Spider-Man: Brand New Day and What’s Making Us Happy

Zendaya and Tom Holland are back in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the movie has a more grounded tone than we’ve seen from the franchise. But does it strike the right balance of fun and darkness? Directed by Daniel Destin Cretton, the film also features Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, and Sadie Sink. Looking for more spectacular Spider-episodes? Check out: 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' mixes fun and fan service https://www.npr.org/2021/12/13/1063686062/spider-man-no-way-home-mixes-fun-and-fan-service 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' thrills in every dimension https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1176735268/spider-man-across-the-spider-verse-thrills-in-every-dimension Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support Pop Culture Happy Hour+ https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  When we last saw Peter Parker, he'd lost everything. His family, his friends, and the whole world's awareness that he was, in fact, Spider-Man. Now, in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, his beloved city is again in danger. And with nowhere to turn, he has to figure out a way to help.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Tom Holland and Zendaya are back as Peter and MJ, but there are some new faces, too, or at least some faces that are new to Peter's world. I'm Glen Weldon.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  And I'm Linda Holmes. And joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is our co-host, Stephen Thompson. Hello, Stephen.

• 0:52Speaker 03

  Hello, buddy.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  It's so good to see you. I will offer a little peek behind the curtain that we usually record at home, but for reasons, we are in historic Studio 44 together.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  There we are.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  On Tuesday morning, where we used to record this show for a long time. So if you sense that we're all gazing lovingly at each other, that is why. All right, so Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the follow-up to 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. That was the multiverse story where several different Spider-Men came together to fight a large cast of villains and where, at the end, Dr. Strange fixed an impending catastrophe by wiping out not only everyone's memory that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but everyone's memory of ever having known Peter. Now Peter, played by Tom Holland, has been a recluse for several years, tackling low level crime very effectively, but without the company of his beloved MJ, played by

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Zendaya, or his friend Ned, played by Jacob Batalon. Oddly enough, the only friend he hangs out with seems to be Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, played by Jon Bernthal, who knows him only as Spider-Man. In Brand New Day, two things are happening. One is that a mysterious force is repeatedly attacking the Department of Damage Control. But also, Peter seems to be undergoing some changes he doesn't understand that are interfering with his web shooters and giving him terrible headaches, spider puberty. He'll have to fight the enemy, fix his own spider body, and maybe possibly find his way back to MJ and Ned. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in theaters now. Stephen Thompson, I'm going to start with you.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  I know you were a very big fan of some of the previous movies in this standalone Spider-Man series. How did you feel about this one?

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, as you said, I really, really love these Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, in part because there is a lightness to them. Not only does Tom Holland bring this kind of impish, kind of boyish quality to it, but the way the action moves, it moves with a lightness. Like, the battle sequences play out almost like dance routines. And that feels very different from a lot of the more leaden superhero action that we've grown accustomed to in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And so I tend to really love these movies, in part because they have jokes, and in part because they just have a buoyancy to them that is missing from so many others. This film, I think, is a very effective film in this series.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  I think it's well-made. I think the action sequences work really well. But there is a portentousness to it and a dourness to it that, for me, I found a little disappointing. I wanted more light. One thing this film really made me realize is how important the relationship between Peter Parker and Ned is, in part because they're buddies. There's this buddy quality to the other films that this film does not have as much. And so, also, this is a bridge sequel. This is the fourth of these films, not counting Spider-Man's appearances in other movies. And it's clearly trying to get us not so much from, like, point C to point D, but

