Spider-Man Brad New Day (2026) 2

 

We are well past the point where any of my opinions are going to matter on a film like this. I am completely aware that my suggestions will be superfluous, after all the movie has already made over a billion dollars and it's part of a long-standing franchise that is going to continue regardless of what I think. Nevertheless I consider it my responsibility to let people know what I thought of a movie that I saw in the theater, and I'm happy to say that I generally enjoyed the heck out of this movie. It's not quite as fun filled with the fan service that we got in the last Spider-Man film 5 years ago, but it is plenty entertaining and doesn't screw up our main characters too much.

Tom Holland may however be growing out of the role since he is much less boyish than he was when he first appeared on the scene as Spiderman in “ Captain America Civil Wars" more than a decade ago. The plot does have him growing older however, so it's not as if the filmmakers are denying the existence of time, but rather they're just trying to minimize it. 

You can get a recap of the plot from a number of other sources, let's just say that the film picks up pretty much where it needed to after the whole planet has been wiped with the memory of Peter Parker. Peter himself of course. still has his memories, which is what is torturing him a bit, because he still loves MJ and misses his best friend Ned. Having made the decision not to reconnect with them at the end of the film last time, he's had to go it on his own. There's a great sequence at the beginning of the film that reminded me of a similar sequence in “Fantastic Four First Steps”, where we see a quick montage of Spider-Man defeating a variety of his comic villains. On the Lambcast my friend Jeanette used the term “cold open villain”, to describe the secondary nature of these characters. They exist just long enough to demonstrate Spider-Man skill but they aren't worthy of an entire film. 

The lone police detective that Spider-Man has connected with, forming a relationship similar to that between Batman and Commissioner Gordon, is professionally effective but emotionally empty. This means Peter is spending a lot of time wallowing in his existential crisis. He watches Instagram posts from Ned about the lives of he and MJ as they go through MIT without him. It's only the presence of a new supervillain, a mysterious psychic, who LeapFrogs from person to person, that causes Peter to try to reconnect with his old friends.

Meanwhile Spider-Man  is also undergoing some changes as a result of his isolation. Apparently the spider DNA that is coursing through his body is following an evolutionary pattern for spiders who do end up in a solitary existence. The changes frightened Peter and move him to try to consult with somebody else who is fighting the DNA in their own body. It's not really a spoiler to tell you that this person is Dr Bruce Banner, since the character is featured in most of the promotional material for this movie.

Bruce has sound advice but it comes with a warning and as usual, Peter can't really listen to a warning, he dives right into trying to make a solution that will work. As it turns out the solution would also potentially stop the new super threat that the psychic presents. In case you haven't guessed it, that solution is a double-edged sword which may in fact hurt Peter, and can definitely be weaponized by the Department of Damage Control, the agency that is under attack from the psychic, and which has been responsible for cleaning up after alien and enhanced human confrontations. 

There are two very emotional scenes in the film, each of which is worth talking about a little bit. Peter gets two chances to confront the situation between him and MJ, one turns out to be a ruse, and the other is a quite affecting moment between the two actors on the screen. The filmmakers do a nice job confronting the situation that Peter has put himself in in relationship to MJ.  They don't have an easy answer, but they do seem to have an honest one. And if you have any romance in your heart for their relationship, it may provoke a moment where you choke up.

Even more emotional however, the clever way Peter tries to resolve the issue with our mysterious psychic. It involves a memory of a conversation that he had with his deceased aunt. Marisa Tomei returns as Aunt May and what might have been flashbacks but are really extended visions in Peter's head. The conversation that Aunt May has with the Peter possessed psychic, is likely to invoke some tears in those of us who are pretty sentimental.

As it turns out, there are other characters from the MCU that show up in the film as well. One is there for a bit of comic relief and for some narrative, but mostly just to remind us that the Avengers is still a thing. The other MCU character is providing a transition to a new set of possibilities in the Marvel Universe. Those comic book fans who know the history of the rights dispersal of MCU characters, will be salivating at the chance to maybe reconnect some formally disconnected Heroes.

There's a lot more to talk about here, and if you want to hear more from me, you can visit the Lambcast episode that I have shared, where Jeanette Ward and I spent an hour debriefing each other on our opinions and theories.

Spider-Man Brand New Day (2026)

 

For now, the Podcast is going to be my post on this film. 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

 

So there there is no doubt by the time you reach the end of this post, I loved the film. It was a terrific visual experience with a real human set of stories to care about. There was sufficient humor to keep it fairly light, but there are dangerous and dark moments in the film. There was a huge amount of creativity expended to make this movie into the "WOW" experience they want you to have. That said, there are issues that I had with the film that keep me from declaring it perfect as an animated movie.

Let me start with the run time of the film. Two hours and twenty minutes is pushing the endurance level for a movie so filled with visual texture, easter eggs, and action. I found myself looking at my watch and wondering if I could take a break. This will be no problem when the film hits streaming and video platforms, but as a continuous experience in a movie theater it sometimes felt like I was being assaulted over a long period of time. There is a lot to see and the screen is rarely static, so when you spend a longer amount of time watching, it can be a bit of a strain. 

