WARNING: Contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day
“Are you Peter Parker? Or are you Spider-Man?” That question is posed to our hero at a vital point in Spider-Man: Brand New Day; a classic Spidey concept, since the character’s appeal has always rested on the tension between what Peter Parker wants, and what the great power and great responsibility of Spider-Man requires. For the first time since Spider-Man 2, Tom Holland’s latest Spidey film really wrestles with that notion. But if you tweak that question slightly, you get to the heart of what – to me – Brand New Day is really about: “Are you Tom Holland? Or are you Spider-Man?”
Under the surface, I think this film grapples with Tom Holland’s decision whether or not to continue his tenure as Marvel’s most beloved superhero. This is the role that’s defined his career so far; one he inherited just over a decade ago when he bounded into Captain America: Civil War. From there, he led an entire Spidey trilogy – Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home – woven around the threads of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. His Peter Parker saved New York, Euro-tripped, then blasted off to space. He died. Was resurrected. He met Spider-Men from other multiverses. He lost Tony Stark and Aunt May. And that was all a prologue, really – No Way Home left him in prime Spidey territory, no longer a high-schooler, living alone, fighting crime.
Peter Parker isn’t the only one who’s been through a lot. Tom Holland let the role swallow a decade of his life; his 20s were defined by Spider-Man. But he’s 30 now. He’s married. In the meantime, he’s delved into deeper character work in The Crowded Room, trod the boards in Romeo & Juliet, started his Bero business. He makes Christopher Nolan movies now, like The Odyssey. It’s understandable that he might want to be Spider-Man no more; does he still connect with the role? Does the spandex still fit, literally and figuratively?
Tom Holland, having had time to be Tom Holland for a while, has accepted the Spider back into his life.
It was never guaranteed that Holland would return. His contract ended with No Way Home, at which point he pondered moving on. “It really felt like a stepping-off point for me as an actor to just go and explore other things and look back on my Spider-Man days with pride and joy,” he told Empire recently. Brand New Day doesn’t just answer that question, it dramatises it. Leaping three years on from No Way Home – in a world where nobody remembers Peter Parker, including his closest friends – we reconnect with him as a workaholic. Just as Holland had swung from production to production in the MCU’s ongoing narrative, Peter Parker too is all-Spidey all the time – battling baddies with very little time for Peter Parker-ing. What even is ‘Peter Parker’, if nobody knows him?
That identity crisis is key to Brand New Day, reckoning with the idea of change. Since Peter Parker has become so committed to web-slinging, he starts to physically transform, his abilities mutating. There’s no balance between his Spider-Man duties and any kind of personal life, and his body can no longer reconcile that lack of equilibrium. Tom Holland has changed too; when the new film briefly flashes back to moments from No Way Home, it’s immediately obvious how much the actor has grown. He’s in a very different stage of life, far from the relative-kid of Civil War.
The way that Brand New Day resolves these threads feels like Holland re-embracing being Spider-Man again. When he decided to return, he also contributed creatively in a major way for the first time, seeding BND’s ‘Spider Puberty’ plot himself. Peter’s initial solution to his mutation in the film is to create an ‘inhibitor’ to stop his powers from going haywire; he literally supresses his Spider-self. But come the final act, he has to accept change, accept the Spider, and balance it out by choosing to be Peter Parker again too. In flashback, we see the ever-wise Aunt May tell him, in a sense, that Peter is just as special as Spider-Man. Tom Holland, having had time to be Tom Holland for a while, has resolved to accept the Spider back into his life.
You feel it in the final moments of the film; Peter, having survived being shot by Punisher (whoops!) manages to leave the hospital incognito. But he passes through crowds of cheering Spider-fans, many of them children, with painted faces, t-shirts, signs. They love Spider-Man. They need Spider-Man. Peter Parker – finally in true, well, Peter Parker mode – smiles at this outpouring of affection. It’s a moment that acknowledges the real-world need for Spider-Man too – to inhabit this character is, indeed, a great responsibility. Holland isn’t just playing a role; he’s a mascot, an idol, for kids and grown-up kids alike. In that scene, we literally get to see the star stand within that feeling and accept it.
So, “Are you Peter Parker or are you Spider-Man?” Are you Tom Holland, or are you Spider-Man? In each instance, the answer proves the same: “I’m both.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in cinemas now
