🍿 Popcorn: The Surface Pleasures
Kids are gonna love it.
Spidey fans are gonna love it.
Tom Holland enthusiasts are gonna super love it.
Admirers crushing on Jon Bernthal are gonna swoontastically love it.
Critics? Mmm, critics might take a beat. And just enjoy it.
Peter Parker (Holland) is in his twenties, square in the aftermath of No Way Home, after (spoiler alert) his dearest friends have been wiped clean of their memories of him in the interest of keeping them safe.
He is lonely, isolated, hyperfocused on doing his Spidey thing while keeping his identity hidden and the world at arm’s length.
When a mysterious entity emerges that can hop unrestricted from person to person à la Fallen, Spider-Man is faced with an adversary the likes of which he’s never known and one that has access to him in ways he’d never imagined. Namely, his Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya).
Simultaneously, he undergoes a kind of later-life superhero puberty and his powers darken and become unpredictable and at this inopportune time… uncontrollable.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a movie about the sanctity of memory. But for all its commentary on the glories and consequences of remembering, it pays little mind to the memory of the audience.
Didn’t this same premise propel the last one too? Didn’t we do this already?
The multiverse and all its marvelous properties are but a menace to the memory-challenged. No worries. There are attempts to keep us oriented. Little reminders. Tiny flashbacks.
And still they keep us present.
They reconnect us with first name Hulk, last name Smash (Mark Ruffalo). They give us Spidey in his element: swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper and running along NYC sidewalks and into bodegas.
And there’s that fire mystery yet to be solved. Who is this monster? What is it? What havoc will it wreak and how many will Spidey have to save? Oh, the scale of the mayhem.
The only one Spidey can rely on as he gets his arachnid hide handed to him is The Punisher (Jon Bernthal). Let him show up in every movie with that Bernthal suave and that Frank Castle big unc energy. Together, they might get this enigma.
Then the reveal happens and it’s… coo.
The movie starts as horror.
It ends as YA fantasy.
The opening mystery is skin-crawly creepy. This unseen force duplicates the kind of supernatural unease that made Fallen so unnerving.
Then it’s not.
The movie exchanges mystery for mythology. The creeping uncertainty of not knowing who or what is stalking Peter proves far more exciting than the answer. Once the curtain is pulled back, the film never discovers another question equally compelling.
After that dun-dun-duuunnn reveal, it’s a fun, watchable movie that could have been magic but instead settles for good.
What saves it, besides the things that keep Spidey movies and shows evercool, the action, the suit, the quips, his big innocent heart, is swinging alongside him as he matures.
🔥 Pyres: The Fire Beneath
He’s watched Ned and MJ live their cool college years through reels and carousels while he’s stuck in the same New York City crime and neighborhood-hero song and dance. This is Spidey’s time to grow up. To become a man.
With great surrender comes great responsibility.
Who doesn’t do all they can to avoid pain? To experience ease and comfort. To soothe after fracture. The universal truth is that there is no gain without pain.
Not the kind of pain that injures, cripples or wounds. No, this is the pain that sharpens. Much of our power, of our ascension, comes from woe, from ache. It might hurt. It might be daunting. It might be humiliating. But through pain we are metamorphosed into the most surprising version of ourselves.
Strong.
Heightened.
Open.
Rather than defeating another wounded soul, Peter chooses to trust one.
Peter Parker and Spider-Man undergo parallel transformations. Peter’s is emotional. Spider-Man’s is evolutionary. Only through surrender, pain and growth can he trust his authority, trust himself enough to lay himself bare to someone else.
He enters trials and tribulations that adulthood requires. Spider-Man molts. Again.
The climax reaches for communion instead of conquest, which is exactly the right instinct. It asks Peter not to overpower another soul but to open his own. It’s a beautiful idea. The relationship simply hasn’t been given enough time to carry the emotional voltage the moment requires.
The idea lands. The meaning almost does.
Where the significance has been earned is when he goes inward and lets himself out. Our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man leaps from isolating himself. He starts afraid of his own power and what might happen to those he loves. Then he gets over his Empire State of Emotion. First he distrusts his power. Then he becomes fluent in it. The battle obeys him.
Ability becomes stewardship.
🕷️ Popcorn + Pyres Judgment
For all its coasting, it redeems itself with the thoughtfulness of that climactic battle’s choreo. It is the kind of majestic worthy of Spider-Man. A film for the full family that has this deep thematic sunshine in its heart can only end in a bright explosion of unparalleled excitement. The energy in the action post-surrender makes the entire movie worth it.
Because through it, the spider becomes a man.