Above is a polaroid I took of my beloved Spider-Man when I was 8 or so. He came in a proper cloth suit but for some reason, I didn’t think that was shiny enough so I stripped him naked and painted on my version. It took me fucking ages.

I was obsessed with Spider-Man as a little kid.

If you’ve read stuff on here before, you’ll know that my early years were pretty grim. Apart from being the fattest kid in every school I got moved to, I was also the only non-white kid. And, in the 1970s, in England, every brand new day was my classmates and teachers inventing new ways to assault me. The teachers verbally, the kids with fists and sometimes more.

I escaped into science fiction, into Star Trek and Asimov and also into Marvel Comics. Yeah, I read any comic I could get hold of but Superman was like someone’s Dad. Spider-Man, he was a kid.

At school. Often getting bullied.

The bright, optimistic heart of Peter Parker was put through so much in those comics. Though I was a wee bit too young to truly get the emotions, I shared his heartbreak over Mary Jane. And then Gwen Stacy. For a lot of geeky young kids, Peter Parker was us, he bumbled along, he made mistakes, he was real and he felt pain like we did.

From the start of Brand New Day to the end credits, the tears were rolling down my cheeks. Here’s what my glasses looked like after:

I bloody loved the first Tom Holland Spidey film and then the two that came after, eh, they were okay. By Marvel standards, they were 10/10s but compared to Homecoming, they were a bit too… MCU-y? The twist at the end of No Way Home was a killer moment that almost re-deemed some of the over-stuffed narrative in the rest of the film.

Where Far From Home and No Way Home meandered, Brand New Day is up and off and bam, bam, bam from the start to the end. I don’t mean in action terms (though there is plenty of great brawling) but in emotional terms. The story is lean and fast, it is relentless, it is ruthless..

I am sooo fucking glad I knew nothing about the plot. When the Big Bad was revealed, I almost squeaked at how perfectly it all fitted. And all I knew about the overall emotional arc was that Peter misses MJ and Ned.

Please, please DO NOT spoil this film for yourself if you intend to see it, the less you know, the better. Hence this deliberately vague “review.”

At its core, Brand New Day is a tour-de-force of acting. Jacob Batalon, Tom Holland and Zendaya are flawless, they carom off each other in a way that is balletic, that made me gasp. The chemistry of these people with each other is clearly translated from their real-life camaraderie into these characters they’ve inhabited for so long. It’s beautiful.

Then there were the themes I wasn’t prepared for: the loss of family, the loss of identity, the straying from dharma. It was all a bit too much for me, to be honest.

Most recent Marvel films have not thrilled me. The barrage of CGI alternating with wincingly unfunny banter doesn’t work for me. The writing seems haphazard at best, lazy at worst.

Brand New Day is not that.

The mise-en-scene, the cinematography, the deft CGI, the soundtrack not being endless shitty needle-drops, all of it goes against the standard Superhero Blockbuster. Those things alone could make me love this film.

But the main thing? Spider-Man Brand New Day has huge, huge heart. It’s about all the things that make us human: love, family, friendship, honour, morality, duty, power and, yes, responsibility.

This is the Spider-Man I loved as a tiny child, a hero who was a real hero, not just an over-powered thug or a millionaire beating up poor people.

It’s very easy in life to lose your way, to lose touch with who you are and who you want to be. But redemption is possible, change is possible. Pick yourself up, remember that you are loved and that you, in turn, love. And, yes, tomorrow is a Brand New Day.