• 4:04Speaker 03

  from point C back to a new point A. And so it feels like it's trying to do a lot of plot business that is getting in the way of hijinks.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get that. All right, Glenn, what did you think?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I mean, this was fun, but Spider-Man occupies a very specific niche in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's the kid from Queens. He can do space, he can do cosmic, but that's not his element. And if you put him in space, you're putting him there to kind of create the contrast.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  And have him be like that guy from Clerks who keeps saying, "I'm not even supposed to be here today." That's what he's there for. So we're doing grounded here. And we're doing grounded for a very specific reason, because people maybe weren't feeling the multiverse cosmic stuff. They certainly weren't feeling the Kang, the Quantumania stuff.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  The Quantumania, no.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, no. So here's where we're getting grounded. And here is how grounded this film is. There is a character whose superpower is depicted on screen with, one, a sound effect, and, two, choreo, basically, with modern dance. And I do kind of like imagining them kind of sitting around a table at a mixer, maybe, and kind of introduce, "I can turn into flame, and I have the proportionate strength and agility of a spider. I can instigate a Twila-tharp flash mob. You know, that's my thing."

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Well, I thought that was very effective, though. It's cool-looking.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  It looked different.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  And it's creepy.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Here's the thing, it looks so cool. It is so weirdly kinetic, and it beats actors just grimacing at each other while, you know, flashy stuff goes on around them. It's so much better than that, and it's so much more effective. But we are pulling back. And as Stephen mentioned, we are in the fuel mixture of Spider-Man. He's always very funny, he's always very sad. He's both a two-stroke engine to this character.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  That's a very common combination.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  It is a very common combination, especially in the MCU. But like, he can be quippy and lighthearted, but he is racked with guilt and shame and angst, and here, heartbreak and loneliness, and let's just say, depression. That's what's going on here. And that mix, you know, everybody, when you tell a Spider-Man story, you adjust the dial. And this dial is turned way over into angst and loneliness and heartbreak. And that's not the Spider-Man film I was clamoring for, but I know for a fact, I have heard from critics and from people and from listeners of the show, that they want a grounded Spider-Man story that hits the human emotional aspect of it. That's what they're getting here.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Wasn't for me.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Wasn't as fun as I wanted it to be, because it was doing that, because it fractured these three characters in the last film, and it has to deal with the repercussions. The sadistic of it all is kind of hovering above the story and not really in the heart of those three characters. And so that's why it feels tacked on, as I think Stephen was right, too.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're not going to talk about exactly who she is playing, but I think the story of the Sadie Sink character kind of never really feels like it's one with the rest of the movie. It kind of feels like a... You know, it used to be that on a sitcom, you could kind of tell when you were suddenly watching something that was meant to be a backdoor pilot.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  There you go, backdoor pilot.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Or some other thing. And it was like, I understand the Brady's know these people, but this just feels like they're playing...

• 7:11Speaker 03

  This guy isn't one of the Golden Girls.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  What are you doing here, Ken Berry? This is Ken Berry, by the way.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  So that's kind of what this felt like to me. It felt a bit like they were just borrowing the opportunity to show her in this movie in order to do something else, which, obviously, like, they've done that a million times, but I think this was not one that particularly worked well for me. But that's partly because we had been away from Tom Holland's Spider-Man for almost five years, and I was really eager to get back into that story. And so having a lot of time taken up by something else, the kind of launch of this other thing, I didn't care for as much. I want to make it clear, I think we all feel the same way, which is, I don't look at this and think that they did a bad job of it.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  No, not at all.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Or that it's unsuccessful, really. It just depends on what you want. And I think you can get a lot of a clue of where they were going tonally with the fact that the friend they chose for him is The Punisher.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  And granted, it is a relatively jokey version of The Punisher.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  In fact, they've shunted a lot of the humor in the film onto the shoulders of Frank Castle, of Jon Bernthal. And that's what, we talk about what's effective, that wasn't effective.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Right. It's the replacement of Ned as his friend.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  With The Punisher as his friend, which is punishing, in a way. And so to me, I agree with both of you. I think they made it very well. I think Holland and Zendaya are both very good in this. I think his emotional conundrum was very well-presented and well-acted. But this is Spider-Man's Dark Knight of the Soul. And in a world full of Dark Knights of the Soul, including my own, I think I missed the... Even in the multiverse thing, which I'm not normally a big multiverse person, because I get discombobulated by the multiverse, as you're supposed to. But even though there's heavy stuff, too, there's a lot of lightness in the interplay

