[Note: I do not consider myself a movie critic. What follows is just one fanboy’s opinion based off of a single viewing of the film. Oh, and there are SPOILERS ahead for this movie, so take heed.]

After what seems like an eternity, Spider-Man is back, baby! At the time of this writing, Spider-Man: Brand New Day has cleared more than two billion at the box office worldwide. After the last few MCU releases, Marvel could definitely use a win, and this was it.

In many ways, this’s precisely what I look for in a Spider-Man story — an internal conflict that Peter is having to contend with while still facing an external battle on the streets of New York. There are several other characters that make an appearance so this story feels like it takes place in a shared universe without those extended cameos overstaying their welcome. Quite the contrary, I wanted to see a bit more of a few of them.

There were some really great performances here that punch way above their weight. Having just seen Jon Bernthal, Tom Holland, and Zendaya in The Odyssey, I honestly think their performances in this movie were much better.

First Impressions

As much as I like Spider-Man: No Way Home, it ended on a super downer. Not only had Peter just lost his surrogate father figure, Tony Stark, but everyone else in the world had forgotten who he was. They didn’t forget Spider-Man, but they did forget Peter Parker, including the love of his life and his best friend.

That ending was definitely a way to give Spider-Man a degree of separation from the rest of the MCU. That smacked of Sony not wanting to be fully beholden to Marvel Studios, but whatever. Suffice to say, it was pressing a big ol’ reset button.

So, I honestly had no idea of what to expect of this next movie or where they would go with the story. There were rumors of Sadie Sink’s involvement, but no source could really agree on which role she would play. There was speculation she might be Mayday Parker, Spider-Man’s daughter from the future, or even another multiversal version of MJ.

While I had some uncertainty given the current state of the MCU (and my growing anxiety over Avengers: Doomsday), Spider-Man is my guy. Spider-Man comics were instrumental in teaching me how to read, and I’ve loved the Wall-Crawler since Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. There was no way I wasn’t going to see this movie. Let’s friggin’ go.

What I Liked

Tom Holland: Stan Lee was a master at humanizing his superheroes, of making them feel like real people who happen to have powers. (Contrast this to DC, where the characters are effectively paragons of various ideals incarnate.) Since his first appearance as Spidey in Avengers: Civil War, Tom Holland has continually brought a level of humanity to Peter Parker that is undeniable. The more I see him in this role, the more I’m convinced that he is the perfect actor to lead this telling of the character. I think his casting in this role is every bit as inspired as RDJ as Iron Man or Tom Hiddleston as Loki. Well done, sir. Well done.

What Spider-Man Means to NYC: When Peter walks out of the hospital into a crowd of Spidey fans wishing him well, and he sees all the signs and costumes, I legit started tearing up. For everything he has sacrificed, for everything he has lost in becoming a hero, and as lonely as his day-to-day life has become, seeing that little boy flash web-shooter hands and seeing Peter return it was genuinely touching. There’s also all those times that Spider-Man shows up somewhere and everyone knows who he is. They all naturally want to help him out. Even if this version of Spider-Man is relegated to ‘small potatoes,’ he is a champion of the city, and people love him for it. He deserves it.

The Hulk: We haven’t seen Bruce since the weirdness of the She-Hulk streaming series, and it’s good to see him back in the classroom, complete with his fans showing up to his classes. Growing up, the two most iconic Marvel characters were Spider-Man and the Hulk, so seeing the OG, weapon-of-mass-destruction-Hulk showing up here was pretty cool. The ending of his part of the story did feel a little rushed, so I hope Bruce’s quick exit from the movie is a setup for a future story.

The Punisher: I’ve said it before, but Bernthal’s version of Frank Castle is my favorite. I was never sold on the character in the comics, but Bernthal in this movie is the kind of Punisher I want to see, not the shivering, unkempt, barely functional Frank we recently saw in Punisher: One Last Kill. Frank and Peter are not characters I would have thought would’ve paired well on screen, but I was wrong on that count. It’s clear that Frank’s parental instincts have kicked in here. He doesn’t want Peter to live the kind of life he does, and the slow-motion scene of Frank bringing Spidey through the door of the emergency room hit on something. As much as they disagree and bicker, Frank has come to see Peter as part of his family, perhaps even like a son. He couldn’t save his family, but Peter he could save. Perfection.

Black Widow: I had wondered if Yelena would adopt White Widow as her superhero moniker, but Ned confirms that she has taken her sister’s mantle of Black Widow as one of the New Avengers. I love how casual about everything she is, including having her office in a Russian banya. It’s a little odd that she refers to Spider-Man as ‘small potatoes’ when he was an Avenger before she was. I guess his membership didn’t survive Doctor Strange’s spell. In any case, I like Florence Pugh a lot, so any time we get to see her reprise her role as Yelena, I’m down for it.

What I DIDN’T Like

Jean Grey: Before I get into this part, let me clarify that I absolutely loved Sadie Sink’s performance here. This version of Jean is super-villain scary, merciless, and both physically and emotionally manipulative. She’s willing to kill just to make a point. While Sadie Sink played this part really well, I did not like this completely amoral, and (let’s face it), evil version of Jean Grey. I know she eventually becomes Dark Phoenix, one of the ultimate villains, if the MCU ever decides to go there, but that’s way in the future. Here, she comes off as more like David Tennant’s Killgrave from Jessica Jones with her lack of regard for anyone but herself.

