynamic, but spent half the scene trying to remember the meeting I must have missed.
The same goes for Yelena, Black Widow’s sister. Since when has she been so close to Spider-Man? She’s going on about big potatoes, small potatoes and something about jumping into a jacuzzi. It’s wonderfully bizarre, except I genuinely don’t know what she’s talking about. Perhaps I’m supposed to accept these off-screen friendships and carry on, but the film makes me feel as though I’ve walked into the middle of somebody else’s conversation.
The action around Scorpion’s escape is great fun, though. I especially liked the music. Some of the cues and sounds have an old-fashioned Spider-Man quality, almost a 1970s feel, which made the fighting more enjoyable. Admittedly, at points it doesn’t look like anyone is actually fighting back. They’re mostly running away, but I was having a good time watching it.
The mysterious figure keeps appearing, and eventually the threat gets personal. There’s an encounter at Peter’s home, with someone going through his belongings and talking about targeting MJ.
Tut, tut. Never target MJ.
If there’s one thing years of Spider-Man stories have taught me, it’s that you can never entirely rule out a twist where MJ is concerned. Is she really MJ? An illusion? Someone from another universe? A water-based imposter? Or is this simply another example of MJ having terrible luck? Whatever the answer, Peter is going to try to save her. He always does.
A genius living in squalor #
Peter eventually goes to see Bruce Banner, who’s teaching at a university now. Where’s Ross? Bruce has a device to keep himself from Hulking out, so naturally Peter, being the genius he is, works on his own version to control what’s happening to him.
And that’s what gets me about Peter Parker. Here’s a man smart enough to develop incredible technology and adapt something designed to restrain the Hulk, yet my man is living in squalor. He’s a scientific genius who can barely manage a decent home. Classic Peter.
Then the mystery leads to Jean Grey. That made me sit up, because I know Jean from the X-Men cartoons and films. The story isn’t simply about someone attacking Damage Control: Jean is trying to find and save her sister. We barely see the sister except in a flashback, and Damage Control’s account implies that she’s dead. It’s quite a cruel situation. Jean has been looking for someone she may never be able to bring home.
Then Jean starts taking control of everyone around her: Damage Control personnel, their chief, MJ, Ned and even a bunch of what look like teenage ninjas, apparently the Hand. Suddenly this whole crowd is jerking and twisting under her influence, and I’m wondering why everybody looks like they’re doing body pops.
I understand telepathy. We’ve seen Wanda use mind-affecting powers in the MCU, and nobody moved like this. Jean Grey is also supposed to have telekinesis, so I was surprised by how narrowly her abilities seemed to be presented here. I kept thinking of X-Men: The Last Stand and that whole Level 5 mutant business. I know these are different adaptations, but Jean is one of those characters whose power is meant to be frighteningly immense. Is this a creative choice, or another consequence of the strange Sony–Disney–Marvel world of character rights? Either way, it looked odd to me.
When the mask comes off #
The confrontation eventually turns into something much more human. Jean sees into Peter’s mind after he removes his mask and that power-control unit, which still makes me laugh. Instead of just a superhero standing in her way, she sees Peter, his losses and his memories of Aunt May. We return to his conversations with May about his powers and what it means to use them for others.
That hit harder than I expected.
Jean is caught up in the loss of her sister. Peter knows loss too. May is dead; MJ and Ned have forgotten him; his old life is gone. Yet he still tries to help. Taking off the mask becomes more than revealing his face. He’s showing someone else what he carries around and why he keeps going.
And then Frank shoots him.
The Punisher shooting Spider-Man is quite a moment, but what follows is even more striking: Frank carries Peter out and gets him to hospital. It reminded me of the comic-book image of Captain America carrying Spider-Man. There’s something about seeing another hero carry a badly wounded Peter that always gets to me.
At the hospital, people work together to keep Spider-Man alive. Outside, members of the public gather, protesting and showing their support while he recovers. For once, the city is looking after the man who has spent so much of his life looking after it.
I found that genuinely emotional.
Then there’s the lovely final trick: Peter leaves the hospital as Peter Parker, while Frank pretends to be Spider-Man at the window. Of all people, the Punisher is helping him keep his identity secret. Their earlier banter suddenly feels less random. Whatever I missed about their friendship, Frank clearly understands what Peter means to people.
The hero behind the strangeness #
This is where the film really won me over. I’ve always thought of Spider-Man as the ultimate hero. Not just the wisecracking kid swinging between buildings, but the one who steps up when everything is falling apart. The team leader. The person who saves the universe. The one willing to sacrifice himself so everyone else gets another chance.
Underneath all of that, he’s still Peter Parker. He misses his aunt. He misses his friends. He lives in a rubbish flat, cobbles together impossible inventions, and carries on even when nobody knows who he is.
That’s Spider-Man to me.
So yes, this film is odd. Some of the characters feel as though they’ve wandered in from stories I’m expected to have watched already, and it’s absolutely a turn-your-brain-off sort of film in places. But the transformation story, the retro music, the Scorpion action and especially the hospital sequence reminded me why I’ve loved this character for so long.
I laughed at the strangeness, questioned half the relationships and ended up getting emotional over a battered Peter Parker being carried to safety.
A good, occasionally ridiculous Spider-Man film and, when it counts, one that understands the hero behind the mask.