The final trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day has dropped, tickets are on sale, and like most people, I’ll be there opening weekend. It’s Spider-Man. Of course I’m going to see it.
That said, I watched the trailer and came away with the same feeling I’ve had throughout Tom Holland’s entire run as Spider-Man: when are we actually going to get a Spider-Man movie?
Before everyone loses their minds, let me be clear: I like Tom Holland. I think he’s a great Spider-Man. In fact, I’ve never really had an issue with his casting. My issue has always been the movies around him.
I’ve been pretty checked out on the MCU since Endgame. Most of the films since then haven’t really done much for me, and while No Way Home was a fun theater experience, a lot of that movie was powered by nostalgia. Seeing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield return was cool in the moment, but looking back, it felt more like an event than a great Spider-Man story.
And now here we are with Brand New Day.
The trailer is clearly trying to sell a more mature version of Peter Parker. He’s not in high school anymore. Nobody remembers who he is. He’s on his own. The aftermath of No Way Home has finally given us a version of Peter that’s isolated and forced to figure things out by himself.
Honestly, that’s the most interested I’ve been in Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in years.
The problem is that Marvel immediately seems determined to make the movie about everything else.
We’ve got Hulk.
We’ve got Punisher.
We’ve got rumors about bigger Marvel characters showing up.
We’ve got mystery MCU connections.
We’ve got Peter apparently dealing with some kind of mutation that’s changing his biology.
And once again, it feels like Spider-Man can’t simply exist in his own story.
This has been my issue with every Holland movie.
Homecoming couldn’t resist making Iron Man a major part of the story.
Far From Home was basically about Tony Stark’s legacy.
No Way Home turned into a massive multiverse nostalgia event.
And now Brand New Day looks like it’s heading down the same road.
The funny thing is that the moments I liked most in the trailer were the moments that actually felt like Spider-Man.
Scorpion looks awesome.
Seriously, his design is fantastic. Every time he showed up in the trailer, my attention immediately came back. Maybe he’s only in the opening act, maybe he’s more important than that, but those scenes felt like something pulled directly from Spider-Man’s world rather than the larger MCU machine.
That’s what I want more of.
I want Peter Parker dealing with Peter Parker problems.
I want Spider-Man fighting Spider-Man villains.
I want stories that focus on the character instead of constantly trying to set up the next crossover.
The other thing that continues to bother me is the visual style. Maybe I’m getting old, but these modern Marvel movies just look too clean. Everything feels overly polished and artificial. Even the web-swinging sequences in this trailer didn’t really do much for me. There’s just something about the presentation that has never clicked the way the older Spider-Man films did.
Which brings me to the Sam Raimi trilogy.
No, those movies aren’t perfect. But what made them work is that they were obsessed with Peter Parker. Every conflict, every emotional beat, every major decision came back to him. The movies cared about Peter first and spectacle second.
With the Holland films, it often feels like the opposite.
At this point, my biggest takeaway from the Brand New Day trailer isn’t that it looks bad. It doesn’t. It looks fine.
My takeaway is that after nearly a decade of Tom Holland playing Spider-Man, it still feels like we’re waiting for his definitive Spider-Man movie.
The setup is finally there. Peter is alone. He’s rebuilding his life. Nobody knows who he is anymore.
That’s a fantastic starting point.
I just wish Marvel trusted Spider-Man enough to let him carry the story by himself.
We’ll see what happens when the movie releases. I’ll be there opening weekend regardless. But right now, I’m cautiously interested rather than genuinely excited.
And if Scorpion ends up being the best part of the movie, don’t say I didn’t call it.
I had a similar feeling to this on seeing the trailer. As much as these Spider-Man films have been fun they are always more about surrounding events than actually focusing on an individual style for Holland’s portrayal of Spider-Man – he always seems to be slotting in with everything else in a wider universe of characters. I also have a sense that this could be Holland’s last Spider-Man movie and this film could not only be a swansong for Holland’s time as Spider-Man but also perhaps the passing of the button or set up for a new era. I might be wrong but it feels like big changes aire on the way.