Marvel Needs to Take a Breather

The problem with Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t the performances. It’s not the action, even as it pinwheels dangerously close to live-action video game territory. It isn’t the score, either, by composer Michael Giacchino, who blends notes of downcast contemplation with epic, sweeping crescendo. Even the script, messy and overburdened, by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, manages to rise above its lowest moments.

The problem is Marvel. Marvel’s problem as a whole remains Marvel. Because as much as we can gripe about phases one through three of Kevin Feige’s grand tour of wringing out every last drop of nostalgia, weighed down by the ceaseless quips that fight to overtake any sincerity, at the very least, for a while, the MCU was in the business of making movies.

Now, for every blip of movie magic, any sequence of genuine fun or showstopper spectacle, we are immediately reminded that none of it is just in service of the main plot. It’s about the overarching plot. The five films down the pipeline and two television series. It’s about selling us toys we grew up with that aren’t even in as good condition as my husband’s old Scorpion action figure, despite the billions of dollars being vomited out.

Marvel has a Marvel problem. 

I don’t hate Spider-Man: Brand New Day. There is a solid Spider-Man film here. I hate that it’s product-first, film-second because they weren’t always this way even with the mid-credit tags. Iron Man let Robert Downey Jr. showboat and remind us of his star charisma. Captain America: The First Avenger had soul and possibly led people to watch the Powell and Pressburger classic, A Matter of Life and Death, in the same vein as how Guitar Hero might introduce you to classic rock. 

Guardians of the Galaxy was fun, Black Panther showcased a titanic talent on the rise (in front of and behind the camera), Avengers: Infinity War had real stakes based on the ups and downs of these characters that had yet to feel quite as orchestrated as they’d become in the ceaseless television series. And Spider-Man: Homecoming was scrappy and heartfelt, buoyed by the charisma and chemistry of the core cast – Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon – and the primary villain, Vulture, played by a great Michael Keaton.

There is a possibility here. With director Daniel Destin Cretton at the center, who managed to make a meal (with the help of Tony Leung) out of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings despite a stiff central performance, there’s promise, even. Even when they’ve sent him to space or to the other side of the globe, Spider-Man as a character remains heartfelt and grounded, no matter Marvel’s best efforts to force him to bear the mantle of other heroes and the studio’s expectations.

Actors like Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal are giving it their all, but is it enough?

And it is our care – our childlike love for this infectious webslinger – that makes it easy to try and find the highlights in Spider-Man: Brand New Day despite the creeping sense of “that’s it?” Following in the footsteps of Thunderbolts by making the greater threat a product of loss and abuse, there’s a wealth of emotional threads to pull on, but Marvel pulls on too many, tangling the story in the process.

Picking up after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is left adrift. As he holds onto his Spider-Man persona, he grieves both the death of Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), the loss of his friends who have forgotten him in his efforts to save them, and the loss of a life that was meant to be his as he watches MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) attend MIT, rooming together like their youthful plans once dictated.

But he’s no longer in the picture. And one of the most effective moments of the entire film comes at the very start, as Peter forlornly watches as his friends move on without him, as he struggles alone with passing figures in his life who want to care but don’t know how. This ranges from a local detective to, of all people, Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), the two having developed a push-pull dynamic off-screen between films and the four-year time jump. Holland does sad puppy eyes well and uses them to exhaustive effect as the world keeps punching down on the hero.

The best part of Spider-Man: Brand New Day are these sequences that ground and mature the hero. The idea that his self-isolation isn’t just born out of a self-aggrandizing sense of martyrdom, but a kid aging into adulthood who has been left behind to process finding an entirely new place in the world 

It’s a shame that Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t spend enough time with its titular hero.

However, things begin to change for him, physically and emotionally, leading him down a mysterious path as he tries to stop the changes while maintaining the healthy balance he’s been forced to adopt in his life. All the while, he’s following a lead for a dangerous new threat whose ability causes chaos, throwing the world around him into disarray. Add to that his general fatigue and isolation, and the result is a hero who has seen better days.

But it all gets a bit muddied after that. There are ideas in Spider-Man: Brand New Day that are worth exploring. The physical transformation that Spider-Man undergoes is intriguing, especially in how it’s triggered not by a moment of powering up but by his own mental decline.

He’s sad and lonely, and his body doesn’t know how to handle that. And how that emotional instability lends itself to a new character helps anchor the plot, even as McKenna and Sommers are forced to bend over backward to accommodate the five-to-ten-year plan happening on every whiteboard at Marvel.

Even the involvement of guest players who are walking over from other sets works well. Bernthal is having a lot more fun here than on the set of Daredevil: Born Again, and he and Holland share genuine chemistry that helps ground their banter. And Mark Ruffalo, though overused, makes for an effective appearance, reminding viewers in the best shot scene of the film that mild-mannered Bruce Banner becomes an actual movie monster when he fully transforms into The Hulk. It’s the first time since The Avengers where we’re reminded of his towering threat, the direction lending itself to horror. 

There’s reason to care; Marvel needs to remember why.

And the moments we do share with the core three remind us why we care in the first place. Why we care to pick out the individual standout moments in a film that is buried under the glut of Marvel’s lack of curiosity and consumerist drive. Because while Spider-Man: Brand New Day has so much potential and rich material to work with, it’s too busy looking ahead to bother working with the story it has.

It isn’t helped by some clumsy, even ugly, filmmaking and an abundance of poorly staged CGI that never blends the actor and the background. The action is cohesive, and two showstopper moments evoke that necessary wonder when watching such larger-than-life characters. Even then, the slick choreography is sabotaged by unnecessary slow motion and terrible mid-fight dialogue.

It’s easy to approach these films with the mindset of “turn your brain off” and have fun. But also, by doing so, we’re feeding into a machine that happily turns out mindless mush and colorless superheroes (colorless! superheroes!) for the sake of quick cash and building out an overarching narrative that needed to take a breather almost ten years ago now. Any affection for Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes in fits and starts.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in desperate need of a soul. 

It comes from Holland’s committed performance and this version of Spider-Man’s distinctive physicality. If Tobey Maguire brought the real nerd out, and Andrew Garfield the exuberant boy next door charm, Holland is somewhere in the middle, but with a balletic twist. The charm comes from a cast who is still clearly in the game, even if the script is halfway out the door. Really, the charm comes from so many of us loving this character, in all his iterations, and wanting to see a single version with three consistently good films.

But Spider-Man: Brand New Day lacks soul. It lacks conviction and a narratively contained specific point. It doesn’t show any remorse in refusing to let Peter Parker be the anchor for his own story. We care because the script manipulates us to, not because it truly earns it. While there are individual moments that stand out, and I’d be a liar to say I was bored, the fact is this: Marvel is no longer in the business of making movies. 

Maybe they never were. But they certainly were better at lying about it, once upon a time. And the spectacle, the portal in the sky in the battle for New York, felt epic and new and like the culmination of laid out plans. Now it all feels perfunctory. Another piece in an endless puzzle.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives in theaters July 31, 2026.