Being different from the mainstream is never an easy road to walk.
Oh, it has its wonders and delights, and as a gay man who’s spent much of my life on society’s margins, I know well of what I speak, and you value the sense of liberated perspective and buoyant empathy it offers you, but you can often feel lonely.
You may see and know people and have contact with the world around you and yet, you can still feel as if you are wildly and irretrievably alone, one person against the tide of life, a lone warrior fighting the battles that many others fight with a sense of shared purpose and companionship.
One person who knows exactly what that feels like is the titular protagonist of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Peter Parker, who since the mass amnesia event at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home where Doctor Strange wiped everyone’s memories of the web-slinging youthful superhero to protect him, has been very much alone in an almost soul-destroying way.
Oh, he continues to fight crime, in close contact with mayor Sheila Rivera (Zabryna Guevara), and he does so with typical self-sacrificing gusto and enthusiasm, but he is carrying a huge emotional load, robbed of his love M.J. (Zendaya), his bestie Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his beloved Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, who sadly ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- died in No Way Home).
The only sort-of friends he has are the mayor, although she only knows the superhero persona, not Parker himself; even so, their bond is tight) and Frank Castle/Punisher (Jon Bernthal) who, after great loss and pain, has shut himself off from the world, his link, at first, with Parker, one of obligation rather than actual friendship.
Parker thinks he has no choice but to carry on alone forever, but as Spider-Man: Brand New Day unfurls its emotional resonant and beautifully nuanced storyline, easily the most sophisticated of the modern slate of Spidey films, it becomes clear that loneliness and his role in the world need not be as closely linked as they currently are.
While there are some biff, bang, boom moments and good vs. evil battles, pretty much de rigueur even for the emotionally in touch of Marvel efforts, not even they are as obvious as they appear, all of them carrying strong subtexts of connection, identity and loss.
Take the appearance of the Hulk aka Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) who is in what seems like an eternal torment between his everyday uni professor self and his furious, giant green alter ego, a warring dichotomy which is used by the Big Bad of the piece ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- a psychically manipulative mutant, Jean Grey, played with heartbreaking fury and vulnerability by Sadie Sink.
She jumps from person to person controlling them with what appears to be careless cruelty but what is actually a raging form of grief at the loss of someone desperately close to her, and while it appears that Spider-Man is up against some sort of darkly supernatural foe, and she is certainly that in some sense at first, he is actually fighting the same sort of loss that is slowly corroding him.
And which is causing his arachnid self to mutate in ways that disrupt who Parker is as Spider-Man, his crime fighting activities and his fractured sense of self.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in many ways a deeply thoughtful film, one which might look like a typical superhero film on the surface, but which goes deep into the ways in which social isolation can warp and twists you if you let it.
It makes the cogent point that if you someone who is different and who is at war with themselves, at war with your difference that society keeps telling you is wrong, a liability, a broken and distasteful thing, you will never be at peace until you truly accept yourself.
But that, of course, is far from an easy thing to do as Spider-Man: Brand New Day illustrates again and again in graphically, action-intense scenes that resonate with the pain of lack of self-acceptance and the desperate sense of isolation and lack of peace that engenders.
The wonder of the screenplay by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers and the inspired, empathetic direction of Destin Daniel Cretton (he also directed the affectingly immersive Marvel outlier, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) is that it seamlessly brings together the action and the deep, dark moments of the soul so that there is no question at any point in the film that they belong together.
In fact, so expertly does the action and the intense emotionality of self-discovery weave together that you wish more Marvel films would have the sort of grounded, real emotion that Spider-Man: Brand New Day has in spades.
While many Marvel movies try to wear their heart very much on their sleeve, very actually manage it with any level of sincerity; Spider-Man: Brand New Day however manages with flawless aplomb, the stellar, emotionally in-touch writing brought affectingly to rich and multi-layered life by Tom Holland who is, in this reviewer’s opinion the best Spider-Man of the current modern cinematic efforts.
You will likely walk into Spider-Man: Brand New Day knowing that there is real pain being felt by Peter over his spell-induced very lonely place in the world, and much of the story’s emotional heft comes from Peter desperately trying to reforge those lost connections and make new ones (that last element is integral to the genuinely moving final act) and wondering if he will ever feel the sense of connection that once made his life so vibrantly alive.
At its heart, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day may look like the usual superhero fare, it’s far from that, a superior, intensely moving offering which is cleaning up at the box office because it insightfully explores what it means to be at war with your difference and the disconnection it causes within and without, and how the only forward, regardless of who you may think your enemy is, is to accept yourself, forge close bonds with those around you and realise that no person is or will ever be an island.