Previously on Spider-Man: Five years ago as the pandemic trended downward — been a while! — No Way Home capped off Tom Holland’s first trilogy by ruining Peter Parker’s life even more depressingly than usual. The This Is Your Life fan-service parade of Spideys and Spider-villains from Spider-cinema past were a delight despite the Major Character Death casting a pall, though The Battle of the Spider-Stars fizzled out in its showdown letdown, a blurry mishmash of scaffolds and weightless automata typifying the rushed VFX of many a post-Endgame superhero blockbuster. But the deepest problem was the story structure itself, a betrayal of “With great power comes great responsibility”, the very heart of every version of the Spider-mythos: taking “great responsibility” began with Peter asking Dr. Strange to fix all his problems for him, and ended with him asking Strange to fix all his new problems that “fixing” his old problems caused in the first place. As I wrote in irritation afterward: “Having a fairy godfather wish your problems away isn’t taking Great Responsibility. That’s weaseling out.” That goes for both times.

Any subsequent Spider-film had two options to get unstuck from that morass: either pretend it never happened and reboot the franchise again with yet another new cast; or spend the entire next film climbing out of that hole. Praise be, then, to director Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi, Wonder Man) and returning Spider-writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers for committing to option B in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Spidey’s ninth solo film and the 38th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s still obligated to invite non-Spider guests and set up future Marvel projects, but within those corporate restraints, Cretton and crew bring back the Spider-basics of comics yore: no multiverse, no intergalactic space travel, nothing otherdimensional or mystical or meta, it’s an intensely metropolitan adventure that returns to Homecoming‘s street-level superheroics, invests time and energy in repairing shattered relationships, whips up a flurry of fun along the way, and lets that Major Character Death count for something besides shock value.

The Gist: When last we left Our Hero, his lady-love MJ (Zendaya!) and BFF Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon!) had three films’ worth of memories, flashbacks, and chemistry with Holland cruelly wiped away so Peter could live in peace without sweating the unpleasant consequences of that film, which in turn were drastic fallout from the end of Far From Home. To wit: Peter’s identity was revealed worldwide, similar to what happened in the comics’ original Civil War miniseries. I have to keep reminding myself No Way Home could’ve ended far worse: in comics this severe inconvenience was solved with One More Day, one of The Worst Spider-Stories in Marvel History. (If you don’t know, don’t ask.)

Thanks to Dr. Strange we’re back to nobody on Earth knowing Spidey’s secret identity again, at the cost of his supporting cast and narrative soul. In the four years that’ve passed in Marvel time, Peter’s been living a miserable monk’s life, somehow affording an apartment and a sweet supercomputer setup that lets him constantly monitor his city for crime, including creepy Dark Knight surveillance tech, as opposed to the time-honored tradition of randomly swinging around Manhattan and hoping to luck into crimes-in-progress — what used to be his version of walking a cop’s beat. (His income source isn’t cited. Leftover Stark paychecks? Aunt May’s vast inheritance? OnlyFans?)

In lieu of having a life, he devotes his days to playing supervillain Whac-a-Mole whenever one pops up, shown in a too-brief montage of B-list baddies in slo-mo cover homages from my own collection (except I didn’t recognize Boomerang’s). That’s a smart callback to the era of single-issue superhero stories, but it crashes to a halt when a faceless new menace shows up wreaking havoc that a mere 20 pages can’t contain. Spidey runs afoul of a seemingly intangible consciousness leaping from person to person in quick possession succession, like a sort of Exorcist leap-frog. He can mostly tell whenever the entity has taken over a new host — though we’re told his Spider-Sense detects them, the head-hopper also acts really weirdly with every new face, tells visible from 100 yards away in the thickest NYC crowds, all but sprouting a “CAN’T CATCH ME!” temp-tattoo bouncing from one forehead to the next.

Their path of destruction fixates on the HQ of Damage Control — drifted parsecs away from creator Dwayne McDuffie’s concept of a tongue-in-cheek post-superfight cleanup service — who were mostly shadow-government pests in past MCU works. (Remember when they were mean to Ms. Marvel? BOOOOOOOOO.) Their new head honcho (Severance‘s Tramell Tillman, last seen as a genial sub commander in the final Mission: Impossible) totally swears they’re good-guy law enforcers now. Because if there’s one thing shadow-government subsections are known for, it’s reform.

As if that mystery weren’t enough, another new nuisance vexes Peter closer to home: his own body. Unlike that time when Tobey Maguire’s powers short-circuited in Spider-Man 3 (the one where his run jumped the shark), this Peter’s going into arachnid overdrive. Suddenly he sprouts Maguire’s organic web-shooters in his forearms, which interfere with his sleek tech-whiz shooters and don’t come with a training manual. He starts having Wolverine-style berserker tantrums that trigger black-pupiled glaring and an urge to smash whoever’s in front of him. Peter understandably freaks out about his loss of self-control: is he evolving into a dangerous new Pokemon form, or is there a more deeply rooted catalyst to analyze?

