Brand New Spider

I guess time has done nothing to dull the public's appetite for Spider-Man: the new movie, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, has scored nearly a billion dollars worldwide in its opening weekend. It's a good movie, not as good as Homecoming, which is still the best film of Tom Holland's run, but good.

For a long time, it seemed like MCU movies were allergic to the secret identity. Spider-Man was the only MCU character who retained that traditional aspect of the superhero comic, and then they took it away from him. It's nice to see Brand New Day really runs with the secret identity concept now that it's been restored to the character via supernatural means. He wears his mask a lot more than usual in these live action movies, even having full dialogue scenes. Combined with the fact that Holland wears the most comics accurate costume in this film, I sometimes had the feeling I was watching a luchador movie. But I liked that. I wonder if that helps the movie, too, in countries like Mexico where masked heroes are more embedded in the culture.

Jon Bernthal is kind of a modern Telly Savalas. He chews scenery like crazy but there's something undeniably charming about his affectation. The unexpected friendship between Punisher and Spider-Man is amusing and surprisingly sweet though I don't know if this Punisher quite feels like the same man from the old Netflix series.

Speaking of Netflix, Sadie Sink's in this movie as a secret character. I won't spoil it for you if you've somehow managed to avoid spoilers but I will say she looks amazing. Her eyes seem like they've doubled in size since Stranger Things. Hopefully this isn't because she got a bunch of fat sucked out of her face and is instead the work of a talented makeup team.

The movie's villain is a secret. The filmmakers chose to make the villain a familiar Marvel character but with totally different motives and slightly different powers, resembling the character in physical appearance and name only. I thought this was a bad idea. Since the new powers were those of Killgrave, the character played by David Tennant on Jessica Jones, I wondered why they didn't just have Killgrave be the villain. David Tennant would've been a great presence in the film.

I wish there'd been more time the Hulk in this movie but critics who say this movie is overstuffed have a fair point. What this movie made clear is that Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is long overdo for his own movie. Thor: Ragnarok kind of cheated and gave him one. If Disney can't get the rights to make a standalone Hulk movie, they should consider another Ragnarok and make another two hander with the Hulk and someone else.

In addition to all the compositions meant to resemble classic comic covers throughout the film, I felt like director Destin Daniel Cretton was trying to outdo every previous, awesome shot of Spider-Man swinging through New York. He gives them a run for their money. I appreciated the ambition in any case.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now in theatres.