Yes, I know that Damage Control abducted and killed her sister, but she drove a tank down the streets of New York, firing machine guns all around, blowing up cars, and then detonated a bomb at a prison with any number of emergency responders nearby (to say nothing of the kindly old lady that would have been inside the tank). That’s terrorist-level stuff. She is responsible for a lot of civilian deaths that had nothing to do with Damage Control. Also, why did she need Scorpion in particular for her plans? Who knows.

You think that if she could get inside people’s minds and work them like puppets, she wouldn’t need a brute-force approach to anything, especially if she could access their memories when she takes them over. She just needed to work her way up to Director Metzger and pull the information directly from his own memories.

All this doesn’t even cover the violation of MJ. Not only did she kiss Peter while puppeting MJ, she then walked MJ off the side of a building. Like, holy crap. It seems like the villain of the story was originally meant to be someone else, but Jean was shoe-horned in there, and not to her credit. Spider-Man may have lamented that he helped capture Jean once he knew the whole story, but the truth is that she needed to be stopped. Thankfully, it was Peter that found a way to stop her instead of Frank.

As a Spider-Man fan, I think we ate pretty well this time around. As an X-Men fan, however, this isn’t a great introduction to the new version of the X-Men to come. Professor X is going to have his work cut out for him. Sheesh.

Inconsistent Use of Super Powers: This has become a recurring problem in superhero movies. There are times that Peter’s spider sense saves him and those around him, over and over, until it just…doesn’t. For instance, the older man with the green hat that backs into traffic (at Jean’s direction). Did Peter not sense the car speeding toward the man in time to web him out of the way? We’ve seen him react to much faster threats, but not that time. Why? Who knows. I’m willing to hand-wave a bit of this because Peter’s powers are changing, but sometimes his powers work when the plot calls for it, and sometimes they don’t.

Also, what happened with his senses getting overloaded? No adjustment or action needed, even though this is why he wears the goggles in the first place. It just goes away on its own.  

Further, when Peter starts trying to web-sling around the city with his new organic web-shooters, he doesn’t have control. He’s crashing into things and making a mess. The next scene he’s got MJ holding on and he’s perfectly in control.

A Lack of Consequences: With the “You have me” line, it feels like all is forgiven. Now I don’t have an issue with Peter forgiving Jean on the spot, given all the things she had gone through. He’s that good of a person, and his empathy and capacity for forgiveness are, well, amazing.

But…Jean did a bit of terrorism, didn’t she? Even if Damage Control is not looking for her, I’m betting every law enforcement agency in New York along with the FBI, NSA, and CIA are likely still looking for her. I doubt that any consequences will ever come of that. I think as far as the movie is concerned, Jean is forgiven for everything she’s done.

To be fair, the same is also true of the Punisher. Isn’t he still a wanted fugitive? Everyone knows who he is and what he looks like, and he wasn’t shy about wearing his skull-emblazoned armor. In Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Bullseye calls in a fake sighting of Frank Castle at a diner, which prompts a swat team to descend on the place with a vengeance (spoilers, it doesn’t go well for them). In this movie, Frank is just hanging out at the hospital with zero issues or anyone trying to take him into custody.

There are many more examples of this in the movie, and it honestly feels like the screenplay was written by a team that didn’t always compare notes.

The Spidersuit: I realize that Peter no longer has access to the super-slick Tony Stark spidersuits, but this one was…lackluster. The scene where Spidey going through security at Damage Control looks more like a talented cosplayer at a convention instead of the man himself. The CGI of some of his webslinging also looked unfinished in a few places, really calling attention to how previous versions of the character looked way better. 

Unanswered Questions

There are so many. By hitting the reset button, it’s hard to know where Peter goes from there. It seems like he will rebuild relationships with MJ and Ned, but it won’t quite be the same. I’m glad that MJ didn’t just immediately fall back in love with him, which means that perhaps Gwen Stacy will have a chance in a future story.

I think what’s really unknown is what role Spider-Man, arguably the symbol of Marvel Comics itself, will have in the larger MCU. Will he continue to be relegated to ‘small potatoes,’ or will he become an Avenger again? Also, will we get to see a Daredevil/Spider-Man story? I loved Charlie Cox’s cameo in No Way Home, but I want to see these two street-level heroes, both suited up, watching each other’s back in a street fight. Now that the Punisher has a connection to both of them, maybe he’ll be the bridge between the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

I guess we’ll just have to find out.

Conclusions

As much as I enjoyed this movie, it’s not my favorite Spider-Man story in the Tom Holland era. If there had been a truly heartless villain at the center of the story, like Mister Negative, Chameleon, a new version of Doc Oc, or any of the established Rogues Gallery, this story would have landed much better for me. Having the central antagonist be a character that’s destined to be a hero, in an emerging super team to rival the Avengers, is definitely a choice, but not one that resonated with me.

That said, there’s so much to love about this movie, and it deserves all the success it garners. I think there are some performances that really elevate the material, however. Whatever issues I may have with the story choices, the interrelationships that we see being built between these characters here are precisely what I want out of a shared cinematic universe. Viewed from that lens, this is definitely one of the strongest Marvel entries in the Post-Endgame era.

A while back, I stopped writing these reviews for every Marvel movie or release that came out. Part of it was the sheer volume of content that came through all at once, but the majority of it stemmed from the waning quality in the offerings. After all, I started this blog to talk about the things I love, not those I dislike.

That this movie is here on the blog, tells you that, whatever flaws it may have, that the movie is easily a net positive overall. So, to Marvel Studios, I say: More of this please.

And that’s the way this fanboy sees it.

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^{Read the first chapter of my military sci-fi novel, Axis Point, for FREE. Just click here.}