The concept of a new start, a brand-new day, is threaded through every element of the new Spider-Man movie. For Peter, it’s the start of a new phase of his life. For the MCU, it’s mutants and the bigots who hate them stepping out into the light. For each of the characters, it’s a new beginning, but not always a good one. Alasdair Stuart breaks it down for us.

Yelena Belova

Everyone’s favourite Eastern European badass has the best time in Brand New Day. Her scenes are some of the funniest, but they also tell us a surprising amount about how Yelena’s dealing with life as the head of the New Avengers (or z, patent pendng).

For a start she’s clearly switched on and aware of the multiple street level threats Spider-Man has dealt with over the previous four years. She’s also clearly used to working with ‘big potatoes’, the problems the New Avengers are designed to face. That all but confirms Brand New Day sits before Doomsday, and also that rather more time has passed in universe than we first thought since Thunderbolts*.

That seems borne out by the running gag that Yelena’s ‘office’ is a bathhouse. Superficially this is funny, and tactically smart. In particular her dialogue about how no one who talks to her can come in armed seems to be a callback to the ‘I have no weapons in my hands… That is also a lie’ scene from Hawkeye. But it also shows that Yelena has made peace with her past. Trained, and surgically mutilated, to kill by the Russian government we’ve previously seen her sprint headlong into personal choice. Here she’s completely at home in a Russian community. All of which suggests Yelena’s new start is well under way and, as can only be expected, she’s crushing it.

May Parker

Oddly, the most surprising cameo in the movie and by far the most effective and affecting. Marisa Tomei doesn’t so much return here as anchor the entire movie. We return constantly to a pivotal moment of May comforting Peter just after she finds out his secret identity. It begins as a life raft for Peter, one of the last good memories he has. It evolves over time into something he defends from Jean’s intrusions and finally, uses as a lifeline to throw to her. It’s a wonderfully done, subtle moment. May is talking to Peter in the past, but when we finally see the memory, she’s talking to Jean with this line proving especially resonant:

‘Never forget that, no matter how powerful you become.’

Given the likelihood we’re getting a third time’s the charm run at the Phoenix Saga, Jean is going to be faced with a series of impossible decisions and the opportunity to commit atrocities. May’s words here may be pivotal in what saves the MCU and drags Jean back from the brink. It’s also a subtle, and meaningful, reinforcement of how similar Jean and Peter are. Too kind, strong, damaged people doing their best and never sure if it’s enough. May’s message to them is the movie’s message to us.

It is.

It always is.

Jean Grey

Sade Sink’s star-making turn thrums with rage and pain so much that when it fades as the movie ends, like Peter, you find yourself stunned by the quiet. Jean Grey’s beginning could not be more traumatic: foster care, her sister kidnapped and murdered by the government and her own powers ripped into feral intensity by the same men. Along the way she wreaks at least as much damage. Jean, at best, seriously injures multiple people and likely kills at least two before she turns herself around and I’ve seen a lot of people criticise those choices.

I think they’re the only choices that make sense. The way the Marvel universe explores how mutants are treated is arguably its most powerful metaphor and it’s one that’s needed now more than ever, especially from a company who elsewhere have given every appearance of moral vacuity at best and cowardice at worst. The darkest moment of the Marvel universe isn’t an angry purple man committing universal genocide, it’s people who look and sound like us reporting their children and neighbours because they feel ‘different’. It’s a moment we’re all living through and to see the MCU rise to meet it, when it’s abjectly failed to do so elsewhere, is as powerful as it is ressuring.

It also grounds Jean in a way that will only help more as time goes on. Jean can’t be a paragon of virtue, the leader we know she becomes, without doing what she does here. She has to fall to rise, and if you think that’s a Phoenix nod then you are not wrong. As we start down the road to the X-Men, having the first one we meet be so troubled and so inspired is a brave choice. Jean has blood on her hands, she has sins to work off, and a school to go to where she’ll do both. That’s her brand-new day and it starts the best way it could – with May Parker and May’s (to all intents and purposes) son, telling her she’s good enough.

