On July 31, Tom Holland will officially become the first Spider-Man actor to get a fourth solo movie. Tobey Maguire got three, Andrew Garfield got two, and Shameik Moore’s animated Miles Morales has two with a third on the way. Even Nicholas Hammond, the original made-for-TV Spider-Man from the ‘70s, only got three feature-length outings. Holland will make Spider-history when he swings into cinemas to steal the summer box office with Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
There’s always a lot of hype around any Spider-Man movie — besides maybe Batman, the web-head is easily the most popular superhero in the world — but the hype for Brand New Day went into overdrive when the first trailer dropped. That trailer teased all kinds of exciting stuff, from a team-up with the Punisher to a showdown with The Hand in a maximum-security prison to a laundry list of C-list villains set to make an appearance. But the most exciting thing about the Brand New Day trailer is its narrative hook: Peter Parker is going through the darkest time in his life all alone, forgotten by the world.
After the colorful, comic-booky feel of the Home trilogy, director Destin Daniel Cretton is doing something completely different with this next chapter of Spidey’s story. In the past three films, and in the larger MCU, Holland’s Spider-Man has always been an Avenger with futuristic tech and a Stark Industries trust fund. But in Brand New Day, Holland is going back to basics as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Brand New Day Is Taking Tom Holland’s Spider-Man In A More “Neighborhood” Direction
Holland’s past three Spider-Man movies have all had heavy sci-fi elements planting them firmly in a heightened reality. Homecoming revolves around a crime ring selling alien weapons on the black market; Far From Home revolves around a holographic-illusions specialist using high-tech drones to fabricate entire superhero battles; and No Way Home, of course, busts open the multiverse and pulls in other Spider-Men and their villains from alternate realities. It’s all been great, but it hasn’t exactly screamed “neighborhood.”
By all accounts, Brand New Day will be a more grounded, street-level Spidey story. He’s going back to basics, fighting New York street crime and struggling to pay his bills. While Holland’s performance has always been praised, the MCU’s portrayal of Spider-Man as Iron Man’s young ward has often been criticized for changing the fundamentals of the character. Peter is supposed to be on his own, living in a crummy apartment, barely making his rent payments but still choosing to put on red-and-blue spandex and fight crime.
In Brand New Day, that’ll finally be the case. After the heartbreaking sacrifices he made in No Way Home, Peter doesn’t have anyone to depend on but himself. He’s lost his best friend, his girlfriend, his aunt, his mentor, his mentor’s head of security, and even his alternate multiversal selves. Going into this new movie, Spidey is miserable, and that’s just how we like him.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Will Have Body Horror Elements Too
But Brand New Day isn’t just switching from hard sci-fi to more of a gritty, grounded, street-level superhero adventure; it’s also bringing in elements of body horror. The trailer teases that Peter is going through a sort of Spider-puberty, as he starts developing organic webbing seemingly at random. Whatever is going on with that — maybe a Man-Spider-type thing — Peter’s body is transforming, and it’s delightfully gross. So, this movie is switching genres from coming-of-age sci-fi to semi-grounded superhero body horror.
Goopy, gory, grossout body horror has made a much-needed comeback in the past few years with The Substance and Together and the Still Lifes in Backrooms. It’ll be really interesting to see what Cretton does with the body-horror visuals of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. After all, this is the guy who gave us a dragon in Shang-Chi and Josh Gad’s interdimensional disappearance in Wonder Man.