Spider-Man: Brand New Day - Less Multiverse, More Movie

Hollywood spent two decades trying to improve Spider-Man.

Smarter suits.

Bigger villains.

Bigger universes.

Apparently nobody at Marvel considered the possibility that Stan Lee had already figured him out.

BeforeSpider-Man ever swung across movie screens, he lived in my brother’s bedroom.  Of every superhero in the Marvel Universe, Peter Parker was the one my brother connected with most.  He’d save his allowance, make the pilgrimage to Unknown Worlds and come home carrying a stack of Spider-Man comics tucked under his arm like treasure.  Every now and then he’d hand one down to me, although I was always a Spider-Ham girl.

Looking back, I don’t think he loved Spider-Man because he had the coolest powers.  The Hulk could flatten a city.  The X-Men had enough abilities to require a spreadsheet.  He loved Peter Parker because he felt real.  Peter worried about homework, money and doing the right thing even when it made his life harder.

Then came 2002…Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.  Today people complain if a trailer buffers for five seconds.  In 2002, we waited 30 minutes.  It was worth every second.  When the trailer finally loaded, we didn’t say a word.  Spider-Man swung across the New York skyline and for the first time, the character my brother had imagined for years existed in front of us.  We weren’t watching a superhero come to life.  We were watching Peter Parker.

Ask someone in their fifties who their Spider-Man is and they’ll probably say Nicholas Hammond.  Ask a teenager and they’ll swear by Tom Holland.  Ask me, and I’ll always point to Tobey Maguire.

Spider-Man isn’t one character.

He’s the hero who arrives at exactly the right moment in your life.

Tobey remains mine because he was perfectly awkward, earnest and always trying his best while wondering whether he could still afford pizza for dinner.

The Holland films drifted away from that idea.  Spider-Man stopped feeling like the kid from Queens and became Iron Man’s sidekick.  Mary Jane transformed into someone else.  Aunt May somehow became the most glamorous woman in Queens.  And Ned…. Who is Ned again?  I remembered the manager at Joes’ Pizza from Spider-Man 2 better than I remembered Ned.  Ironically, the loudest cheers in Spider-Man: No Way Home weren’t for Tom Holland.  They were for Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield walking through Doctor Strange’s portals.

People called it nostalgia.

I call it Marvel accidentally reminding everyone what they’d been missing.

Hollywood spent twenty years trying to revamp Spider-Man.

Stan Lee knew the original was enough.  Then Marvel did something unexpected.

Marvel remembered Sam Raimi’s homework.  Brand New Day strips away the noise.  Most superhero movies mistake bigger for better.  Marvel’s answer to every problem was to add another universe.  BrandNew Day becomes stronger by becoming smaller.  The billion-dollar gadgets and endless attempts to make Peter Parker larger than life quietly fade into the background.  He’s back in the quintessential red-and-blue suit, solving city problems instead of multiversal ones.

For the first time, Tom Holland fully embraces Peter Parker’s quick wit and friendly-neighbourhood sarcasm instead of feeling like another recruit in the Avengers internship program.  He’s no longer jetting around Europe on a school trip, because nothing says “friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man” like a summer vacation in Prague.  He’s exactly where Spider-Man belongs, protecting New York.  Even the action remembers Peter Parker.  Several shots linger just long enough to recreate poses that are lifted straight from the comic books.  The villain works as well because the conflict grows out of character rather than spectacle.  By the end, Brand New Day isn’t trying to outdo every Spider-Man movie.  It’s trying to remember why we loved Spider-Man in the first place.

Brand New Day understands that Spider-Man was never supposed to be the biggest hero in the room.  He was supposed to be the most recognizable. That’s what makes this movie work.  It’s exciting, funny and surprisingly heartfelt.  Even its imagery quietly nods to Raimi, proving some things don’t need reinventing.

Years ago I was lucky enough to meet Stan Lee and receive his autograph.  I think he understood that superheroes were extraordinary, the people underneath the masks weren’t.  In my mind, I can still picture my brother lying across his bed, completely absorbed in another Spider-Man comic, carefully turning each page before sliding it into a plastic sleeve and placing it inside his Sears wooden chest.  He wasn’t protecting a superhero.  He was protecting Peter Parker.

Maybe that’s why Spider-Man has endured for more than sixty years.  The costume changes.

Peter Parker doesn’t.