Frank Castle

Frank Castle would never claim to be a good man. A Special Forces veteran, Frank was a ruthlessly efficient violence machine long before his long dark night began. Frank doesn’t get a brand-new day, but something better. The final fifteen minutes of the movie are some of the most touching and poignant work the MCU has put together and so much of that is Jon Bernthal’s wounded pitbull of a vigilante. The look on his face when he realises he’s shot Peter is horrific, a man good at one thing realising he’s not even good enough at that. Someone who’s told himself he’s a necessary evil sees what a true hero does. The movie plays with countless iconic images from the comics, and Frank carrying a wounded Peter into the hospital is one of them. But what follows is brand new, in every way. Frank is brought to tears when he realises Peter’s going to make it and is clearly delighted when this scrappy little kid busts his chops for it.

But the moment that wrecks me comes after that, when Frank puts Peter’s mask on so Peter can walk out of hospital unnoticed. It’s a lovely beat, that gives Peter a chance to see how beloved he is, but the more you think about it, the more touching it is. Frank talks about how the suit had to be cut off Peter when he was brought in. That means there are nurses and doctors who’ve seen Peter’s face, and who have presumably run his ID. None of them have, because he’s Spider-Man. He’s New York’s favourite hero. Their designated weird little guy. You mess with Spidey, as the other movies have shown, you mess with New York. As an aside too, the moment where the Empire State Building is lit in Spider-Man’s colours? My GOD, half the audience were in tears. The last time I cried that hard at a Marvel movie was the end of Thunderbolts* and this feels, emotionally and thematically, very much like a sequel to that underrated gem.

Then there’s the fact Frank walked in and hasn’t been arrested. Some people have said this is a plot hole. Others have said it indicates how terrified the city is of him. I choose to believe it’s more that this isn’t about Frank. If The Punisher brought him in, then maybe New York looks the other way for a while. The ethics of that, like everything surrounding Frank, are very, very dark. But they’re also not entirely without light.

And neither is he.  And when he puts the mask on, you see him realise it.

Frank Castle capers and roars with a mask that barely fits him and the crowd erupts. It’s not for Frank, they don’t know that, but he does and because of that it’s enough, at least for now.  Frank has been of use. He’s cleared this part of his blood-drenched ledger. Frank Castle gets to save his new friend’s life, and he gets just a taste of redemption, just a kiss of hope for it. He did a good thing, one not even he can deny. It’s not a brand-new day. It’s daylight. For a man who lives in the dark, that’s enough.

Bruce Banner

Bruce Banner is the only cast member who doesn’t get a brand-new day. But the Hulk does. Jean triggers Bruce’s transformation for the first time in years, using him to get to Metzger to find her sister. The Hulk is enraged, both at her for letting him out and Banner for keeping him locked up. But there’s a line that goes by very quickly which suggests Jean may have done something much worse. As Banner fights to stay human, he says ‘I think she broke something’ just before a colossal version of Hulk we’ve never seen before emerges. The implication is that Jean has permanently damaged the barrier between Bruce and the Hulk, meaning that he’s once again incredibly dangerous to be around.

That’s both a tragedy and, at first glance, the exact sort of dangerously reductive risk avoidance that leads to the ongoing cancellation wave at Marvel. But look closer and it gets much more interesting. ‘I think she broke something’, the clear implication that the Hulk recognises Peter and Bruce’s carefully ambiguous status as the movie closes all suggest a new day is coming for Banner and The Other Guy, just with considerably less sunshine than some of the others. The Hulk is out once again, and a scale that’s been imbalanced for years is hurtling back to equilibrium. On Hulk’s terms.

William Metzger and Damage Control

Tramell Tillman is always one of the best things about anything he’s in and his work as Damage Control head William Metzger is some of his best. Plausible, charming and sociopathic, Metzger is a war criminal in an undeclared war and one who, given he’s an X-Men supporting character and is at large as the movie closes, we are certain to see again.

What’s interesting is whether he’ll be running Damage Control, and the status of that organisation. What started as a well-meaning, if bureaucratic, element of the early Spider-Man movies has become an active and heavily armed threat. Across Brand New Day, Wonder Man and She-Hulk especially, Damage Control has taken up arms against the superhuman populace and done so with no checks and balances. A reckoning is surely coming, and in a world where Marvel’s creative cowardice hadn’t run so rampant, my guess is we’d see She-Hulk be a big part of that. While that seems, for now, unlikely, I’d look for Metzger and DC to be a major part of the X-Men movie that’s looking increasingly likely to be announced at D23.

