Pop Culture Happy Hour - Spider-Man: Brand New Day and What’s Making Us Happy

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Zendaya and Tom Holland are back in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the movie has a more grounded tone than we’ve seen from the franchise. But does it strike the right balance of fun and darkness? Directed by Daniel Destin Cretton, the film also features Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, and Sadie Sink.Looking for more spectacular Spider-episodes? Check out: 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' mixes fun and fan service'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' thrills in every dimensionConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport Pop Culture Happy Hour+See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

When we last saw Peter Parker, he'd lost everything. His family, his friends, and the whole world's awareness that he was, in fact, Spider-Man. Now in Spider-Man brand-new day, his beloved city is again in danger. And with nowhere to turn, he has to figure out a way to help. Tom Holland and Zendaya are back as Peter and MJ, but there are some new faces too, or at least some faces that are new to Peter's world. I'm Glenn Weldon. And I'm Linda Holmes.

And joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is, is our co-host, Stephen Thompson. Hello, Stephen. Hello, buddy. It's so good to see you. I will offer a little peek behind the curtain that we usually record at home, but for reasons, we are in Historic Studio 44 together on Tuesday morning, where we used to record this show for a long time. So if you sense that we're all gazing lovingly at each other, that is why. All right, so Spider-Man brand new day is the follow-up to 2021's Spider-Man No Way Home. That was the multiverse story where several different Spider-Man came together to fight a large cast of villains, and where, at the end, Dr. Strange, fixed an impending catastrophe by wiping out not only everyone's memory that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but everyone's memory of ever having known Peter. Now, Peter, played by Tom Holland, has been a recluse for several years, tackling low-level crime very effectively, but without the company of his beloved MJ, played by Zandaya, or his friend Ned, played by Jacob Bottalon.

Oddly enough, the only friend he hangs out with seems to be Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, played by John Bernthal, who knows him only as Spider-Man. In Brand New Day, two things are happening. One is that a mysterious force is repeatedly attacking the Department of Damage Control. But also, Peter seems to be undergoing some changes. He doesn't understand that are interfering with his web shooters and giving him terrible headaches, spider puberty. He'll have to fight the enemy, fix his own spider body. and maybe possibly find his way back to MJ and Ned. Spider-Man, brand new day, is in theaters now.

Stephen Thompson, I'm going to start with you. I know you were a very big fan of some of the previous movies in this standalone Spider-Man series. How did you feel about this one? Yeah, as you said, I really, really love these Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, in part because there is a lightness to them. Not only does Tom Holland bring this kind of impish, kind of boyish, quality to it, but the way the action moves, it moves with a lightness. Like the battle sequences

play out almost like dance routines. And that feels very different from a lot of the more leaden superhero action that we've grown accustomed to in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And so I tend to really love these movies in part because they have jokes and in part because they just have a buoyancy to them that is missing from so many others. This film, I think, think is a very effective film in this series. I think it's well made. I think the action sequences work really well. But there is a portentiousness to it and a dourness to it that for me, I found a little disappointing. I wanted more light. One thing this film really made me realize is how important the relationship between Peter Parker and Ned is, in part because they're buddies. There's

this buddy quality to the other films that this film does not have as much. And so also, this is a bridge sequel. This is the fourth of these films not counting Spider-Man's appearances and other movies. And it's clearly trying to get us not so much from like point C to point D, but from point C back to a new point A. And so it feels like it's trying to do a lot of plot business that is getting in the way of hijinks. Yeah, I get that. All right, Glenn, what did you think? I mean, this was fun, but Spider-Man occupies a very specific niche in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's the kid from Queens.

He can do space. He can do cosmic, but that's not his element. And if you put him in space, you're putting him there to kind of create the contrast. Right. Have him be like that guy from clerks who keeps saying, I'm not even supposed to be here today. That's what he's there for. So we're doing grounded here. And we're doing grounded for a very specific reason because people maybe weren't feeling the multiverse cosmic stuff. They certainly weren't feeling the Kang, the quantum mania stuff.

The quantum mania, no. Yeah. No, so here's where getting grounded. And here is how grounded this film is. There is a character whose superpower is depicted on screen with one, a sound effect, and two, Corrio, basically, with modern dance. And I do kind of like imagining them kind of sitting around a table at a mixer, maybe, and kind of introduce, I can turn into flame, and I have the proportionate strength and agility of a spider.

I can instigate a Twilithar flash mob. You know, that's my thing. I thought that was very effective, though. It's cool looking. It looks different. And it's creepy. Here's the thing. It looks so cool.

