My Take on Spider-Man: Brand New Day

I left the theater impressed by the visuals and cinematography. The movie took me through the full range of emotions: happiness, sadness, tears, and frustration. And yet, I left feeling kind of empty. Despite everything it did right, I wasn’t blown away.

What I loved

Punisher can do no wrong in my eyes. I went into this movie worried they would soften his character, the way so many male characters seem to get these days. Thankfully, he’s still the same hardcore guy, carrying all his trauma and remaining firmly in anti-hero territory. He’s not just a hero with a Punisher skull slapped on his chest for branding.

The visuals were incredible. The first-person shots from inside Spider-Man’s suit, the attention to detail, and the seamless transitions between CGI and practical effects all looked fantastic.

The performances were excellent across the board. Jean’s actress was especially impressive whenever she switched between possessing different people. Those scenes were a real highlight. Metzger was great, too. The entire cast delivered.

I also liked the decision to have MJ genuinely forget Peter. When she tells him outright that she doesn’t love him because she doesn’t know him, it makes the consequences of his choice to erase himself from her memory feel real. They don’t just fall back into each other’s arms because of feelings left over from their past. Peter has to live with what he gave up.

The runtime didn’t feel padded, either. The movie took its time explaining things without making the experience feel unnecessarily long. I definitely felt like I got my money’s worth.

What didn’t work for me

The biggest issue for me was Jean Grey’s character development. The movie gives us some of her backstory: she’s searching for her sister, Sara, who was taken by the Department of Damage Control for experiments. Metzger, the head of DODC, lies to both Jean and Spider-Man about what happened to Sara.

That’s all interesting, but I wanted more time to get to know Jean before things escalated. I’m used to older Marvel movies taking their time developing their villains, and this one felt rushed. Jean goes from being a scared kid with powers to putting all of New York under a telepathic hex in what feels like a very short time.

Compare that to Wanda. We’d already spent several movies getting to know her before WandaVision, so when she puts an entire town under a hex, we understand how she got there. We’ve seen her power, her grief, and her struggles build over time. With Jean, that escalation happens so quickly that it doesn’t have the same impact.

I’m also getting tired of the whole “talk the villain down” ending. After all the fighting, it comes down to a heartfelt speech, a hug, or some kind of mental intervention that calms the villain down instead of delivering a more satisfying resolution. It works here, but I’ve seen this same formula too many times. Thunderbolts did it, too. Why spend the entire movie building toward a final confrontation if everything gets resolved by talking at the last second?

And then there’s the post-credits scene, which honestly lost me. Ned’s tracker pulls back from our Earth, passes the Moon, and picks up a Spider-Man signal somewhere else, possibly in another universe.

But how does that work? Does every universe have its own Spider-Man tracker? Whose tracker is Ned even using? Is it somehow tracking our Peter across universes, or is it picking up a completely different Spider-Man in another universe?

The scene doesn’t explain any of this. I get that post-credits scenes are meant to set up future stories, but a tease should still make some kind of sense on its own. Here, it just left me confused.