Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, deals with his personal issues, additional mutations to his powers, and a mysterious mind hopper in another great entry in the MCU’s most constantly solid series: Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Note as we start: If you regularly read my reviews, you know I’m spoiler-avoidant, and thus this review will be especially trying not to get stuck in the sticky web of spoilers. I’m going to stick with just what I know has been overall seen in some trailers, but so much is going to be swung around to keep things fresh.
The Spider-Man films have been the most consistent in quality and care across the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While the interconnected series has waxed and waned, the four Spider-Man films have remained a constant in keeping a true sense of story and character, while delivering on the action spectacles one expects from a superhero film.
The thing with Spider-Man is he connects with the young. Spider-Man is more than likely any child’s superhero of choice. He was one of mine, and he is absolutely my son’s (he’s very into utterly charming the Disney+ Spidey and His Amazing Friends right now). He’s brightly colored, funny, with an awesome rogue’s gallery. But mostly, he’s also young and relatable. Spider-Man, while he can be older in the comics, in moving visual media has represented younger people and their problems and issues: growing up, finding oneself within responsibilities, taking account for mistakes, balancing the needs of life, and facing the changes of life from adolescence to adulthood. He’s the most human of the heroes, and that translates. 
Within the MCU, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and his trilogy of films (along with the team-up films) have grown with Peter. Thus, four films and ten years later, the first of the series not to be directed by John Watts, but also not with “home” in the title. With the events of No Way Home, Peter loses it all, sacrificing all connections to keep them safe, becoming homeless in a way. With the moniker of Brand New Day and a new director in Destin Daniel Cretton, of the underrated Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings & the underseen WonderMan, Spider-Man is ready for a new start. Save returning writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, but they know Spider-Man so well, so that’s good. Away from the Teenage travails, but a more emotional and mature Spider-Man story, working through the motling of one’s life in our early 20s. But don’t worry too much about those adjectives; there’s still plenty of incredible web-slinging action. As seen in Shang-Chi and Wonder Man, Cretton excels at focusing characters within the bigger picture, and he does so for Spider-Man.
How do you follow up with a climax of 3 Spider-Men, five villains, and one Dr Strange swinging and portaling all over the Statue of Liberty? Go small. Go personal. Tell a grounded story of our various ways of working through trauma, how it sends people into circular personalities; how our choices and consequences and mulling over them can start endless cycles without any respite until forced out of crippling self-imposed isolation. In the time since losing everything close to him due to the memory spell and Aunt May’s death at the hands of the Green Goblin (if No Way Home brought in Spider-Man’s past, Brand New Day finds a path to the future), Peter’s stuck in the rut. Living on his own, spending what seems to be all his time fighting crime, street-level crime and super criminals like the superpowered ninjas The Hand and their awesome Wuxia moves (leaving our other villains here), leaving flowers at May’s grave, and watching Instagram videos of memory-wiped MJ and Ned work through MIT and return to NYC (in a wonderful choice to move time forward). The only connections seem to be friendly NYC detective DeWolfe, some contacts at Damage Control, and a few familiar faces to the MCU. He’s stuck in the doldrums of what to do next with his life after school and youth. Peter doesn’t seem to work or worry about money issues; I’m going to write that off to some Avengers-stipend Stark setup that still works. I’m glad to not have to deal with this standard Spider-Man angle this time.
As still played by continually strengthening Tom Holland (two weeks ago I called his performance in The Odyssey never better, I now say here), Peter’s life represented what works best: it’s grounded with restraint in the storytelling. As Peter tries to figure out just what’s happening with a mysterious mind-hopping (a direct counter to Peter pushing out everyone’s mind) villain trying to access Damage Control, led by Tramell Tillman from Severance and Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. Between these three roles, I really don’t like his wholly unnatural acting. The who, what, and how of it all is the movie’s to unmask, but it’s deftly plotted in how it moves through Peter trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the “monster” and his own weird molting representing his repressed emotion (taking four movies before the “power issues” of Spider-Man, a series record). The nature of this keeps him “street level,” avoiding world-ending stuff. Or “small potatoes,” as one familiar face calls it in their handful of great scenes.
This character is a great example of the restraint. A few familiar faces appear for a handful of sequences, but none are gratuitous; they serve the plot and are used judiciously. A weaker film would up the ante in these appearances. One particular known entity has an amazing fight sequence halfway through. Even MJ and Ned. Jacob Batalan is energetic as always, but call me surprised by how good Zendaya is here (I’ll admit I’m not much of a fan of her low-key glower acting) are used sparingly, avoiding the need to force them into the narrative more than necessary just to have them. Heck, at one point MJ mentions a company she’s interviewing for: a weaker film would drop Oscorp here. McKenna and Sommers don’t. Kudos. I can and will say I adore Spider-Man working with Punisher. Jon Berenthal has continued to live in the character, giving Frank Castle more than anyone else. Their dynamic in film is a major highlight, with nothing lost in a PG-13 Punisher; in fact, I think it enlivened Berenthal. Speaking of familiar faces, while new to this universe, Sadie Sink is known from Stranger Things, Fear Street, and her Broadway run of John Proctor is Dead. One of the best new young performers, she delivers a heart-stopping, intense, inescapable performance. She might be the MVP of the film, sneaking the film away from Berenthal. (I’m sad to report Keith David is relegated to the mere voice-over in the trailer. Boo.) How each of these people- Peter Parker, Frank Castle, and “Sadie Sink” looks at trauma and how it sticks to us; well done.
To swing back to the fight sequences, the action scenes are very well choreographed and put together, using the character and environment cleverly. Cretton loves to get right up in the action, with first-person or near-about sequences that heighten the power of the large screen (with Michael Giacchino’s touching score helping the big bits but heightening the character moments). It’s impressive but like everything else, not overdone, so when we get the Spider-Man’s Eye View it still feels fresh. The film is generally shot close and intimate, expanding to wider shots to make a point or hit a moment.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day continues the trend of consistent quality in character and spectacle in a Spider-Man story (squinting at parts of Spider-Man 3 and the Garfield flicks), coming in with the strength of the rebuilding MCU, the animated Spider-verse, and the excellent Spider-Noir TV series. Destin Daniel Cretton’s entry to the canon is a more mature, grounded Spider-Man after the high-flying high school years for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. Swing into the theatre this weekend.