It is so weirdly kinetic. And it beats actors just grimacing at each other while, you know, flashy stuff goes on around them. It's so much better than that. And it's so much more effective. But we are pulling back. And as Stephen mentioned, we are in the, in the fuel mixture of Spider-Man. He's always very funny. He's always very sad.

He's both a two-stroke engine to this character. That's a very common combination. It is a very common combination. combination, especially in the MCU, but like he can be quippy and lighthearted, but he has racked with guilt and shame and angst and hear heartbreak and loneliness and let's just say depression. That's what's going on here. And that mix, you know, everybody, when you tell the Spider-Man story, you adjust the dial. And this dial is turned way over into angst and loneliness and heartbreak. And that's not the Spider-Man film I was clamoring for, but I know for a fact.

I have heard from critics and from people and from listeners of the show that they want a grounded Spider-Man story that hits the human emotional aspect of it. That's what they're getting here. Yeah. It wasn't for me. Yeah. Wasn't as fun as I wanted it to be because it was doing that because it fractured these three characters in the last film and it has to deal with the repercussions. The Sadie Sink of it all is kind of hovering above the story and not really in the heart of those three characters. And so that's why it feels tacked on as I think. Stephen was fun too.

Yeah. We're not going to talk about exactly who she is playing, but I think the story of the Sadie Sink character kind of never really feels like it's one with the rest of the movie. It kind of feels like a, you know, it used to be that on a sitcom, you could kind of tell when you were suddenly watching something that was meant to be a backdoor pilot. Or some other thing. And it was like, I understand the Brady's know these people. But this just feels like they're playing. This guy isn't one of the gold. And girls? What are you doing here, Ken Berry? He was Ken Barry, by the way.

So that's kind of what this felt like to me. It felt a bit like they were just borrowing the opportunity to show her in this movie in order to do something else, which obviously, like, they've done that a million times. But I think this was not one that particularly worked well for me. But that's partly because we had been away from Tom Holland's Spider-Man for almost five years. And I was really eager to get back into that story. And so having a lot of time taken up by something else, the kind of launch of this other thing, I didn't care for as much. I want to make it clear. I think we all feel the same way, which is, I don't look at this and think that they did a bad job of it or that it's unsuccessful, really.

It just depends on what you want. And I think you can get a lot of a clue of where they were going tonally with the fact that the friend they chose for him is the punishment. Right? Yes. And granted, it is a relatively joky version of The Punisher. In fact, they've shunted a lot of the humor in the film onto the shoulders of Frank Castle of John Berthal. And that's what we talk about what's effective. That was an effect.

Right. It's the replacement of Ned as his friend with the Punisher as his friend, which is punishing in a way. And so to me, I agree with both of you. I think they made it very well. I think Holland and Zendaya are both very very. good in this. I think his emotional conundrum was very well presented and well acted. But this is Spider-Man's Dark Night of the Soul. And in a world full of Dark Nights of the Soul, including my own, I think I missed the, even in the multiverse thing, which I'm not normally a big multiverse

person because I get discombobulated by the multiverse as you're supposed to. But even though there's heavy stuff too, there's a lot of lightness. and the interplay between the three Spider-Men and with the villains. That's all really good stuff. I mean, No Way Home is a fantastic superhero movie. It is one of my favorite superhero movies. And so part of the issue with this one for me is it's following on the heels of something I loved so much, but taking away a lot of the elements that I loved best about it.

I do think John Bernthal does give you a version of the Punisher that is probably the most interesting. version of the Punisher to me. I'm not a Punisher guy. Never have been, probably never will be. The film knows he's always teetering into self-parody. And so the film plays with that a little bit. And clearly, he's there to set up

this kind of Iron Man versus Captain America two different ways into how to deal with a crisis. And one is burdened by the weight of morality and the other one has this kind of by any means necessary approach. But I'm not a Punisher guy. I was not craving an injection of that level of kind of ultimate grim and gritty superhero character.

Yeah. And so what we're seeing here is a world-wary Peter Parker, which is kind of the whole thing that Jake Johnson is voicing in the Into the Spider-Verse films. And I don't know if Tom Holland's Peter Parker could ever get to, could ever become that. that world really is good because there was something different about his performance, a sweetness, an essential sweetness. And the Jake Johnson Spider-Bers version has an edge that is just not here. And I think this film is sometimes struggling to give this version of Peter Parker an edge. Yeah. And I don't know if that's what I want from him. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because part of the issue here for me is that this is clearly the beginning of a story. And, you know, if you think about a movie like Avengers Infinity War and you think about where that movie left you at the snap and the disappearance of many of your favorite people, the feel of that movie is really, really heavy.

