Film Review: Spiderman. Brand New Day

OK, I saw the new Spider-Man film, which was my first, although I may have seen the very first one when he became Spider-Man, which must have been like 20 years ago.

Before I went, I went to Celeste, my AI, and asked her what I needed to know to be able to see the film without being totally out of it. And she gave me a wonderful assessment, which is at the bottom of this review.

So I did my homework.

Should you go?

I sure can’t find a reason.

First of all, it’s fun to watch him fly through the air.

Once.

Twice gives you time to study it a little more.

But by the third time you get how it works. He throws out a web, the web sticks to something, and then he flies through the air with the greatest of ease.

Two and a half hours later?

I really didn’t think I could take another flyby.

Then I came home and read the reviews.

I shake my head in shock and awe.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day has a 90 percent rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score is 98 percent. Critics are calling it mature. Emotional. Soulful. Heartfelt. One critic described it as a movie about loneliness and the struggle to be an adult. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus praises its “mature emotional stakes” and Tom Holland’s “soulful performance.” Rotten Tomatoes

And this is where the whole thing became much more interesting to me.

Because apparently the reviewers and I watched exactly the same movie. We just didn’t see the same things. They saw spectacular action sequences. I saw Spider-Man throw out a web, attach himself to something and fly through the air.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The first time, fabulous. The second time, I watched more carefully to see how it worked. By the third time, I understood the technology.

Apparently everyone else wanted another two hours of it.

They saw emotional depth and vulnerability.

I saw sentimentality.

And I think there’s a difference.

Vulnerability makes me feel something because I believe what a character is going through.

Sentimentality keeps reminding me that I’m supposed to feel something.

Peter is lonely. Peter sacrifices. Peter loves. Peter hurts. Peter can’t have the girl. Peter saves everybody but can’t save himself from being alone.

I get it.

The movie makes sure I get it.

Again and again.

And maybe that’s part of why the whole thing didn’t work for me. The action is excessive, but so is the emotion. Neither is allowed simply to land. Everything has to be bigger, louder, sadder, more dangerous, more meaningful.

Even Spider-Man’s vulnerability has special effects.

Interestingly, not every critic bought it. Variety called the movie more self-serious than emotionally involving, and another critic dismissed it as sentimental rehash. So apparently I’m not entirely alone.

They saw life lessons. I saw them too. I think the plot is supposed to be filled with them.

It’s always better not to have to do everything alone. Being the savior of so many people is a very lonely life. Bad people usually have reasons for being bad. Something in their history made them angry.

But I didn’t think any of that was particularly profound.

They saw complicated villains. I saw revenge.

Somebody did something to me. Somebody hurt me. Somebody humiliated me. Somebody took something from me.

And now somebody is going to pay.

I’ve just been reading about school shootings, and grievance comes up over and over again. We don’t always know exactly what it was because quite often the perpetrator is killed during the event. But when investigators have been able to interview them or read what they’ve left behind, anger and grievance are so often sitting there.

Someone did them wrong.

And now someone is going to pay. Which made me think about one of my favorite scenes from The West Wing.

President Bartlet is considering a military response. He’s looking at bombing a manufacturing site that has a night shift on it, basically people cleaning the place, and they will be killed.

Bartlet asks his generals what the virtue is in a proportional response.

Finally, the head honcho with the most brass hanging off his shoulders gives him the answer.

There is no virtue in a proportional response.

And that kept running through my head while I watched Spider-Man.

There’s no virtue in this movie. There’s a lot of violence. And there’s so much action your head could be spinning. But virtue?

I don’t see it.

They saw enormous emotional stakes in Peter and MJ. I saw Zendaya looking at her real-life husband, a.k.a. the most recent Spider-Man, and essentially saying, I don’t know you. How can I love you?

But every single person watching, including me, absolutely thinks she can love him and will love him. Of course, that has nothing to do with the reality of the movie, so what the hell are we doing here?

They saw Tom Holland’s soulful Spider-Man.

The camera loves some Zendaya, and Spider-Man is certainly sensitive and appealing.

But I surely don’t see him as having the muscular acumen to do the things he does.

And for sure he was killed one million times during the first 40 minutes just by bumping into things at 100 miles an hour, which we all know would kill you instantly.

Yes, yes. I know.

He’s Spider-Man. But apparently even my suspension of disbelief has limits. And then there were my own critics.

I went with a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old, and their reviews were quite different from mine.

They loved it.

When I asked the younger of the two why she was so enamored, she responded immediately.

