Audiences have witnessed Peter Parker facing his enemies for decades on the silver screen. Yet, in Brand New Day, Spider-Man must face the ultimate enemy — himself. And it isn’t just the symbiote this time. As we catch up with our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, he is finally doing friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man things. Following the world-altering events of No Way Home, where his Aunt May died and his best friends were forced to forget him, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has time to be the hero of Queens that fans have been hoping to see for years. But all is not as well as it seems. Beneath the façade of success, there is a workaholic trying to white-knuckle through the day.
(Spoilers ahead!) The film begins with Peter discovering he now possesses terrible, potent powers, and he doesn’t know why. He can hardly understand them — let alone control them — so he does everything he can to suppress them. Meanwhile, a faceless horror that inhabits minds is building a presence in New York alongside Peter’s personal crisis. Peter is stuck. He can’t control his own actions, a faceless new enemy threatens the city, and he has lost every meaningful relationship to him in his life. In a tailspin, Peter hits rock bottom in a grim scene when he loses control and nearly kills a police officer. Peter becomes the very villain he sought to subdue.
In a desperate grasp for help, Peter reaches out to Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk, the only man Peter knows who has tamed his inner beast. Banner gives him the idea for what he needs to stamp out his new powers. Building on the technology Banner invented to suppress the Hulk, Peter designs a new gadget that neutralizes his DNA on a molecular level. Peter can now suppress his inner spider. In his genius, Peter asks Banner if he could use this tech theoretically to limit any superpower — an invention that would have a massive impact on the greater MCU. Here, Banner asks him the most important piece of dialogue in the film, paraphrased, “How would you decide whose powers deserve to be limited, and whose do not?” Peter can’t answer him, but Peter doesn’t really care in this moment. He is so fixated on his technical problem, he can’t imagine the antidote is far deeper than a piece of technology can provide.
This piece of dialogue with Banner highlights a key question: What makes a monster, and what makes a man? This question, which I draw from Disney’s adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is still important today, and Destin Daniel Cretton’s spin on Spider-Man centers a similar question in the story. Parker joins a list of archetypal characters — Hulk, Quasimodo, Elsa, Frankenstein’s monster, etc. — who know the destruction of which they are capable and who attempt to suppress it on their own. Yet their strivings to hide, suppress, and run from their destructive tendencies never works. What these characters fail to recognize is, in each of these stories, it will take someone outside of themselves to bring a resolution. They can’t do it alone.
For Peter, he attempts to suppress his dangerous powers with physical exertion, mental effort, and technological advancement. He struggles to let the memory-addled Mary Jane see his effort, he can barely ask his frenemy Frank Castle for assistance, and he refuses to level with Banner. He is afraid. Thematically, Banner has clarified for Parker what he believes to be his only option: destroy this hardship before it destroys you. Peter has forgotten what he once knew: he can’t make it on his own and desperately needs help. He needs a person unafraid of his power who can give him what he needs to face the monster within.
And it is here Peter’s foil enters the story: Jean Grey, the face of the faceless horror. Jean has similarly faced her own monster. Her power to control others is astonishing. But her response is not to suppress her power but to embrace it. Jean is out for revenge against those who have kidnapped her big sister. While an understandable character motive, it drives Jean to terrible things. She murders and destroys along the path to find her sister. In the climax of the film, Jean is prepared to destroy everyone around her when she takes control of Peter’s mind. There she meets a surprising friend, a tender memory of Peter’s deceased Aunt May, where she delivers a twist on the famous Spider-Man motto:
This is what I want you to know. You’re beautiful. And the people who love you, we love you not because you’re special. We love you because you’re you. I want you to remember that. That’s your deepest responsibility. Never forget that, no matter how powerful you become.
As Jean listens to May’s love for Peter — her understanding of his frightening powers and her commitment to walk alongside him no matter what happens — Jean’s hard heart begins to melt. What Jean needs most is for someone else to understand her powers, accept her, and offer her love in the depth of her sorrow and brokenness. She needs grace. As May gives Peter grace in his memory, Jean then receives this grace from Peter, and it transforms everything for her.
The story of Spider-Man resonates with millions. Shattering global records, it is evident folks long for a brand-new day of their own. It is evident we desire to be free from our personal propensity for self-destruction. While none of us are, likely, at risk of becoming a large green monster, we struggle with destructive tendencies that threaten to shatter us if we allow ourselves to give into them, like Jean, or allow them to isolate us, like Peter. Only when we recognize these inner monsters will our hearts be prepared to receive grace. Like Peter and Jean, we need a friend who truly understands our hazardous nature and fully loves us all the same. We need an Aunt May to offer us the hope of a brand-new life. The antidote to our sin and shame is not working harder to make ourselves palatable. The antidote is found in the application of grace to a weak and weary heart.
At the heart of the Christian story is a God who refused to leave us to our own futile devices. It may seem too good to be true, but stories like Brand New Day resonate in our hearts because they point us to the greater story in which we live. We are drawn to characters like Aunt May because we long for someone to rescue us from ourselves. The story of Jesus’ incarnation contends that God became a man who dwelt among the broken, received the weak, loved the outsider, and died to guarantee the salvation of his people. Jesus took on our failings, met us in our loneliness, and brought us hope for restoration. To him, we are beautiful — no superpowers necessary.
