Spider-Man: Brand New Day - Brand New Trilogy

SPOILERS AHEAD!! BE WARNED!!!

The road to get Spidey to the big screen in the MCU was not an easy one. There were times the Home trilogy almost couldn't be completed due to rights. Yet, here we are. The beginning of a new group of Spider-Man movies.

Once the Infinity Saga ended with Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home, a new Saga was introduced...The Multiverse Saga. It' uh...not been great. You can partially blame the pandemic for that, but Marvel Studios had a lot to blame as well. They decided to focus harder on TV shows to build up the universe when they knew movies wouldn't do well. For the most part, they were okay. WandaVision and Loki kicked it off and were pretty great. Wanda's show had a new decade of TV interwoven with a complex story about grief. Loki's was about redemption and setting up what was supposed to be our new villain of the Saga.

As time went by, we were oversaturated with too many shows, many of which were low quality. The movies were more miss than hit. Fans showed up, but divided a lot of them. Over the last couple years Marvel movies started to find their footing again as they changed course.

Kang actor, Jonathan Majors, ran into some legal troubles around the time Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania came out. The Multiverse Saga continued, but was changed to have Dr. Doom come in to be the main antagonist.

The 20th Century Fox universe got their bow with Deadpool and Wolverine. The ragtag team Thunderbolts surprised everyone with a story about mental health. It was one of my favorites of that year. The final movie to come out before Spider-Man swung into theaters was Fantastic Four: First Steps. The famous family of heroes reside on another earth to help usher in...Doomsday.

But first, we have our favorite wall crawler to bridge the worlds.

Brand New Day shows us a new Spider-Man, a more friendly neighborhood version. Taking place four years after the spell that made the world forget about Peter Parker, Peter is in full Spider-Man mode. We get to see him face two of the members of his rouges gallery: Tombstone and Scorpion.

The spell worked just as it should have, the world forgot Peter was Spider-Man and the city loves him. He's working well with the police. He's the hero the city needs and deserves...but there's something missing. What made the other movies great was the mix of Peter's normal life with keeping his identity as Spider-Man. Here, he's more Spider than human. He almost never takes the mask off.

Which is fine in a galaxy far far away...but here, Peter is isolated from the world. His friends, who just spent four years at MIT, return to NYC and he keeps his distance. It's sad because he doesn't really have anyone. He's alone and cutoff from the world. His only family is gone and his friends have moved on without him (mostly cause they don't know him). He spends his days and nights fighting crime, but not really living in the world.

The only people who know him, his allies, only know him as Spider-Man. There's a scene where he's with Yelena in a bathhouse, he refuses to take his mask off. Another, he's having breakfast on Punisher's hidden boat base...doesn't take the mask off to even drink a cup of coffee. It's all intentional to show how far removed from the world he used to be a part of.

A new villain who can possess people arrives and our hero has to rely on more people to help Damage Control (Introduced in Homecoming and Ms. Marvel series) find the person and take them down. Which in itself sets up future films, the spoiler is out, and took in almost a billion dollars, it's Jean Grey played by Sadie Sink. Damage Control took her sister and she's trying to break into their base to find her.

Does she have the right intentions? Absolutely. Does she go about it the right way? Absolutely not. Thing is, her and Peter aren't all that different. Both characters are alone in the world and can't ask for help.

While all this is going on, Peter is changing. The spider DNA is starting to overtake the human side. He's becoming more spider than human. So, he's working to find a way to suppress it from overtaking him after he hurts people while that part of him was in charge.

We get a lot of great scenes and team-ups in this one. You wouldn't think that Spidey and Punisher would be the dynamic you want to see more of but, dangit, I wanted to see more. I especially wanted a running gag of Peter webbing Frank's mouth every time he tried to drop and F-bomb. Frank was a good ally for Peter; he provided protection for MJ when Peter asked, gave him 'friendly' advice to learn to take off the mask and let more people in (surprising from him, I know).

Bruce is teaching at Empire State University, setting up Peter goes to college maybe, as a college professor. Pete goes to talk to him for help on his mutant evolution problem. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time, Jean unleashes Berserker Hulk and the duo of Spidey and Punisher taking him on is fun. Would have loved if Peter had told Hulk that "the sun's getting real low".

Peter also put himself in Ned and MJ's lives. It started out by just checking up on them, seeing if they were okay. Ned's Spider-Man's biggest fan and even developed a tracking app. MJ is dating a new guy, but the pull to his friends can't be ignored, especially when MJ is in danger.

The film focuses on Peter's metamorphosis and part of me wonders if they're going to go Man-Spider route like they did in the cartoon, but they seemed to have helped Peter get a beat on his changes and power within. While its obviously doing a slow build to the X-Men universe coming into their world in December, the Jean Grey storyline wasn't forced and it was just as important to Peter's growth as it was to hers.

The MCU is changing. You could say its...evolving.

Doomsday is on deck and it's going to be a huge change to the entire universe. Given how it started, it looks as though we are ending this saga on the right foot.

Brand New Day does it part to ease the transition and also plant a seed for it, but without taking the attention from what's supposed to be a Spider-Man story. Peter is offically going from a teenage boy into a man. A true hero in his own right and this film, as I keep refrencing and saying in varoius ways, transitioning into the hero we all know and love. He's still got some more growth to go through before he truly becomes the friendly neighborhood hero that's been popular for decades.

This is one to see in theaters and I'm psyched to see what's next, mostly because I'm a nerdy guy and love these movies. The journey continues in December.

4/5