Brand New Day includes surprising callbacks to another Spidey movie

Having met two other versions of himself in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man drew some inspiration from his doppelgangers with his new suit featured in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Even in real life, Holland helped design the costume by researching what people liked about Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s spider suits. The result is the most comics-accurate Spider-Man suit to date, with bright, shimmering blues and without the added black sections that seemed to house the Stark tech in Holland’s previous get-ups.

While this change was expected thanks to tons of publicity done with the new suit, another link back to a previous version of Spider-Man came as more of a surprise in the film.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Spider-Man: Brand New Day

One of the major story arcs going on in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is that Spidey is undergoing a transformation not dissimilar to the one he presumably experienced when he first got bit by a radioactive spider. (We never actually got an origin story for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, but he most likely underwent a period of radical change as his body developed all these new powers.) As the movie explains, because Spider-Man has been stressed out due to his prolonged loneliness, he is undergoing something of a “rebirth.” Now, his senses are enhanced even more than they were before, and his eyes become black like a spider’s during intense combat, causing him to lose control. Most notably, Spider-Man now has organic webs.

The movie spends some time showing us Peter adapting to his new power set, as he’s overwhelmed on a rooftop from the sensory overload, and he’s struggling to get the hang of his new webs. While learning how to use them, he is a bit clumsy and unsure of himself. He occasionally crashes into things like store signs and water towers. The sequence is incredibly reminiscent of the very first Spider-Man movie from 2002, directed by Sam Raimi.

In that movie, when Spider-Man first learns of his powers, he’s also jumping around on rooftops to test out his newfound athleticism. During his first swing on a web, Maguire’s Spider-Man smashes into a building. He even tries out some voice commands to summon the webs, like “Go web!”, “Fly!”, “Shazam!”, and “Go web go!” This last bit is pretty directly referenced in Brand New Day, as Holland’s Spider-Man activates his organic webs via voice commands like “Go web” and “web stop” while he’s still learning how to use them.

Going in, many people thought that the “rebirth” moments featured in the trailers suggested we would be seeing Spider-Man transform into the monstrous Man-Spider in this movie. That wasn’t the case. Instead, we got a more simple power upgrade, but the transformation suits the plotline featuring Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey. Spider-Man is trying to design a way to limit his powers, so he invents an inhibitor that he winds up using on Jean to subdue her. Also, the power upgrade pays off incredibly well during a truly epic fight scene with the Hand.

Given the fact that Tom Holland has been Spidey for a decade, it’s a little bit surprising to see him undergo these kinds of growing pains now. Moments like the ones seen in Brand New Day have generally appeared at the beginning of Spider-Man’s story. But since a power upgrade would logically have a similar adjustment period, why not nod to the best-ever depiction of Spider-Man learning how to use his powers on the big screen?