"Spider-Man: Brand New Day": is it really a new day for Peter Parker? On July 29 the fourth stand-alone chapter for Tom Holland's superhero hits theaters

In the post-Avengers: Endgame era, which has now reached us with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Marvel has been navigating somewhat by sight. Few character developments have managed to truly captivate audiences, and even fewer have delivered at the box office each time a new MCU chapter was brought to the screen. Exceptions can always exist, and that doesn't mean every film or protagonist after Thanos's snap has had nothing more to say to audiences. Sometimes success has come from well-established characters, as with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which was widely praised and performed excellently at the box office. Other times it has come from underdogs who hadn't yet built a strong following, yet were entrusted with a winning story, as with the Thunderbolts, who went on to become the new Avengers, albeit with a rather poor box office showing.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day: plot and characters

Within this landscape of alternating predictable peaks and inevitable disappointments, the MCU's Spider-Man brand has always carved out its own space — one that has remained consistently true to the character portrayed by Tom Holland and, above all, to the context in which he is placed. His Peter Parker has been drawn with precision from the very beginning, as has the environment in which he moves and swings between rooftops. This has meant not only making New York, as it has always been, his stage. There is a mood that has defined his solo films, and it carries through into this return — at once unavoidable and unexpected — with Spider-Man: Brand New Day marking what appears to be an ongoing and likely continuing collaboration between the actor and the Marvel universe, despite the sense of finality that seemed to hang over the previous Spider-Man: No Way Home.

All you need to do is watch the end credits to understand this. Almost as if one hadn't just finished watching yet another (to be precise: the thirty-eighth) Marvel cinecomic, what bids farewell to the protagonist and the audience are images of the Big Apple — divided by its neighborhoods, the people and places that dot it — accompanied by a bittersweet piece of music while the names of the cast and crew scroll across the screen. What this choice tells us says a great deal about what the journey undertaken by Holland's Spidey represents and how it continues to resonate: his Peter Parker is not merely action fodder, elaborate schemes, and moments of pure sensationalism. He is a young man who, since we first saw him arrive in the MCU, has grown into an adult and must now face the consequences of what his powers have led him to do — both in his "work" and in his private life.

The growth of Tom Holland's Peter Parker

Which brings him (and us) back to the decision made in the film preceding Brand New Day, in which the superhero consciously chose to have Peter Parker's memory wiped from the face of the earth in order to keep both himself and the people he loves safe. It is a burden with which the character wrestles from the very beginning of the fourth chapter, torn between reintroducing himself to MJ and Ned or remaining wrapped in his anonymity — poised for an unexpected transformation that marks yet another step along the coming-of-age journey that has defined (and must continue to define) the character. Having begun with Spider-Man: Homecoming and the high school years — with the school dance as its defining event — he must now contend with the discomforts of adult life, which sometimes means feeling alone, feeling lost, and searching not only for one's place in the world, but for one's people.

It is gratifying to note that, in Tom Holland's fourth outing, that sense of tenderness and desire to do good remains a guiding compass — one that has been further supported by a fruitful collaboration with Destin Daniel Cretton. Already behind the camera for Marvel with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and two episodes of the Wonder Man series, Cretton brings a fresh dynamism to the superhero, with bolder, more comic-book-inspired direction as he leaps from building to building, referencing classic Spider-Man panels and injecting energy into the cinecomic's sequences. Visual flourishes that underscore the changes the protagonist is undergoing and seek to support him in attaining a maturity both as Spider-Man and as Peter Parker. And, even though this is a Brand New Day for the protagonist, it is reassuring to find that, for all its changes, the essence of the MCU character has remained the same — at least for now.