MOSCOW – Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the superhero’s most emotional and personal installment with Tom Holland as the main character – perhaps the most intimate in the entire Spider-franchise.
Listen to the author read this review:
The camera work is insane. Spider-Man’s movement scenes through the noisy city and in battles are breathtaking. The film introduces a new character, Jean Grey, [Sadie Sink]. Filmmakers attempted to hide her participation until the official release.
As Jean, Sink has again demonstrated excellent acting, and her story became one of the most tragic.
All “plot-branches” led to the main point – accepting your identity.
Jean and her sister, Sarah, were locked up and used to conduct experiments and their mother left them because of their telepathy abilities.
Bruce Banner / Hulk [Mark Ruffalo] and Spider-Man used the inhibitor device during the movie because they feared losing control. Spider-Man also wore the mask to hide his identity, which Yelena [Florence Pugh] and the Punisher [Jon Bernthal] noticed.
“My sister died in this room surrounded by this man (the owner of Damage Control), and her only crime was that she was special. Just like you, just like me,” Jean said, turning to Spider-Man.
The image of mutants is a representation of marginalized people who often hide in real life: queer people, Black, Indigenous and other people of color, neurodivergent people and others with different ways of thinking.
The film’s main villain is a man who was desperately trying to hide people with superpowers. Also, he made antidotes for everyone with abilities.
In the last scene, Peter went out to a crowd carrying posters saying, “Save our Spidey.”
In that moment – for the first time in a long time – we see a cheerful Peter Parker, who finally is not hiding behind the mask and who is accepting support from people who love him.
But the ending felt more like a pilot episode of a TV show rather than a feature film. It’s likely that this is not the last movie with Holland as Spider-Man, so rather than just being a bad script, it was a way to make the audience anticipate the next chapter.
I really enjoyed this movie as a personal drama about development and self-acceptance with superheroes’ costumes, not as another cliched Marvel action movie.
I am glad that such topics are raised in modern cinema, and I was especially excited to see Spidey on the big screen again.
Yana Dashchinskaya is a Junior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