But you know that there's another one coming. And I think one thing that's going to be interesting to see is that eventually when we see the next piece of this does that balance of sort of. of sadness and kind of triumph balance out differently because I think there's a good chance it will. It's just that this is the risk you take. And the other thing is this was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. He directed Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, but more to the point here, he directed short-term 12, which is a very small, very intimate movie. One of the first things people really notice Brea Larson in. So when you get a really good director, of feelingsy business and you put them on a Dark Night of the Soul movie,

you're going to get a particularly evocative, sad film. There's literally a card that says Spider-Man will return. And by the way- I was shocked, by the way. And by the way, while we are here, I think we can offer you a small piece of Intel. Preach it. Right. Which is, you know, everybody sits at a Marvel movie and they wonder, is there a post-credit scene?

Do I need to stay? It's been two and a half hours. you might have to go to the bathroom, but you're rocking back and forth in your seats. And you're thinking, I don't want to miss anything if they're going to do like a big reveal of something really cool

or if they're going to do like a great joke like the Schwarmah bit at the end of Avengers, right? Neither of those. Nope. Is there a post-credit thing? Technically, yes. It does not give you very much more than Spider-Man will return.

Not since Harry Stiles at the end of Eternals has there been more of a nothing at the end of a marvels. You absolutely don't mean. You don't need it. You don't need it. Avoid the crowd. There's no reason to say that.

Service journalism. Exactly. Service journalism, baby. We're here because we care, you know. I want to ask one other question, which is since these movies started, I would say Zendaya has gone from, like, famous person to, like, sort of mega famous person. And I felt, like, maybe there was a little bit less of her in this. then the movie would have benefited from having. And I wondered if it was because of all the other stuff that she does.

I wondered if it was because of her busyness. But I can't tell whether it's just because of the place that they're at in the story. You don't get as much MJ because obviously they're separated mentally. I think it's that her character really doesn't have any agency here. Like her character is kind of waiting for things to happen to her. And so she feels very ancillary to this story. And that's part of, I think, what throws off the fuel mixture. Yeah.

Yeah. And this version of MJ has always talked about as being kind of dark and weird. And that has never really manifested on screen. Here, it really doesn't. Doesn't. She's pulling it very straight ahead, very straightforward. Yeah, I think she's great. And their chemistry, believe it or not, is believable.

Yeah, right. I mean, who knew? But, yeah, I mean, she's not given much to do except be rescued a couple times. Yeah. I think the other element that I would mention is that has maybe kind of thrown off that fuel mixture that we've been talking about is that Aunt May died in the previous movie. And so he doesn't have her. He doesn't have Ned and MJ. And what he has instead, as we've already mentioned, is the Punisher.

Yeah. And so there's a way. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a way in which he's always been kind of surrounded by love, you know, for him. He's had loving people in his life, even his relationship with Tony Stark. You know, he's always had people who cared about him to interact with. And I think not having warm people who care about that character for him to interact with has also maybe thrown it off a little bit.

But again, I'm talking about thrown off from what I have enjoyed. I'm not talking about thrown off from right or wrong, good or bad. And there's going to be people who say, well, that's the story. The story is him coming to realize he needs to be. with other people. Like I said, Dark Night of the Soul. Dark Night of the Soul. And it's fine as long as it's not a slog to get to that realization.

And it's not a slog. Fun movie. Yeah. And for a two and a half hour movie, I was not terribly aware of how long it was. I wasn't sitting there being like, this is long and boring. You know, what I was aware of, though, is whenever we had a rooftop scene, didn't so much happen in the street scenes. But whenever there's a rooftop scene, they've always felt like they take place in a soundstage, right? Because it's

Hollywood. This felt like that rooftop is in the middle of a PS5 game. Like, that rooftop looks really, like the quality of light or something, it just looks really fake. I think to some degree they've done that intentionally, though. There is some stuff that the people who made the film have talked about, that they were somewhat inspired by not just the comics, but also like the other movies, but also the games. And so it's like, I think some of that is a chosen aesthetic because I agree with you.

I felt the same way. But it kind of like weirdly worked for me because I felt like they were doing it with some intention as opposed to like this is supposed to look realistic and it doesn't. I agree with what Linda's saying. And I also, I've seen so many of these movies where so much of the action by necessity takes place in the darkness. Like in an alley at night so that you can't even see who's doing what. I appreciate a brightly lit action scene. And I think it's one reason that I tend to like the action sequences in these films more than a lot of other superhero action. Yeah. Yeah. I liked the action in this. I did not have as much.

the feeling that I often have with the big superhero movies of setup and then stall, stall, stall, stall, stall, stall, battle, right? This has way too much ground to cover. It has a different rhythm. It has multiple kind of smaller rises and falls in the tension, which I think is really useful. So I do in a lot of ways think it's a successful movie. I just really miss the lighter. I think I come down in the same place as maybe both of you a little bit. Yeah, I think there are people who want this Spider-Man.