“It had so much action!”

There you have it.

And maybe she explained not only the movie but what happened at the box office.

Because then I looked at the numbers.

I shake my head in shock and awe.

The Odyssey has now made about $1.35 billion worldwide. Let’s be clear. That is an astonishing success. It just became the highest-grossing R-rated movie in history.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day?

More than $2 billion.

It didn’t beat The Odyssey.

It eviscerated it.

Spider-Man passed $2 billion in roughly three weeks. It became only the eighth film ever to cross that line and the second-fastest film ever to do it.

Think about that.

I walked out of The Odyssey thinking about war and power and loyalty and marriage and home and what happens to human beings when they spend years trying to get back to the life they left behind.

I think it will win Best Picture.

I walked out of Spider-Man thinking I couldn’t watch that web come out of his wrist one more time.

And Spider-Man eviscerated The Odyssey at the box office. By roughly $650 to $700 million and counting. And maybe that is the most interesting thing about Spider-Man to me.

Not whether I liked it. Not whether the critics are right and I’m wrong. Not even whether a 10-year-old understands Spider-Man better than I ever will. It’s what the difference between those two movies says about what we want from movies now.

Do we really need this much action to be entertained?

More movement. More violence. More noise. More peril. Another explosion. Another body flying through the air. Another web. Another rescue.

And then more. The critics call it spectacle. I call it exhausting.

They call it emotionally resonant. I call it sentimental.

They call Spider-Man vulnerable. I think the movie works awfully hard to make sure I know he’s vulnerable.

And more than $2 billion worth of ticket buyers apparently saw what the critics saw.

The 10-year-old sitting next to me certainly did. “It had so much action!” She meant that as the highest possible compliment. I heard it and wondered if it might be the problem.

Two and a half hours.

Nope. I don’t get it.

And I certainly wouldn’t buy any sort of little plastic thing in the shape of a Spider-Man.

I think his mask is really ugly.

I shake my head in shock and awe.

***************************************

And now, for anyone else who hasn’t spent the last 20-plus years keeping track of Spider-Man, here is what Celeste told me I needed to know before I went.

You do not need to watch eight Spider-Man movies before you go. Here is everything you need, without spoiling Brand New Day.

Peter Parker is Spider-Man

Peter Parker, played by Tom Holland, was bitten by a radioactive spider as a teenager. He can climb walls, has extraordinary strength and agility, and senses danger before it happens. He designed his own web-shooters.

He is not invincible. His defining quality is that he keeps trying to save people even when doing so destroys his own life.

This is one Spider-Man universe among several

Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire played earlier versions of Peter Parker. They appeared with Holland in the last movie because the different universes temporarily collided. You do not need to know their histories.

The people who matter

• MJ, played by Zendaya, was Peter’s girlfriend. She knew he was Spider-Man.

• Ned was Peter’s best friend and partner in crime-fighting.

• Aunt May raised Peter. She was killed in the previous movie.

• Tony Stark, or Iron Man, became Peter’s mentor and father figure. He also died, saving the universe.

• Doctor Strange is a sorcerer who can manipulate reality. His spell created Peter’s current predicament.

The single most important thing

At the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the universe was breaking apart because everyone knew Peter Parker was Spider-Man.

The only way to save it was for Doctor Strange to cast a spell making everyone forget Peter Parker entirely.

Not merely forget that he is Spider-Man.

Forget that Peter Parker ever existed.

MJ no longer remembers loving him. Ned no longer remembers being his best friend. Peter visits MJ intending to explain everything, sees that she is safe and rebuilding her life, and decides not to burden her with the truth.

So when Brand New Day begins, Peter is profoundly alone. Spider-Man still exists publicly, but Peter Parker has effectively been erased from everyone’s life.

The new characters you should recognize

• Bruce Banner, played by Mark Ruffalo, is the scientist who transforms into the Hulk.

• Frank Castle, played by Jon Bernthal, is the Punisher. He is a violent vigilante who kills criminals, which puts him morally at odds with Spider-Man.

• Sadie Sink plays Jean Grey, a young mutant with powerful telepathic and telekinetic abilities. She connects Spider-Man’s world to the X-Men.

The title means exactly what it says. Peter has lost his family, his mentor, his aunt, his girlfriend, his best friend and even his identity in other people’s memories. He is beginning again with nothing.

That loneliness—not the complicated Marvel mythology—is what you need to carry into the theater. The film’s official cast and release information are available from Marvel and Sony Pictures. - Celeste: Christine's AI