Why ‘Spider-Man 2’ Is Still the Best ‘Spider-Man’ Movie

Warning: This article contains spoilers from “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is the best “Spider-Man” movie Tom Holland has ever starred in, but it is not the character’s greatest big-screen outing to date. The film, Holland’s fourth solo adventure as Peter Parker, is the first of his Marvel Cinematic Universe excursions in which he is not saddled with a mentor figure of some kind. The result is a film that, for once, does not feel torn between its Spider-Man and Marvel duties and feels just in service of Holland’s hero.

There are MCU cameos aplenty throughout the film, and supporting stars like Zendaya, Jon Bernthal and Sadie Sink nearly run away with it at points. But “Brand New Day” feels, in many ways, like the promise fulfilled of Marvel’s initial partnership with Sony. It is a film in which Holland’s Spider-Man lives in a world occupied by other superheroes, but as fun as it is to see him arguing with Bernthal’s Frank Castle or seeking advice from Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner, the movie’s focus remains on its friendly neighborhood web-head at all times.

That is a balance that Marvel’s previous “Spider-Man” movies have struggled to achieve, and it is one that “Brand New Day” does. For all of its many creative and financial achievements, though, it still lives in the shadow of one 22-year-old predecessor: 2004’s “Spider-Man 2.”

“Brand New Day” has more in common with “Spider-Man 2” than you would think. Both movies tell their version of a classic Spider-Man story, one in which Peter Parker is struggling to balance his personal life with his superhero responsibilities. In “Spider-Man 2,” his efforts to keep a steady job, pay his rent, maintain any kind of relationship with his lifelong love Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) and keep up with his schoolwork are constantly hampered by the fact that New York City is always in trouble. It is the closest that any superhero movie may ever come to telling a true everyman story. (Just try to imagine any single contemporary comic book movie including an image as devastatingly mundane as the one above from “Spider-Man 2.”)

In “Brand New Day,” Holland’s Peter has gone into an isolated form of self-exile. In the wake of the memory-erasing spell cast by Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) at the end of 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” everyone who ever knew Peter has forgotten him. He has decided, after watching his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) die at the hands of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), that this is for the best, and he has thrown himself completely into his Spider-Man lifestyle. It would be too simple to say that Peter’s increasingly terrible work-life balance in “Brand New Day” is chosen, but it is close.

He made a promise to Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ that he chose not to follow through on and he has decided that a life alone is the life he must have. It is a judgment he has come to about himself and it is, to be clear, an extremely in-character decision. It is the kind of self-punitive choice that Peter Parker makes in the comics all the time. From a dramatic standpoint, though, Peter’s struggles in “Brand New Day” feel more self-defeating and less outright inescapable than those everyday problems Maguire’s wall-crawler goes through in “Spider-Man 2.”

In “Spider-Man 2,” Peter’s problems manifest in physical ways. Watching Mary Jane get engaged to someone else while he remains in a terrible apartment he can’t afford, he begins to resent his superpowers and the responsibilities that come with them. He sees them not as gifts but as a burden. As a result, he loses them and is thus, for a time, left even more unmoored than he was before. He is forced to wear glasses again, but his personal life flourishes. His schoolwork excels and his relationship with Mary Jane becomes a source of joy again.

In “Brand New Day,” Peter’s commitment to being Spider-Man and Spider-Man only is literalized. He starts to become more spider than man and is therefore forced to decide who he really wants to be. Both this dilemma and the one in “Spider-Man 2” have happened in the comics, and you can choose for yourself which one you find more compelling. This writer would argue that the latter, Peter’s loss of his powers, forces the character into a more dramatically and psychologically thought-provoking state of crisis. Because if he can’t be Peter Parker or Spider-Man, then who can he be?

Both “Brand New Day” and “Spider-Man 2” force their heroes into conflict with anti-hero villains who serve as dark reflections of themselves. In the former, that role is filled by Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), an immensely powerful telepathic mutant on the search for her missing sister. Under director Destin Daniel Cretton’s hands, Jean is imagined as a young woman haunted by a similar loneliness as that plaguing Holland’s Peter. The world has stolen much from her in ways even more vindictive and sinister than the thefts that Peter has suffered at the hands of the multiverse by the time “Brand New Day” begins. 

Jean uses those losses as an excuse to further isolate herself and treat the world as horribly as it has treated her, regardless of the consequences. She is every irresponsible, self-destructive impulse that Holland’s Peter has been trying to keep in check, and while she pushes him to the very brink, he ultimately reaches and redeems her through kindness. She saves him in return, and “Brand New Day” later ends on a moment of imperfect human connection, as Peter steps out on a limb to reconnect with Ned, who miraculously remembers him.

This arc is similar to that in “Spider-Man 2” between Maguire’s Peter and Alfred Molina’s Otto Octavius, whose face still belongs 22 years later on the Mount Rushmore of superhero movie villains. A brilliant scientist that Peter idolizes, Otto is turned sour by grief and his own unchecked ambition. He puts his own dreams, his own desires, over everything else. In Otto, Peter sees a dark reflection of himself — a brilliant man who puts himself above others, no matter the costs. He ultimately saves Otto by reciting Aunt May’s earlier words to him in the film’s elegant climax, telling the defeated scientist, “Sometimes, to do what’s right, we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most — even our dreams.”

This moment brings “Spider-Man 2” to a bittersweet, dramatically satisfying conclusion, one in which Molina’s Doc Ock sacrifices himself to save the world and Peter learns to see the beauty in what he does again. Mary Jane chooses him in the film’s closing scene and “Spider-Man 2” subsequently ends — in an echo of “The Graduate” — on a close-up of her face as she watches him swing away and starts to understand the gravity of the life she has chosen with him. It is a hopeful, romantic conclusion, but one markedly more melancholic than that of “Brand New Day.” It is the culmination of “Spider-Man 2’s” efforts to tell a superhero story that actually confronts the real, human costs of its masked crusader’s life.

For all those reasons and more, “Spider-Man 2” still strikes a more vivid and affecting note than any of the web-slinging films that have followed it, including “Brand New Day.”

From an even more superficial perspective, despite the latter being made over two decades later, “Brand New Day” does not look as good as “Spider-Man 2,” either. There are more shoddy VFX shots scattered throughout the new film than you will find in “Spider-Man 2,” and no set piece in “Brand New Day” (or any other live-action “Spider-Man” film, for that matter) comes close to matching the dynamic, propulsive quality of the midpoint train fight between Maguire’s Peter and Molina’s Doc Ock. And that is not to mention the sheer, visceral quality of the film’s hospital sequence.

None of which is to say that “Brand New Day” is a failure. It is the best film Marvel and Sony’s partnership has yet produced and the first Marvel movie in years that leaves one feeling positive about the current state of the superhero film landscape. But if “Brand New Day” has proven anything (besides that Marvel would be wise to get to its X-Men phase as fast as possible), it’s that more comic book films could benefit from following in the footsteps of “Spider-Man 2.”

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is now playing in theaters. “Spider-Man 2” is streaming now on Hulu and Disney+.