The fourth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s series of Spider-Man films, Brand New Day sees our hero fighting a variety of foes, both new and old. Slightly to my surprise, Tom Holland returns to reprise his most famous role – just as when someone who really likes warm things is happy to be presented something that is warm but even happier to be presented something that is warmer, I had assumed that because everyone likes Tom Holland so much they would probably like even more Tom Hollander. It can only be a matter of time.
Even though there’s a change of director this time, with Destin Daniel Cretton taking over from Jon Watts, there is continuity in the music department, with Michael Giacchino – one of the best in the business at this sort of thing – getting the chance to extend his familiar sound for the character.
And – after the previous three scores were all pretty much stylistic close cousins – for Brand New Day the composer really has extended the palette somewhat. His core idea is that his now very familiar (and top-drawer) theme for the character can be deconstructed for this new film, representing not just the character’s growing maturity but also a sense of loss – he has lost many of those close to him, lost his band of brothers – and we hear this right from the off in “Web Letter Days” as those familiar chord progressions are heard but without the usual flourishes and without quite the same vim.
It is still recognisably the Spider-Man theme – this actually isn’t always the case through the score, with Giacchino sometimes stripping it down so much that it can take a little while to recognise it. And it is at times quite sad – in “Mask Me No More Questions” for example, it really is down to the bare bones, and it’s quite emotionally charged. Perhaps my favourite variant comes in the beautiful piano solo in “Quick as a Flashback”, a touching piece of music.
The main antagonist (I won’t say who it is so as not to spoil it) gets a couple of variants on a theme – perhaps it’s not as memorable as the composer’s often are, relying a little more on texture and feeling than melody as such – but we hear it quite frequently, with some warped sounds a particular highlight, and sometimes it does battle with a new “Spidey goes bananas” type theme – hear that in particular in “Settling Old Scorpions”, a frenetic piece of action music featuring some vintage “bad guy” writing.
That’s one of several really good action sequences. While the score as a whole is certainly mellower than the previous ones in the series, it’s hardly a surprise that there’s still plenty of time for action. “A Good Day to Dive”, “Possession is Nine Tenths of the Brawl”, “Damage Control to Major Bomb” and others feature the sort of elaborate writing we’ve come to expect from the composer for such moments.
I like the way that Giacchino has found a way of keeping things fresh and interesting this deep into a series of films that he’s scored from the start: this new mellow, calm, mature sound for Spider-Man works really well and ensures the album stays fresh-sounding. While the familiar theme does eventually appear fully unleashed in its original form, this happens right at the very end, and even the end credits suite (not unpredictably called “Suite New Day”, though I’d have gone with “Brand New Suite” to signify the shift) is very different from the three previous ones, which all followed a similar pattern. The composer’s body of work for Marvel is really impressive and this is another very fine entry into it.
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