‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Review: Marvel, Just Put Destin Daniel Cretton on a Retainer Already

The news that the latest, fourth installment of the MCU/Sony Spider-Man partnership is good, actually, is hardly news at all. The Tom Holland-Spidey movies have been a reliably good time since the franchise kicked off with Homecoming almost a decade ago, despite the baggage of being the third Spider-Man franchise of this millennium and the first to carry the weight of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on its spandex-clad shoulders. Still, I'll admit my expectations were a little low for this outing, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Although Sony's extended Spider-Man universe is officially (and deservedly) kaput, I was concerned that Spider-Man: Brand New Day might get shoehorned into the MCU's flop-sweaty build-up to Doomsday.

And I guess in a way it was, sort of, in that it introduced a large Marvel Comics character nobody would have expected to see dropped into this particular cinematic corner, but - in a refreshing and potentially controversial move - that character did not also haul in a bunch of implications. As you can tell, I'm dancing around THEE spoiler of the movie, which I'll get to later (after a warning for those who don't wanna know), but what matters is that the character comes in as themselves, and reflects a key part of Peter Parker's journey in a way that is mostly organic to the story Brand New Day has set out to tell.

That story? Life isn't always fair to gifted individuals, but it helps when you don't try to go it alone.

Brand New Day picks up after the events of No Way Home, with Peter navigating a solitary existence after asking Doctor Strange to wipe the memory of his identity off the face of the Earth. He has thrown himself into being Spider-Man at the expense of being Peter Parker, becoming a bigger hero than ever to New York City and to the NYPD, even forming a sort of partnership with Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas). Meanwhile, he torments himself by cyberstalking MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) on social media as they enjoy their college experience together. Thus, the first act fast-forwards through four years in our hero's life, until his friends graduate and return to NYC as roommates.

Meanwhile, various Damage Control outposts are being attacked, but Peter's Spidey-senses allow him to perceive that the attacks are all orchestrated by someone adept at mind control (Stranger Things star Sadie Sink). Civilians, and even villains like Scorpion (Michael Mando), are used in the assaults, while the mysterious mastermind taunts Spidey through dozens of innocent faces. He's the biggest threat to her plan, and so she zeroes in on his greatest weakness - namely, his love of MJ.

Oh, ALSO Spidey is going through a fresh mutation of his Spider DNA, and it's giving him a huge boost in strength, organic webshooters, and an unbearable increase in his heightened senses. It's all too much for him to take, so he visits Professor Bruce Banner to discuss the Hulk's nifty new inhibitor doohickey to see if he could retrofit it to keep his own mutation under control. The big green guy isn't the only familiar face to join Brand New Day - Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Black Widow (Florence Pugh) also help Peter in his latest adventure.

Marvel has often struggled to satisfy fans who want the MCU to feel like a sandbox full of toys that smash together in fun, organic ways. Historically, their attempts were either fan-service cameos that distracted from the plot at hand, or giant cross-over events that forced team-ups but left little space for individual growth, but Brand New Day threads the needle the same way Marvel comics so often do. Outside characters aid our hero's story in the moment, fit in with the unique vibe, and peace out again. There's no effort made to set up characters that already exist elsewhere, or to fill in their history with Spidey, or to worry about their own continuity or cinematic style. It's enough to know that in a city full of superheroes, they're gonna run into each other once in a while!

So Punisher bickers with Spidey in a way that fits the Spider-Man tone, and is a far cry from Frank Castle's usual tormented anger. The two argue about some run-in they had in Staten Island, and I don't know if that's something I should have seen or not but it doesn't matter. In fact, it's better if that incident was strictly off-camera. Likewise, I have no idea when Peter met Yelena, but somehow he knows enough to swing by her Russian bathhouse office to ask for intel, and it makes sense. Her appearance is more than a cameo, it's a genuinely delightful highlight, and the New Avengers of it all doesn't threaten to overtake the story. Frank, Yelena, and Bruce all come back for the third act, and none of them are there to advance some larger MCU scheme or future cinematic event. They simply exist in the same place and time as Spider-Man. It's easy, and it's enough.