There are two or three distinct stories in the film, and as such, it felt like a lot of things were being stuffed into the movie. It is true that some of the stories have parallels in them, so showing them in the same film allows us to make comparisons, but each of those stories felt like they could have been a movie unto themselves. Maybe a little trimming on each of them would allow the film to move along more efficiently. One of the problems with these multiverse stories is that there is always another villain/hero conflict to explore, so it never feels like you are getting anywhere. Like a swimmer fighting a riptide, there is so much weight that keeps pulling you away from your desired destination. 

I suspect that everybody's favorite sequence in the film will be  Mumbattan on Earth-50101, with the local Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar. He is a hoot and the visualization of him in the densely populated and high traffic version of India is a blast. The character has skills that are great but a personality that is self mocking and appealing at the same time.  Hobie Brown as the puck rock version of Spider-Man also appears in this sequence, and without much context, we understand him but maybe can't quite relate to him. I'm sure fans of the comics will have a different outlook because they will know his story more and so his attitude may be less off-putting. 

Keeping track of all the Spider-Man variations, and all the Universes they inhabit, is something that should be left to the fans who want to keep flow charts and infographics. The idea that there are canon events in the Spider-Verse makes sense, but we are left to guess what they are. Obviously, some are self apparent, but the one that turns out to be the driving force of the movie is not. It is difficult to reconcile heroes who protect their worlds with the self interested individuals willing to allow deaths that are preventable for "The Greater Good". Miles Morales may only be a kid, but he has a pretty good sense of right and wrong in contrast to the members of the Spider-Society who have decided to play God. 

One more word of warning/slight hesitation. The movie is long, but not because it takes a while to get to a resolution. It does not arrive there. This is an "Empire Strikes Back" middle chapter in a trilogy, and the story stops on a cliffhanger. The final segment is supposed to come next year, it was supposedly written and worked on simultaneously with this film. So unlike the Star Wars film, we will not have to wait three years to find out what happens. But you will need to see this one again before then, and that should not be a problem. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

I had originally dismissed this as a piece of television animation that was getting a theatrical release to boost interest in DVD sales and streaming. Well that turned out to be wrong. After hearing a number of my colleagues on "The Lamb" rave about it, and seeing a half dozen really positive reviews (which I scanned rather than reading), I became a lot more motivated. I can now see why there is a lot of enthusiasm, and while I am not inclined to say it was the best film of the year as some of the hyperbole had it, I can say it was excellent.

The story does take a while to set up and you have to be patient with it. Not only do most of us know the origin story, but when the various dimensions start crossing paths, we get it partially recapped, although with slight variations each time. The main focus in this telling is on Miles Morales, a kid from Brooklyn who is starting at a charter school where he stays in a dorm during the school week. This story is immediately different because Miles has a loving Mother and Father present in his life. He is not alienated from them but he does have some of the usual adolescent angst that comes from trying to be your own person but also needing your family. Miles is gifted but more in the arts than the sciences, and his radiated spider bite is not a result of his involvement with a science project but rather, a graffiti experience he undertakes with his uncle in the subways of N.Y..

The look of the film is interesting because it contains a variety of painting styles, animation techniques and comic book themes. There are multiple panels being used at once and the progression thru the story is sometimes abbreviated by that style. This really is a hip hop version of a Spider-man story, complete with street art and music to lead us through our hero's tale. The backgrounds are textured with the kind of pixelation that you would see in an old school comic book or maybe video game. In the traditional Spider-man films, whether from Sony or from Marvel/Disney, the character does look like a cartoon in a real world setting at times. This movie makes all the world look like a drawing so you stop noticing how different the animation is in the action scenes. I had a slight problem because the image sometimes looked blurry to me, as if it was created for 3-D and I was not wearing my special glasses. I assume this was an intentional choice rather than an exhibitor error. It was the main fault I had with the way the movie looked.

The story is self aware, making slight insider references to the other films in the Spider-man universe. There is also a version of the character that looks like a Warner Brothers cartoon, and a Porky Pig reference is made. Multiple villain appear and they seem to be altered to some degree by the intersection of the dimensions as well. Dr. Octopus for instance will probably surprise you a bit. The Kingpin is the main antagonist and we are given just enough information to understand his motivations for the actions he takes and his desire for what he sees as revenge. Some new villains (or at least I assume they are new, I'm not a reader of the comics) also appear in the story, and there is a twist that comes but it is signposted well before it arrives so it is easier to swallow.

We end up with six different versions of Spider-man, aiding one another in trying to stop the scheme while also dealing with the possibility that they will glitch our of existence.  My favorite was Noir Spider-man, who looks like Darkman but even better, is voiced by Nicholas Cage. The mash up of styles for the different heroes is not as jarring as you might expect and in the end it all works pretty well. Some storlines could be a bit more complete but as a comic book film, "Into the Spider-verse" achieves its purpose. I was entertained and enjoyed expolring different variations on the same theme. Plus there is a really fun shot taken at Sam Rami's "Spider-man 3". That should give the comic book geeks something to look forward to as well. If you stick to the end of the credits, you will also get a nice nostalgia moment for old timers like me.