Spider-Man’s story has always been, on some level, about the terrifying experience of growing up. One morning, you discover your body is changing and doing things you can’t quite control, and you have to figure out what to do with that. As winningly played by Tom Holland, Peter Parker has been a kind, openhearted teenager who wants to do the right thing and is horrified that his powers often put everyone he loves in the path of danger. At the end of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” he asked Doctor Strange to cast a spell that would cause the whole world — including the love of his life — to forget that he was Spider-Man, because it was the only way to save his universe from destruction.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” directed by Destin Daniel Cretton from a screenplay by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, picks up where “No Way Home” left off. Peter lives alone now that his aunt May (Marisa Tomei) has died, and MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) have gone to M.I.T. As years go by, Peter watches them from afar via Ned’s social media updates. Spider-Man is beloved by New Yorkers again, so he fights crime and chats on the phone with Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), never revealing his identity as Peter Parker. Occasionally he crosses paths with Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), with whom he has a testy relationship.
But a weird threat menaces the city, a vengeful entity seemingly jumping from person to person. It’s apparently seeking something that’s hidden at Damage Control, the organization that was created to do cleanup after the Battle of New York but turned a bit more authoritarian over time. The director of the organization, Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), explains that he’s not sure what the entity is after, but the goal of Damage Control is to harness destructive energy and turn it to something good. They’re hoping to just keep everyone safe, he says.
At the same time, Peter has his own issues with energy, because his arachnid hormone levels are spiking, giving him major headaches and the ability to shoot web fluid from his wrists instead of his suit. He wants nothing more than to tamp down his powers, to return to the abilities that he knows well. And it’s imperative he does this before the entity gets to MJ, who still doesn’t know who he is.
There is, of course, a lot more, some of which I can’t tell you; Sadie Sink has spent the last year dancing around questions about her role in this movie. “Brand New Day” is the fourth in this particular series of Spider-Man movies, and it feels like a cap on the growing-up arc that this iteration of the character has gone through. If “Homecoming” was about adolescence, and “Far From Home” was about growing through the loss of a mentor, and “No Way Home” was about taking responsibility for your actions (and also, college applications), then this is, in part, about deciding to accept your adult powers, even when they scare you.
It is not, unfortunately, nearly as fun as the previous few films, though that may just come with the territory. Much of the lighthearted comedy that made the other movies so amusing is gone, largely because Peter’s relationship to Ned and MJ has changed drastically, which means the bantering chemistry between Holland, Batalon and especially Zendaya is mostly absent. In its place is an emotional heaviness, which compounds in some of the film’s other plot threads. (Thankfully, Florence Pugh shows up a few times as Yelena Belova, and she is a pure delight.)
The film is also bogged down by the same thing that has caused late-stage Marvel Cinematic Universe films to sag: the weight of tying all of the stories together. For instance, if you’re not a walking encyclopedia of M.C.U. lore — or didn’t watch “Daredevil” Season 2 and “Daredevil: Born Again” Season 1 and the two-season “Punisher” TV show and the “Punisher: One Last Kill” Marvel TV special — you might not know who Frank Castle is or why he and Peter know each other, which seems like an awful lot to expect of your audience.
Spider-Man has been tied into the M.C.U. since he appeared in “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), thanks to a deal between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Walt Disney Studios (which owns Marvel Studios), and he’s in several “Avengers” movies. Although other M.C.U. characters crop up in the stand-alone Spider-Man movies, sometimes with substantial roles, the films have still mostly felt like character-driven features about Peter and his friends. Even “No Way Home,” with its many winking ties to other movies, was mostly about various generations of Spider-Mans (Spiders-Men?), not really the M.C.U.’s main arc.
This movie feels as if it’s carrying more franchise weight on its shoulders, and that leaves less room for emotional weight. It’s more scattered as a result, and while hardcore M.C.U. fans might be pleased, the rest of us are, demonstrably, getting kind of tired of having to do our homework.
Nothing can erase the enjoyment of witnessing Holland’s performance, which remains winsome and wonderfully kinetic even if you know that’s got to be a computer-generated Spidey a lot of the time. As he’s grown up onscreen, his audience has grown up with him. The question this film asks is one that has cropped up over and over throughout comic book cinema: What do we do with our specialness? For the most part, Peter has chosen to stay local and hidden, to undo the damage done when people know his powers. But now he has to either accept who he is and let himself be known again, or stay in the shadows and take the clean slate promised by the title.
Similarly, a slice of his audience has gone from teen to new adult in a world where creative powers — especially exceptional ones — are seen as something that might be taken from you and put to profitable use. Peter even considers whether there might be a way to create a device that puts everyone on a level playing field, and that doesn’t seem coincidental. If movies subconsciously tap the anxieties of their audiences, maybe this one is about the terrifying experience of growing up and discovering that everyone sees what makes you special and wants it for themselves.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Rated PG-13 for the usual cartoonish violence and sad feelings. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters.
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