Ned

It warms my heart, that Ned Leeds starts and ends the movie in a pretty great place. Jacob Batalon’s incredibly endearing ‘guy in the chair’ thrives at M.I.T. and aside from a mild energy drink addiction (SHARKFIRE!) Ned’s doing great! And it’s richly deserved too.

I wonder if that foundation is also why Ned is so vital to the movie, and what follows it. While he’s got light duty in the plot this time, the final scene all rests on two things. We’ll get to the second in a minute, but the first is Batalon’s physical acting. The moment he instinctively completes Peter’s handshake, and the gentle, happily surprised ‘…Peter’ that closes the moment is another of its most touching beats. There’s some deliberate ambiguity about just how and what Ned’s put together, but the simple fact he remembers the handshake (especially coupled with the Hulk beat mentioned earlier) suggests that the spell is much less watertight than Peter fears. Even if it isn’t, and this is Ned building something new, it’s still a literal ray of sunshine to wrap the movie on.

MJ

MJ has the weirdest, and possibly best, day of all of them. I didn’t know I needed ‘MJ and the Punisher, surprise besties’ but I really did and I’m delighted to see it. Frank’s reluctant adoption of his weird little brother’s not-quite girlfriend leads to some of the best gags in the movie and some of the most dramatic beats. MJ finding the letter is enormously powerful as is the moment she tells him that the girl in the letter isn’t her. The pain in that sequence, the sudden awareness of the gap in her life, is beautifully played and calls back to her earlier discontent and sense she was ‘waiting’ for something. The movie is peppered with beats like this, setting up the idea that the spell may be starting to fray and Zendaya plays it very well. Her final scene especially is lovely,  MJ sitting on the roof of their old school, wearing the necklace Peter got her in Far From Home. She’s smiling, slightly, but definitely. Whether or not it’s because the gates are opening or she’s realised a page has been turned isn’t clear. But like everyone else, this is something new for her and, this being MJ, she’s ready and ready on her terms.

Peter

New York’s favourite hero has, appropriately, the biggest distance to travel. The movie’s core is Peter’s search for identity and that’s key to both his finest and worst moments. He’s Spider-Man, New York’s patron saint, but he’s also got a crime-monitoring AI and works closely with the NYPD. He’s desperately concerned with making other people happy and damages himself every time he does. He’s Peter Parker. He’s Spider-Man. He’s painfully human and something much more. He’s, briefly, Maynard. He’s none of these things and all of them.

Peter acknowledging the hole at the centre of his life is terrifying for him, and it gives the movie some delightfully well-handled tonal shifts. A fight with Scorpion goes from comedic to terrifyingly brutal in seconds and the escalating crisis at Damage Control HQ is both a great action scene and a demonstration of what happens when Peter can’t get out of his own way in time. He may have a loft and a surprising (but plausible once you think about it) amount of technology on hand but he’s got no time and less luck. The mapping of his emotional turmoil onto his physical changes is especially well done, and while it feels like a return to Spider-Man’s ancient enemy, canon, here it also feels fresh, new and necessary.

Everything changes for Peter, and he steers through all of it. He embraces his new powers and the confidence that comes with that changes him completely. The tortured, denial-ridden angsty young man of the opening scenes is replaced with something much closer to the sweet boy of the earlier movies. It’s gradual, but from Widow calling out his sadness to the final conversation at May’s grave, Peter makes the choice to not be alone anymore. He’s lost everyone, and it’s an act of incredible bravery to step out into the world like he does. The beat where he and MJ are seemingly reunited is beautifully ugly, Peter finally letting his guard down and sobbing with relief before realising it’s far too late. The companion to that later, when MJ tells him the truth and then asks for a ride home, is the best physical acting we’ve ever seen Holland do. All the pain, all the horror and anger and grief, is communicated through the motion of one arm. He hates it. He’s doing it anyway, he’s Spider-Man.

But the final scene, and Holland has called this out specifically, is Peter’s true brand-new day. His best friend recognises him and Peter Parker, for maybe the second time in the entire film, smiles. He’s not alone, and he finally lets himself accept that. A new day dawns, and New York’s hero is finally back in the daylight. He’s missed it, and we’ve missed him.

 

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in cinemas now and is great – read our review here

Every other modern Spider-Man movie is streaming and available on Blu-ray.