• 9:12Speaker 01

  between the three Spider-Men and with the villains. That's all really good stuff.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  I mean, No Way Home is a fantastic superhero movie. It is one of my favorite superhero movies. And so part of the issue with this one for me is it's following on the heels of something I loved so much, but taking away a lot of the elements that I loved best about it. I do think Jon Bernthal does give you a version of The Punisher that is probably the most interesting version of The Punisher to me. I'm not a Punisher guy.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Never have been, probably never will be. Like, the film knows he's always teetering into self-parody.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  And so the film plays with that a little bit. And clearly, he's there to set up this kind of Iron Man versus Captain America, two different ways into how to deal with a crisis. And one is burdened by the weight of morality, and the other one has this kind of by-any-means-necessary approach. But I'm not a Punisher guy. I was not craving an injection of that level of kind of, like, ultimate grim and gritty superhero character.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so what we're seeing here is a world-weary Peter Parker, which is kind of the whole thing that Jake Johnson is voicing in Into the Spider-Verse films. And I don't know if Tom Holland's Peter Parker could ever get to, could ever become that world-weary spirit, because there was something different about his performance, a sweetness, an essential sweetness. And the Jake Johnson Spider-Verse version has an edge that is just not here. And I think this film is sometimes struggling to give this version of Peter Parker an edge.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  And I don't know if that's what I want from him.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, it's interesting, because part of the issue here for me is that this is clearly the beginning of a story. And, you know, if you think about a movie like Avengers: Infinity War, and you think about where that movie left you at the snap and the disappearance of many of your favorite people, the feel of that movie is really, really heavy.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  But you know that there's another one coming. And I think one thing that's going to be interesting to see is that eventually, when we see the next piece of this, does that balance of sort of sadness and kind of triumph balance out differently? Because I think there's a good chance it will. It's just that this is the risk you take. And the other thing is, this was directed by Dustin Daniel Cretton. He directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. But more to the point, here, he directed Short Term 12, which is a very small, very intimate movie. One of the first things people really noticed Brie Larson in.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  So when you get a really good director of feelingsy business and you put them on a Dark Knight of the Soul movie, you're gonna get a particularly evocative, sad film. There's literally a card that says Spider-Man will return. And by the way-

• 12:22Speaker 03

  I was shocked, by the way.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by the way, while we are here, I think we can offer you a small piece of intel.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Preach it.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Right?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  I know where you're going with this.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Which is, you know, everybody sits at a Marvel movie and they wonder, is there a post-credit scene? Do I need to stay?

• 12:35Speaker 03

  It's been two and a half hours. You might have to go to the bathroom, but you're rocking back and forth in your seat.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And you're thinking, I don't want to miss anything if they're gonna do like a big reveal of something really cool, or if they're gonna do like a great joke, like the shawarma bit at the end of Avengers, right? Neither of those.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Is there a post-credit thing? Technically, yes. It does not give you very much more than Spider-Man will return.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Not since Harry Styles at the end of Eternals has there been more of a nothing at the end of a Marvel's film.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  You absolutely don't need it.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Head to the parking lot.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  You don't need it.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Avoid the crowd.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  There's no reason to say that.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Service journalism.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Service journalism, baby. We're here because we care, you know? I want to ask one other question, which is, since these movies started, I would say Zendaya has gone from like famous person to like sort of mega famous person. And I felt like maybe there was a little bit less of her in this than the movie would have benefited from having. And I wondered if it was because of all the other stuff that she does. I wondered if it was because of her busyness. But I can't tell whether it's just because of the place that they're at in the story.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  You don't get as much MJ because obviously they're separated mentally.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  I think it's that her character really doesn't have any agency here. Like, her character is kind of waiting for things to happen to her. And so she feels very ancillary to this story. And that's part of, I think, what throws off the fuel mixture.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this version of MJ is always talked about as being kind of dark and weird. And that has never really manifested on screen. Here, it really doesn't.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Doesn't.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  She's playing it very straight ahead, very straightforward. Yeah, I think she's great and their chemistry, believe it or not, is believable.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. I mean, who knew?

