Holding on by a thread … Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Photograph: Sony Pictures View image in fullscreen Holding on by a thread … Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Photograph: Sony Pictures Now you've seen it Film Spider-Man: Brand New Day: new characters, new flaws, new tech and brain-exploding future consequences – discuss with spoilers Now you’ve seen the new Spidey, let’s talk about new baddies (or are they goodies?), X-Men alumni, painful relationships and a potential Spidey-pig
This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Prefer the Guardian on Google T here was a danger that Spider-Man: Brand New Day might amount to little more than a palate cleanser between the multiversal excesses of No Way Home and the all-star chaos of Avengers: Doomsday . Why not just keep it small: a more grounded tale of New York crime-fighting, to keep the Marvel machine rolling before the inevitable return of world-ending stakes? Instead, the studio, once again in partnership with Spider-Man rights holder Sony, has produced a gamechanging comic book epic whose effects will continue being felt for years to come.
The film’s biggest twist is significant enough on its own, but Brand New Day keeps widening the implications long after the initial shock has started to wear off. Characters who seemed to exist for one purpose gradually reveal another. Throwaway conversations acquire unexpected significance. New gadgets, strange abilities and apparently routine subplots all hint at much broader shifts taking place beneath the familiar web-slinging adventure. By the time the credits have rolled, the film has answered some longstanding questions, raised several more, and left audiences with a surprisingly clear idea of where the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) could be heading next.
So if you walked out of the cinema this weekend wondering why certain revelations felt so important, what some seemingly innocuous scenes were really setting up, or whether one particular post-credit tease might have enormous implications for the years ahead, here is what the film may have been trying to tell us.
View image in fullscreen Peter Parker (Tom Holland) peers through a web in Spider-Man: Brand New Day Photograph: CTMG/PA The Peter Parker we re-encounter at the beginning of Brand New Day is in a bad place. Yes, he has locked up enough New York City supervillains to recreate the Sinister Six several times over, but he lives a lonely existence without his dear departed Aunt May, his girlfriend MJ or his best friend, Ned, and the last two don’t even remember who he is thanks to Doctor Strange’s spell at the tail end of No Way Home . As if loneliness weren’t awful enough, Spidey also finds himself struggling to control strange new powers: the organic web shooters could be useful if they can be controlled but the hypersensitive Spider-sense is a problem, while all that extra arachnid aggression only serves to increase the chances of our friendly neighbourhood hero accidentally taking down innocent bystanders. The question remains whether the hero really is falling apart or just evolving into something new.
Just when Spidey is at his weakest, he is faced with an antagonist whose powers far outstrip those of the street-level crims he has been swatting away. At first, Sadie Sink appears to be portraying a common-or-garden body-swapping baddie who is out to hurt MJ if Parker doesn’t do what she says. But it quickly emerges, in one of the m…