Obviously, the credit for that largely remains with writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, who penned the three previous films in the franchise as well, but I can't help but wonder how much sway director Destin Daniel Cretton may have had. This may be his first time helming a Spidey flick, but he's no stranger to Marvel - he previously wrote and directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and created the Emmy-nominated Wonder Man series. Rather than fitting into the MCU house style (read: unobtrusive), I'd say his strength comes from his refreshing ability to sort of keep the extended universe of it all at arm's length. With Shang-Chi, that meant introducing a C-list character nobody had any expectations of and giving him a vibrant mystical/martial arts world unlike anything else Marvel has to offer. It was fun and breezy, and the stakes were non-existent, which afforded Cretton a degree of relative freedom. Likewise, Wonder Man introduced a character who could, and will, show up in future Marvel projects, but at its core it was a show about an actor who has superpowers - not a superhero who is an actor. It hewed so closely to that unique behind-the-scenes, insidery television style that it finally felt like a TV show first, not an MCU joint chopped up into episodes. In both cases, Cretton was precise in how he utilized the requisite Marvel connective tissue, making sure it always served the character and story at hand and wasn't merely teeing up events on the horizon.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day presents a unique challenge for Cretton, taking the reins of an established and important franchise that I'm sure offers far less creative freedom, and yet he pulls it off. He has a way of creating whole unique, lived-in worlds for his characters, and hands down Brand New Day is the most New York-y Spider-Man movie yet. Peter is situated not as a cog in the Marvel machine but in the fabric of the city that gives him purpose in a way we haven't yet seen. Even the end-credit montage is just footage of average New Yorkers instead of the usual CGI splashes of character art. It's all so down-to-earth, it's easy to forget that Doomsday is breathing down Spidey's neck. I walked away from the theater pleasantly surprised that Brand New Day was as good as it was - another solid, entertaining entry in this consistently solid series of films - but mostly thinking that Marvel better have Destin Daniel Cretton on a retainer if they want to pull off whatever comes next in Phase Umpteenth or wherever we are. They may have cancelled the next season of Wonder Man, but I'm hoping that's just a sign that they're using his talents elsewhere.

And that's where I'll leave you if you want to remain spoiler-free, but for those of you who do want to discuss the handful of secrets Brand New Day has to offer, be warned: Here come the SPOILERS...
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Still here? OK, cool. So, one of the nice things about the movie being so down-to-earth is that there really aren't a lot of spoilers. Not enough to warrant a separate article, at any rate. Not a lot of easter eggs or other cameos to unpack. Not even a real end-credit scene, other than a brief stinger that promises Spider-Man will return, which we already know. The only thing Marvel was keeping under wraps was Sadie Sink's character, who - as the entire internet always guessed - is Jean freaking Grey. Brand New Day introduced a key X-Men figure, a real MUTANT-mutant, but without setting up the X-Men or that corner of the universe at all. What the MCU's plans for the X-Men are, beyond introducing the Fox film cast as alternate-universe figures in the upcoming crossover, is anyone's guess - and maybe that's why it was safe to let Sony take a swing at making Jean a villain here. If this universe is going to get wiped out or altered anyway, then any confusion over Jean and the X-Men can be waved away, right?

So, who is Jean Grey? Here, she's a telepath looking for her sister, who was abducted by Damage Control. Turns out the department, headed up by Bill Metzger (a deliciously welcome Tramell Tillman), is definitely Up To No Good, and is protecting humanity by strip-mining talents out of gifted individuals to use as defensive measures, even at the expense of killing those individuals. Jean is the villain for most of the film, until the third act reveals her motivations and Damage Control's bad deeds, flipping everything on its head and forcing Spider-Man to re-evaluate his allegiances.

Some fans may be disappointed that Jean Grey is not here to usher in the X-Men into the MCU, and others may feel the third act, which essentially shifts from Peter's POV to Jean's, is a little disjointed. I'll be honest, it is a little messy in a film that is already stuffed to the brim with STUFF, but I think it holds by the skin of its teeth because the script does the work building up how Jean is a mirror of Peter at this stage of their lives. They are both navigating explosive leaps in their mutations. They've both lost their loved ones. So what if Peter letting Jean into his mind palace so she can get a much-needed hug from a memory of Aunt May is a little hokey - just be grateful Marisa Tomei came back!

The point is that Brand New Day took a character that should come with a lot of baggage and managed to use them in a way that suited Peter's story, without letting that baggage interfere in the slightest. And though the X-Men weren't introduced, the themes of the X-Men comics were -- that special people, different people, can be feared and misunderstood, but how you confront that fear matters.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in theaters now.