‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ is the Best MCU Movie in Forever

This is an edition of the weekly newsletter Tap In, GQ senior associate editor Frazier Tharpe’s final word on the most heated online discourse about music, movies, and TV. Sign up here to get it free.Let’s get this out of the way: the last Marvel movie I was into—like, really dug—was Sam Raimi’s Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The plot is all over the place, sure, but so are the distinct Raimi touches—horror flourishes, dark wit, kinetic setpieces—and those superseded all other nonsense to me. That should tell you a lot about what I value out of these movies now above all else. Storytelling that’s too focused on a flimsy future, third act fumbles, plot holes—those are pretty much par for the course in the MCU. All I’m asking for at this point is a little personality and flavor.By contrast, the Phase 4 and 5 films that the masses were into, that seemed to signal that the MCU still has gas in the tank? Thunderbolts (rote), Fantastic Four: First Steps (bland), Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (forced)…those did next to nothing for me. Really, I’ve been on the opposite side of all Marvel takes since Spider-Man: No Way Home, a lifeless movie built around one core gimmick that had nothing else to offer.So picture my surprise when I walked out of Brand New Day charged up. It took them four swings, but the Feige factory has finally made a banger that at least gestures at the highs of Tobey Maguire’s first two outings. Homecoming is cute and I have a soft spot for the Jake Gyllenhaal madness of Far From Home but for the most part, despite reliably charming performances from Tom Holland, the Spidey adventures he’s been saddled with have felt like empty calories. There’s always an Avenger or three dancing all up in the video; there’s always some broader MCU business encroaching on the narrative; there’s always Jon Watts directing action so bland that it doesn’t even measure up to the old videogames.Enter Destin Daniel Cretton, who’s no Raimi (but who is?) but manages to finally give Holland a Spider-movie that feels tactile, kinetic and most importantly, has some grit. The latter is a gift courtesy of the final minutes of No Way Home, which ingeniously rendered everything before it as a sort of Surf Dracula trilogy, finally positioning Tom as the Peter we know and love: broke, lovesick, down on his luck, mourning a parental figure, with great responsibility and zero hoes. That left a lot of time wasted, but a lot of potential on the horizon. Brand New Day, blessedly, delivers.What’s funny is that on paper, this Spidey-film should suffer from the same burdens that weighed on the last three (and that’s without even spoiling one big, increasingly obvious plot twist). This is a Spider-Man movie that makes room for The Punisher, The Hulk, and other people who will have a huge impact on the future of this whole Marvel thing. Yet here, it works. The other heroes, Punisher especially, feel woven into the fabric of Peter’s New York, not like Very Special Guests jammed in. Maybe that’s because the stakes for Peter personally have never felt higher, or more specifically, realer. Up until now, Holland’s Peter has been so plucky and happy to be here that he still feels like a sidekick even in his own movies. When we pick up with him here, he’s a loner of near sociopathic levels, resolving to remain a monk as penance for Aunt May and tracking MJ and Ned’s lives through Instagram. That gaping void actually gives Holland more to do and emote about, so much so that anyone he has to share the spotlight with doesn’t subsume his.And when he does get back in MJ’s orbit, ironically, the everybody-has-Peter-amnesia plotline creates the best chemistry between Tom and Zendaya across all four films; it’s easily the first time MJ has felt like a real 3D person, and it’s sneakily one of Zendaya’s most effortless performances in general.Like every Spider-Man adventure to follow it, this movie wants what Spider-Man 2 has, and inevitably falls short. A “New York City rides for Spidey” moment that evokes Raimi’s train scene? Sure. Steve Lacy doing his best to restore the Dashboard Confessional end-credits feeling? Mostly works. A mental identity crisis affecting Peter’s physical abilities? Not so much. The most generous bail is that it doesn’t have much room to cook thanks to a third act that gets completely taken over by the villain, in a very big bid to set up the next five years in Marvel. The action and emotional beats in the final showdown do their best to re-center things on Peter, but by the time he inevitably answers the existential question of “Are you Peter Parker? Or Spider-Man,” it feels totally unearned and flat because he hasn’t actually had the time to reach that conclusion. Also—this movie is 145 minutes long.That said: Maybe I’m grading on a curve after half a decade of mid or worse, but the highs outweighed the flaws for me. This is the best Holland has ever been; all the jokes about his summer abroad learning real filmmaking with Christopher Nolan might have actually had some weight to them. I loved seeing the actual Spider-rogues gallery, from Scorpion to Tombstone. Even better was seeing two of TV’s best character actors out right now, the always-welcome Liza Colon-Zayas and Trammell Tillman, playing to their strengths (warm and maternal; inscrutable and oily). And although it’s become kind of a sick joke that Feige won’t just leave Spidey to his own devices, the sacrifice here at least pays off, with the first genuinely exciting phase-next tease in a long time—mostly on the strength of Sadie Sink’s performance.In a world where virtually every other tentpole Marvel hero feels cooked and Doomsday hype feels tepid, the fact that Tom, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon feel revved up and ready to run out a whole other trilogy feels impressive. For the first time, at least in this specific corner of the MCU, there feels like there’s actually more story to tell, not just end-credit-teaser straws to grasp at. Let’s see if they keep it up.