The familiar faces: Given Spidey’s newly short-fused temper, who better to lend him a hand than two of the MCU’s most terrifying rage-monsters? He soon petitions Mark Ruffalo’s green-skinned Bruce Banner for a scientist-to-scientist heart-to-heart about how to suppress unwanted transformations when merely honing one’s self-control doesn’t feel like a viable option. It doesn’t occur to Peter that maybe if Banner were 100% in charge of his gamma-bulked id with no chance of falling off the inner-peace bandwagon, he’d still be starring in his own films and not reduced to bit parts as a recurring Mr. Wizard consultant for every Marvel headliner. Ruffalo can only tempt fate so many times before Hulk’s gonna smash again, but let him wander into the same borough as a mind-controlling menace and…well, hey, what’s the worst that could happen, right?

Rage-monster #2: Jon Bernthal’s Punisher! Frank Castle makes his big-screen MCU debut after the ultraviolent catharis of his One Last Kill Disney+ special, in which he (hopefully) came to terms with his family’s murders and the extreme mental-health damage that drove his relentless anti-crime vendetta and made his old Netflix show such a horrifying keeper. Frank is finally allowed into the MCU proper now that he’s promised not to murder anyone here and limits himself to only PG-13 profanities, though he’s still allowed to bellow as many of them as he wants. More than a quick guest-star turn, Bernthal sticks around to achieve full costar status in Brand New Day‘s second half when Spidey is clearly outmatched and could use the advice and weaponry of a charismatic crazy uncle.

Other familiar faces include Florence Pugh a.k.a. the current Black Widow, on limited loan from the New Avengers; Academy Award Winner Marisa Tomei as the late Aunt May in key memories; and Better Call Saul‘s Michael Mando, who was barely noticeable in Homecoming as the Scorpion but gets more time and lines here than any other classic villain.

Newcomers include The Bear‘s great Liza Colon-Zayas as NYC Detective Jean DeWolff, one of my favorite supporting characters from my Spidey-collecting childhood up until her unforgettably traumatizing final appearance. She didn’t have any kids in the comics, but she has two here, one of whom is played by Nina Galano, last seen in Netflix’s The Sandman as a key figure from Johanna Constantine’s tragic past. (Longtime DC fans can guess who.)

(Personal fun trivia: Bernthal and Colon-Zayas destroyed me in their season-3 episode of The Bear, “Napkins”. They don’t share a single scene here, which is a huge shame.)

Marvin “Krondon” Jones III, Black Lightning‘s albino big-bad Tobias Whale, gets a line or two as albino big-bad Tombstone, whom he also voiced in Into the Spider-Verse. Eman Esfandi (Ahsoka‘s live-action Ezra Bridger) is a new pal of MJ’s who, luckily for him, is not necessarily named Paul. Close your eyes and you still might not recognize Naomi Watts as the voice of Peter’s new AI assistant. Beloved character actor Keith David takes on a role that nary an internet rumormonger guessed correctly even though you can clearly hear him in at least one of the trailers.

Those same mongers also spent months speculating on the casting of Sadie Sink (Stranger Things, The Whale) in a top-secret role. We all wondered: is she playing the most ridiculously obvious Marvel character at the behest of a casting manager with zero imagination? Is she the Mary Jane of another Earth? Is she some other superhero’s girlfriend who appeared in exactly two panels of one issue of Marvel Spotlight back in 1981? Is she a new character altogether? Is she just some nameless Little Caesar cashier who sells Peter his dinner every night? She’s fantastic here, but the important thing is now we know who she is and we can all shut up with our theories because casting debates mostly bore me anyway.

The Impressions: No Way Home‘s sketchy rehash of X-Men‘s Statue of Liberty fight is hereby buried and doesn’t have to haunt me anymore. Cretton absolutely brings the same flair for action that won Shang-Chi‘s superior first half. The fight scenes pop with more pizzazz this time, breaking from the humdrum fisticuffs of too many Marvel films since The Winter Soldier. Although a few segments are still blatantly CGI cartoons faintly resembling human actors, those exceptions appear few and fleeting. If they are still the majority, it doesn’t show so readily. For value-added fanboy glee, Cretton taps the “Snyder slo-mo” button at particularly gonzo moments that’ll make awesome .gifs someday, adding a touch of simulated gravity to potentially featherweight CGI bodies battling at hyperspeed. It’s most and best used in a climactic dogpile against the Hand, the ninja clan from Marvel’s Netflix era — exactly the sort of aerodynamic opponents that Spidey ought to fight way more often.

