Team Radio 4 took a trip to Dubai Mall to watch the Fan Dawn Screening of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, 24 hours before its regional release, and here’s everything we think about the film WITHOUT REVEALING ANY SPOILERS.
Spider-Man is a cultural icon whose innate wit has carried across generations of actors and their stories. Breaking what once felt like the Spider-Man trilogy curse, Brand New Day makes Tom Holland the first live-action Peter Parker to lead a fourth solo film, reaching a milestone that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s versions never got the chance to achieve.
With such a legacy, a comparison between Tom Holland and his predecessors in the role is inevitable, especially after the events of the last film in this franchise. Paying full homage to the different iterations of Spider-Man’s adventures that we all grew up with, BND not only offers nostalgia for audiences who relate more closely to Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Men, but also for younger fans who have grown up with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker since 2017. With the same drama, loneliness, new struggles, new powers and so much more, Tom Holland brings a fresh yet deeper portrayal of the burdened character that is Peter Parker.
Tom Holland’s Peter Parker having to erase his existence from the memories of everyone he knows, including his love interest, MJ, and, most importantly, his best friend, Ned, is where we left off in the last film. This gives Brand New Day a tone of remorse and maybe even desolation on Parker’s part. A young Peter, grieving the loss of his only guardian, Aunt May, attempts to overcome something mundane, something we all experience: the urge to push away everyone we love when we need them the most. Without Ned or MJ by his side like before, Peter Parker starts his journey anew as a simple, friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.
He battles villains previously seen only in the Spider-Man video games and comics, which, among other things, trigger something new within his arachnid form. Will this metamorphosis change Spider-Man’s usual charm and heroic ethic, or will it simply make him stronger in the face of this film’s deadliest villain(s)?
Like any other Marvel blockbuster, there is so much more that Peter Parker goes through in this film, only some of which has been teased in the multiple promos on Sony Pictures Entertainment’s YouTube channel, creating expectations higher than the Empire State Building among fans.
Head to our Instagram page, @891radio4, to find out whether those expectations were met in our Brand New post, where some of the first audiences to watch Spider-Man: Brand New Day tell us exactly what they thought.
By Shagun Chhotwani
