Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Grade: C-

To bring in a metaphor from another cinematic universe, the Marvel films aren’t always my Kryptonite. My pass/fail cutoff is B- and C+, and most have been given a B- or a B. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is boring, uninteresting, and my least favorite of the Marvel films I’ve seen. It suffers from Middle Chapter Syndrome. It’s clearly world-building, and setting up for future installments like Avengers: Payday…excuse me, Avengers: Doomsday. It puts its eggs in future baskets without enough regard for the current one.

I mentally checked out frequently. It’s possible for my brain to go into the Twilight Zone and still love a movie. Something like Oppenheimer was a case of “I don’t understand everything here, but I really like the craft and construction. I’d see this again and again, to enjoy what I loved before, and get more from it each time.” Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t fall into that category.

The initial premise was interesting enough. It begins with Peter Parker, lonely, and attempting to live his dual life after his girlfriend’s and best friend’s memories of him were wiped clean. It’s a bit like Spider-Man as Travis Bickle, but instead of driving a taxi, he’s donning the costume and anonymously fighting crime. I liked a couple of things. The scene where Scorpion is temporarily possessing random townspeople all over the city to taunt Spider-Man was an exciting sequence. Various extras take turns delivering a Talking Villain monologue, a few sentences at a time as Spider-Man swings through town. I got amusement out of a running gag between Spider-Man and the Punisher about “what happened at Staten Island Ferry.” We never find out, and don’t need to know, but whatever took place is obviously a sore subject, and even MJ gets in a one-liner about it.

As MJ is starting with a clean slate with Peter, Zendaya unfortunately doesn’t get to do much when it comes to acting, other than be skeptical. Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is in the trailer, so it’s public knowledge that he would be here, but I enjoyed seeing a few other actors I wasn’t expecting to make an appearance here. I shouldn’t even begin to describe how Sadie Sink plays into it, but she takes over the third act in a powerful performance.

What didn’t work? Practically everything else. The product placement is distractingly obvious. I wondered why BERO was shown so prominently on a convenience store shelf, until I learned that it’s Tom Holland’s line of non-alcoholic beer. Also, if you live in New York City, with tons of incredible pizza options that you can’t get anywhere else, why would you order from Little Caesars, of all places? I found most of this movie to be a dull, interminable slog. I couldn’t care.

The seasoned moviegoer knows a Marvel movie doesn’t end when the closing credits begin. 90% of the audience stayed. As I didn’t enjoy the 140 minutes that came before, this was like waiting for a bonus track on a Yoko Ono album. It’s not anything you wouldn’t have known otherwise. It’s not even a scene with actors. The main idea is Spider-Man will return. I just hope he doesn’t take the Staten Island Ferry to get here.

Grade: C-