When Our Hero isn’t mortally combating, Cretton rekindles some of the long-lost sentimental flames of the Sam Raimi era — the thrill of web-swinging through New York from dozens of stories high! The fanboy thrill of low-stakes good-vs.-evil bouts that couldn’t possibly have sustained an entire movie of their own! And an old-fashioned Big Apple where eight million people LOVES Spidey! In an age where all our real-life heroes are big fat disappointments and our superheroes are retreating to 20th-century grimdarkness (‘sup, Kara?), a costumed do-gooder who tries to do right by his neighborhood — on this planet and timeline, for once — and gets appreciated for it is a welcome change of pace from the recent norm, at least till David Corenswet puts his cape back on. (It helps that once again J. Jonah Jameson is Sir Not Appearing in This Film. We have way too many Jamesons around right now.)

Cretton took still more notes from Raimi — or has the same favorite comics — for the deep dives into Peter’s post-traumatic state of mind. Cutting his closest friends out of his life — possibly the last two living people who really loved him — might’ve been annoyingly written at the time as a necessary move to save the multiverse or whatever, but this next chapter doesn’t take that sacrifice for granted. Spidey’s local fame aside, more than ever it reframes Peter as the classic bad-luck loner we knew in his first few decades’ worth of stories — saving the day on the outside, angst on the inside. Four years’ worth of isolation hasn’t helped, which is quite possibly a situation that a lot of viewers can relate to nowadays.

Granted, some of that alienation is by his own choice. He could’ve said something to MJ and Ned in No Way Home‘s epilogue without jeopardizing reality again, but didn’t. And the longer he kept quiet, the harder it got to say anything, and then four years flew by and he got too used to wallowing in his silent martyrdom. Taking great responsibility seriously doesn’t have to mean stoically suffering all your burdens; people need other people. Most of the film’s quieter moments work toward Peter overcoming that, often with a little help from other costumed loners. In particular, every exchange between Holland and Bernthal is a snarky spectacle belying their respective pains — two loners protesting that they don’t need anyone, little realizing they’re helping each other get better. Same as in The Bear and so many other places, Bernthal elevates every scene and any other actors around him who have to step up to keep up.

Peter’s power malfunctions aren’t helping, either — the random fluctuations are a blow to his confidence, as well as the anger-management slippage and the creepy Dark Willow eyes (a little too reminiscent of Maguire’s evil-dancer phase). As if he weren’t already feeling othered enough, he’s betrayed from within and nobody’s got a copy of Our Changing Super-Bodies for him to watch. Once again Peter turns to science for problem-solving, but this time he’s testing the wrong hypothesis. He whips up a potential treatment, but with potentially world-changing ramifications that the film doesn’t allow time to explore (despite lasting nearly 2½ hours) beyond its immediate effects on the cast at hand. Same as magic, this sweeping solution comes at a price and doesn’t factor in the possibility that there’re some biological processes that need to happen, whether we understand them or not.

As all the tangled web’s myriad strands are knotted together in the final half-hour, some of it frays and nearly snaps. The mystery assailant’s big reveal drew a lot of audible reactions in our packed showing, even from the numerous viewers who’d guessed it in advance. The guilty established character wasn’t among my favored suspects and never had physically expressed body-hopping in their general power set, which means as comics-fan puzzles go, this film cheated. But that whopper of a development completely changed the film’s tenor. The back-and-forth between them and Holland is a much more heartbreaking actors’ duel than Spidey-v.-Punisher, but it asks the audience to accept that the “villain” had their reasons for what they did, despite how their biggest rampage endangered countless innocents, got at least one poor guy critically injured and who knows how many others. (To say nothing of Damage Control security, but, y’know, cue audio clip from True Lies: “Yeah, but they were all bad.”)

Ultimately the resolution leads Spidey into the curious position of trying to teach the all-important “Killing Is Wrong” lesson while in the middle of an official Marvel Team-Up with a heavily armed antihero who’s racked up at least a triple-digit body count, not all of which was self-defense. I have the same qualm every time Deadpool works with a hero-hero in the comics instead of another antihero. I get a little tired of comics characters that depend on readers giving them free passes for their moral blind spots just for the sake of happy endings.

With those objections noted, at least Brand New Day gave me what I wanted most out of it: No Way Home‘s drastic side effects erased without Peter having to beg his fairy godfather to come do it for him. This time, taking responsibility comes with painful accountability.

The end credits? To answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: yes, there is indeed a scene after the Spider-Man: Brand New Day end credits. For those who tuned out prematurely and really want to know, and didn’t already click elsewhere…

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[…insert space for courtesy spoiler alert in case anyone needs to abandon ship…]

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…Ned’s Spider-Tracker app confirms Spidey is in New York…until he isn’t. The 8-bit graphics shift as the cursor moves away from New York, then away from Earth, then picks up his signal again…in outer space! That’s is, that’s the whole scene — a cutesy tease for Avengers: Doomsday, coming in December.

The credits also assure us, “SPIDER-MAN WILL RETURN,” in case you were worried. Anyone hoping for some last-minute bonus X-Men is denied.