• 14:31Speaker 02

  But, but yeah, I mean, she's not given much to do except be rescued a couple times.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think the other element that I would mention is that has maybe kind of thrown off that fuel mixture that we've been talking about is that Aunt May died in the previous movie. And so he doesn't have her, he doesn't have Ned and MJ. And what he has instead, as we've already mentioned, is the Punisher.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Punisher and AI.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  So there's a way, yeah, yeah. But there's a way in which he's always been kind of surrounded by love, you know, for him. He's had loving people in his life, even his relationship with Tony Stark, you know? He's always had people who cared about him to interact with. And I think not having warm people who care about that character for him to interact with has also maybe thrown it off a little bit. But again, I'm talking about thrown off from what I have enjoyed. I'm not talking about thrown off from right or wrong, good or bad.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  And there's gonna be people who say, well, that's the story. The story is him coming to realize he needs to be with other people.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Like I said, Dark Knight of the Soul.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Dark Knight of the Soul. And it's fine, as long as it's not a slog to get to that realization. And it's not a slog. Fun movie, but it's just-

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And for a two and a half hour movie, I was not terribly aware of how long it was. I wasn't sitting there being like, this is long and boring.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  You know, what I was aware of, though, is whenever we had a rooftop scene, didn't so much happen in the street scenes, but whenever there's a rooftop scene, they've always felt like they take place on a soundstage, right? Because it's Hollywood. This felt like that rooftop is in the middle of a PS5 game. Like, that rooftop looks really, like, the quality of light or something, it just looks really fake.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  I think, to some degree, they've done that intentionally, though. There is some stuff that the people who made the film have talked about, that they were somewhat inspired by not just the comics, but also like-

• 16:18Speaker 02

  The game.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  The other movies, but also the games. And so it's like, I think some of that is a chosen aesthetic, because I agree with you. I felt the same way. But it kind of like weirdly worked for me because I felt like they were doing it with some intention, as opposed to like, this is supposed to look realistic and it doesn't.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  I agree with what Linda's saying. And I also, I've seen so many of these movies where so much of the action, by necessity, takes place in the darkness.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Like, in an alley at night, so that you can't even see who's doing what.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  I appreciate a brightly lit action scene. And I think it's one reason that I tend to like the action sequences in these films more than a lot of other superhero action.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I liked the action in this. I did not have as much the feeling that I often have with the big superhero movies of setup and then stall, stall, stall, stall, stall, stall, stall, battle, right?

• 17:14Speaker 03

  This has way too much ground to cover.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  It has a different rhythm. It has multiple kind of smaller rises and falls in the tension, which I think is really useful. So I do, in a lot of ways, think it's a successful movie. I just really miss the lighter. I think I come down in the same place as maybe both of you a little bit.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there are people who want this Spider-Man movie. More power to them.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I have no quarrel with that. Well, that is Spider-Man: Brand New Day. And up next, we're gonna talk about what is making us happy this week.

• 17:46Speaker 00

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  In a midterm election, it's hard to keep track of all those small down ballot races. So some voters are using AI chatbots to figure out who to support. Sometimes if you push back to hallucinations, the chatbot will confess that it made something up. But in other cases, you know, it will double down. What you should know about using AI for election research. Listen now on the NPR Politics Podcast.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week, What's Making Us Happy This Week. Glen Weldon, I'm gonna start with you. What is making you happy this week?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  It is that time of year again. The Jimmy Awards took place in June. We have discussed the Jimmy Awards before. This is a national competition for the best performers in high school musicals. They come to New York, they get coached, they perform together, and then they get solos. First in a series of medleys that make no sense, because you have, and this isn't actual, but this is kind of the vibe, you have Curly from Oklahoma, leading to Velma Kelly, leading to Anuzi, leading to Gomez Adams, to Eurydice. By the way, lots of Hades Town this year, lots out in the country. There must be a lot of 15-year-old Hermes and Hades.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Love it. Talk about more power to them.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they try to provide connective tissue during those medleys, because of course they do it with their theater kid. Big theater kid energy, but there is no ligament in the world that can connect these things together. But if you watch every year, as I've been doing, you start to see something I didn't think about, which is that the same kids show up. Because of course, you know, high school is a four-year prison term, so they're gonna keep coming back. They're gonna get several bites of the Big Apple. That is the Jimmy Awards. They have their own YouTube channel.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  So you can go back and revisit them on YouTube?