It would be. More power to them. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I have no quarrel with that. Well, that is Spider-Man brand new day. And up next, we're going to talk about what is making us happy this week. Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week?

Glenwell, and I'm going to start with you. What is making you happy this week? It is that time of year again. The Jimmy Awards took place in June. We have discussed the Jimmy Awards before. This is a national competition for the best performers. in high school musicals. They come to New York.

They get coached. They perform together and then they get solos first in a series of medleys that make no sense because you have. And this isn't actual, but this is kind of the vibe. You have Curly from Oklahoma, leading to Velma Kelly, leading to a newsy, leading to Gomez-Adams, to Uridic. By the way, lots of Hades Town this year. Lots out in the country, there must be a lot of 15-year-old Hermes and Hades. I love it. Talk about more power to them.

Yeah. And they try to provide connective tissue during those medleys. Because, of course, they do with their theater kids. Big theater kid energy. But there is no ligament in the world that can connect these things together. But if you watch every year as I've been doing, you start to see something I didn't think about, which is that the same kid show up. Because, of course, you know, high school is a four-year prison term. So they're going to keep coming back.

They're going to get several bites of the Big Apple. That is the Jimmy Awards. They have their own YouTube channel. So you can go back and revisit them on YouTube. Absolutely. Not the entire ceremony, but just like the musical elements. The performances, yeah. Absolutely.

I spent a lovely afternoon on Instagram, just kind of going through them. And particularly, I will admit, finding songs I knew. Sure. Which is not all of them these days. These days, I'm like, oh, that's right. There was a musical made of that movie that was okay. Yeah, I love those kids. Thank you very much, Glenn Weldon.

That is the Jimmy Awards. You can find them on YouTube. Stephen Thompson, what is making you happy this week, buddy? So on one hand, I feel like nostalgia is a mind prison. that keeps us longing for a past that never existed instead of working to build a better tomorrow. On the other hand, I am such a sucker for a band that sounds like I'm back at my old college radio station in 1993. So what I'm trying to say is that nostalgia in others is bad. There is a newish Australian band called Swap Meat that just put out an album I find totally irresistible, big jagged, gnarly guitars, a mix of salty and sugary.

voices, loud, quiet, loud arrangements. You can hear what I'm talking about. In this song, it's called, I Know. I don't know if college radio is a genre of music. It is. That is quintessential. Specifically, college radio circa 1993. And the fact that I was 21 at the time, total coincidence that I would pine for those days musically. But there's just such brightness, such playfulness, not an ounce of fat on this whole record. I love it. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's swap meet. Their new record is called Mount Zero. All right. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson for bringing very Stephen Thompsonian music to us here in Pop Culture Happy Hour. So what is making me happy this week? A few weeks ago, I talked about a writer named Sherry LaPena who writes thrillers.

And I have been on a domestic thriller tear, which has brought me perhaps inevitably to Freedom McFadden. Frieda McFadden wrote the Housemaid, which was made into the movie The House Made with Sidney Sweeney and Amanda Seifred. And if you have seen The House Made, you know that it contains some wild twistiness. It turns out this is the Frayda McFadden brand. And when I say twistiness, I don't just mean like regular thriller twistiness. I mean you read the book and you go, what? To the point where some people, when they review her books, will be like, this was so ridiculous. It completely lost me.

But I personally, since I tend to read books like this in one sitting in the evening on a night when I'm not watching baseball, I will tear through it. Very often I end up going, I just go, no way. She loves not just an unreliable narrator, but like a whatever is past unreliable narrator. Her stuff is just, it's funny, but it's also really suspenseful. You just have to be ready for the fact that you're not going to know. And then when it hits you, you're going to be like, oh, oh. And do I think she plays fair? Mostly, yes.

A little bit no sometimes, but I don't mind because it's so fun when you hit the twisty parts. So if you are looking for a very, very twisty book, a couple of the ones I have read recently, there's one called The Divorce. There is one called Dear Debbie, and there is one called Never Lie. And all of those have absolutely delighted me with how absolutely whack-a-doodle there are. Love it. Absolutely love it. Freedom McFadden Thrillers. That is what is making me happy this week. And that brings us to the end of our show. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org your newsletter. Glenn Weldon, Stephen Thompson, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Delighted to see you both. This episode is produced by Mike Katzif and Hufsofathema and edited by our

showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next week.