It's been a long, lonely road for Peter Parker. After the world-altering events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the friendly neighborhood web-slinger is truly on his own—no Stark tech, no Avengers backup, and no one who remembers he's Peter. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tom Holland's hero is at his lowest point, fighting crime full-time while watching his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) move on without him. But this time, he finds an unlikely mentor in Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, a character famously rooted in R-rated violence. The film also introduces Sadie Sink to the MCU and brings back Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner.
In a recent interview with Collider, Holland, Bernthal, and Batalon opened up about working with director Destin Daniel Cretton, whose vision for the franchise has taken it in a bold new direction. Holland couldn't contain his excitement after seeing the finished film for the first time. "It is above and beyond what I thought it was going to be," he said. "Destin is a filmmaker with a level of talent that you rarely come by. He has found a way to grow this franchise and to make the movie feel bigger, and to make the action feel more dangerous, and to make the stakes feel higher without sacrificing the emotion and the heart."
Holland admitted that his first screening was so overwhelming that he immediately asked to watch it again. "I finished it the first time, and I ran upstairs in Burbank at Marvel Studios, and I was literally jumping up and down with the editing team and Destin." Batalon echoed the sentiment, saying the script was already great, but seeing it all come together "put a big smile on my face."
Bernthal, who hasn't yet seen the final cut, praised the film's focus on character. "It felt enormously human," he said. "I was very surprised, in the making of it, how much attention to character and, like Tom said, to emotion and just to the fractured human connection between these characters."
One of the biggest questions surrounding Brand New Day is how the Punisher—a character known for his brutal, no-holds-barred approach to justice—fits into Spider-Man's PG-13 world. Bernthal explained that the creative team dug deep into that very issue. "Would we buy that he could walk off of One Last Kill and walk into this world, and go back and forth?" he asked. "I think we explored it fully." He credited Colton Hill, a Green Beret who worked with him on One Last Kill, for helping maintain the character's core identity. "I was really blown away by how open these guys were to really exploring that issue and to diving into it, and not to run away from it."
The film also introduces a startling new mutation in Peter's transformation, triggered by his isolation, as he faces an enemy he can't see. For fans wondering how the Punisher's R-rated world can coexist with Spider-Man's lighter tone, Bernthal assures that the debate between the two characters—one who believes killing is never justified, the other who sees it as the only way—is central to the story.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31. For more on the evolution of the character, check out Spider-Man's wildest comic book evolutions before Brand New Day. And if you're a fan of the web-slinger in video games, don't miss the best Marvel video games of all time, ranked.