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Not the entire ceremony, but just like the musical elements.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  The performances, yeah, absolutely. I spent a lovely afternoon on Instagram, just kind of going through them. And particularly, I will admit, finding songs I knew.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Which is not all of them these days.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  These days, I'm like, oh, that's right, there was a musical made of that movie that was okay. Yeah, I love those kids. Thank you very much, Glen Weldon. That is the Jimmy Awards. You can find them on YouTube. Stephen Thompson, what is making you happy this week, buddy?

• 20:40Speaker 03

  So on one hand, I feel like nostalgia is a mind prison-

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  -that keeps us longing for a past that never existed-

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  -instead of working to build a better tomorrow.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  On the other hand, I am such a sucker for a band that sounds like I'm back at my old college radio station in 1993. So what I'm trying to say is that nostalgia in others is bad.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  There is a newish Australian band called Swap Meat that just put out an album I find totally irresistible. Big jagged gnarly guitars, a mix of salty and sugary voices, loud, quiet, loud arrangements. You can hear what I'm talking about in this song. It's called "I Know."

• 21:36Speaker 02

  I don't know if college radio is a genre of music.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  It is.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  That is quintessential.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Specifically, college radio circa 1993. And the fact that I was 21 at the time, total coincidence that I would pine for those days musically. But there's just such brightness, such playfulness. Not an ounce of fat on this whole record. I love it. That's Swap Meet. Their new record is called Mount Zero.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  All right. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson, for bringing very Stephen Thompsonian music to us here on Pop Culture Happy Hour. So what is making me happy this week? A few weeks ago, I talked about a writer named Sherry LaPeña, who writes thrillers. And I have been on a domestic thriller tear, which has brought me, perhaps inevitably, to Freedom McFadden. Freedom McFadden wrote The Housemaid, which was made into the movie The Housemaid with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried. And if you have seen The Housemaid, you know that it contains some wild twistiness. It turns out, this is the Freedom McFadden brand. And when I say twistiness, I don't just mean like regular thriller twistiness.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  I mean, you read the book and you go, what? To the point where some people, when they review her books, will be like, this was so ridiculous. It completely lost me. But I personally, since I tend to read books like this in one sitting in the evening on a night when I'm not watching baseball, I will tear through it. Very often, I end up going, I just go, no way. She loves not just an unreliable narrator, but like a whatever is past unreliable narrator. Her stuff is just, it's funny, but it's also really suspenseful. You just have to be ready for the fact that you're not going to know.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  And then when it hits you, you're going to be like, oh. And do I think she plays fair? Mostly, yes. A little bit, no, sometimes, but I don't mind because it's so fun when you hit the twisty parts. So if you are looking for a very, very twisty book, a couple of the ones I have read recently, there is one called The Divorce. There is one called Dear Debbie. And there is one called Never Lie. And all of those have absolutely delighted me with how absolutely whackadoodle they are. Love it. Absolutely love it. Freedom McFadden thrillers. That is what is making me happy this week. And that brings us to the end of our show. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for

• 24:17Speaker 01

  our newsletter at npr.org/popculturenewsletter. Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson, thank you so much for being here.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Delighted to see you both. This episode is produced by Mike Katsif and Hafsa Fathama and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next week.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

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