Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton | Written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers | 145 min | ▲▲▲▲ | In Cinemas

I have to own the fact that my expectations when I walked into Spider-Man: Brand New Day were solidly mid. Like the broader culture, I think I’ve been suffering from a little bit of superhero fatigue, and while some of the recent Marvel movies haven’t been awful, certainly better than the Distinguished Competition has offered in their shared universe, the feeling of momentum of the first couple of phases of the MCU hasn’t been sustained.

I’m surprised to report how good this movie is. It’s certainly the finest Marvel movie since Spider-Man: No Way Home back in 2021, and can hold its own among the best of the web-spinner’s movies going all the way back to the Sam Raimi trilogy. It offers a genuinely new emotional landscape for the character by separating him from the first three Tom Holland pictures — this isn’t a coming-of-age movie, or a teen adventure, it’s a more mature offering dealing with, for want of a better euphemism, adult themes.

For starters, this is a genuine New York movie, which is such a pleasure. Though I gather some of it was shot in Glasgow, and maybe London — I think I recognized a location there — what they shot in New York makes it feel genuine. And Spider-Man is now definitely a New Yorker. He yells at people in the street in a Queens accent. He sounds like a real goombah. I’d wager he spends more time in the suit in this film than any of the others — this is undeniably a Spider-Man movie, as much or more than a Peter Parker movie.

It was four years ago when the world forgot Peter Parker thanks to a Dr Strange spell, and he’s been living a solitary life. He still checks up on his old pals on Instagram, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon), who’re just finishing university and living their best lives.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man is fighting villains like Scorpion, Tombstone, The Hand, and Tarantula, and earning fans in the streets of the city.  I recognized all kinds of visual references directly inspired by the comics, which are a lot of fun. I was also reminded of one of the best bits of one of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies, where he’s helping fire-fighters put out a blaze and tackling the Rhino.

Except… except… this Peter is deeply unhappy. Even though he’s got a cool, teched-out apartment (it’s a little unclear how pays for it), he’s very much alone. His best friend is a police captain, Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), who he chats with on the phone but who he doesn’t really know. He misses his aunt May (Marisa Tomei, in flashbacks), who perished in the last film, and whose death he feels responsible for. He chose this existence to keep his friends safe.

Even then, he can’t. There’s a superhuman who keeps attacking Damage Control — that’s the agency who cleans up after superhero battles, and policing the hero community, run by Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman). The superhuman can take control of people’s minds, but she can’t get control of Spider-Man. Still, she learns who’s important to him and he’s forced to, once again, rescue MJ.

(I thought maybe the villain was Karma, a Vietnamese mutant introduced by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller in the comics, but it’s not. I won’t say who it is, but she’s played by Sadie Sink, and when her name is given, the audience I saw the movie with applauded — this is someone they’ve been waiting for.)

Making matters worse for Spider-Man, his powers are going haywire. He seems to be evolving in uncomfortable ways — mutating, you could say — which makes him much more sensitive to his environment. This is a parallel with the Maguire wall-crawler, who seemed to struggle more with the visceral nature of his powers.

All of this escalates of course, bringing in a few familiar faces from the MCU, including The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and the Black Widow (Florence Pugh).  And rather than feel shoe-horned in, they all offer something special to the story without overshadowing the central issues and themes — What happens when you’re isolated from your community… from your loved ones? And what happens when you can’t really control your own power… where you might hurt someone. Does that make you a monster?

It’s not a perfect movie. Some of the special effects around the arrival of a genuinely monstrous character don’t look too great. The disposition of who is the real villain of the piece is telegraphed from the start, anyone could see that coming. And I wondered about a few plot issues — like what’s the story with MJ’s boyfriend. The actor (Eman Esfandi) has an unsettling resemblance to Jian Ghomeshi.

But this marks a genuine departure from what’s gone before, and a refreshing one. If Marvel can manage quality like this going forward, the MCU project might still have a lot of life left in it.