‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Director Talks Peter Parker’s Emotional Growth

Last Thursday, I stepped through the doors of an unassuming sushi joint in Midtown Manhattan and found myself in Asian American Avengers HQ. At the far end of the bar, Celine Song and her husband Justin Kuritzkes were catching up with Dìdi director Sean Wang. By a booth across the way, Ronny Chieng held court with Olympic medalists Maia and Alex Shibutani, while Tan France milled about with Pretty Lethal’s Avantika and The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Minnie Mills. Michelle Yeoh swooped in to deliver a few warm hugs and then vanished again so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined her. And then there was the actual Avenger in our midst: Tom Holland, who made time with Zendaya to join their Spider-Man: Brand New Day compadres—castmates Jacob Batalon, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Tramell Tillman, as well as Marvel boss Kevin Feige and powerhouse producer Amy Pascal—at the head table.All of us had gathered to toast Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton, at a dinner hosted by the AAPI non-profit Gold House. Glancing around the room before we sat down to eat, Cretton, who is half-Japanese and grew up in Maui, reflected on how nice it was to see so much Asian talent in one room.Zendaya, Destin Daniel Cretton, and Tom Holland Courtesy of Wini Lao / Gold House“Until I did Shang-Chi,” he told me, referring to his 2021 Marvel debut, “I honestly didn't really know what I was missing. There’s like a blind spot in my brain where I didn’t fully connect my culture with the work that I did. And it was a pretty big realization on Shang-Chi that I had never really been on a film set where I was surrounded by people who looked like me or had a similar cultural upbringing. It was pretty life-changing.”In the same breath, though, Cretton cautioned that things hadn’t changed nearly as much for Asian Americans in Hollywood as it might’ve seemed in the wake of blockbusters like Crazy Rich Asians hitting big at the box office and Everything Everywhere All at Once sweeping the Oscars. “A lot of things happened in this industry that gave new opportunities during an expansion bubble, and a lot of those opportunities began to fall away when that bubble burst,” Cretton said. “Everything is a giant question mark as to where we go next. But that doesn’t change the way that I feel about where movies and storytelling should be, because it should reflect the audience who’s watching it.”Michelle Yeoh and Destin Daniel Cretton Courtesy of Wini Lao / Gold HouseFor now, Cretton has Spider-Man: Brand New Day to celebrate. The movie, which hits theaters on July 31, marks a new peak in the 47-year-old’s career arc: He broke out in the early 2010s with microbudget indies like I Am Not a Hipster and Short Term 12, graduated to studio dramas like The Glass Castle and Just Mercy by the end of the decade, and then earned a spot as one of the most capable hands in the MCU. Earlier this year, Cretton followed up Shang-Chi by co-creating and directing several episodes of Wonder Man, easily the finest of Marvel’s rather checkered TV offerings, a buddy comedy that smashed together The Studio’s unsparing Hollywood sendups with Atlanta’s weirdo instincts. (All he’d say about when we might next see Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s reluctant superhero? “I hope soon.”)And while Brand New Day is a big-budget action behemoth, Cretton says he was still able to port over some of the character work that defined Wonder Man and his early projects.Celine Song, Justin Kuritzkes, Destin Daniel Cretton, and Amy Pascal Courtesy of Wini Lao / Gold House“This is a film about the importance of connection,” he explained. “And I think Peter Parker’s journey in this movie is extremely relatable to the way that a lot of us feel right now, in a time where you can be in a city like this one and it’s still very easy to feel alone. And in this particular movie, we’re watching Peter Parker go from a place of being completely isolated to figuring out the importance of reconnecting to people he loves.”Those might sound like more mature themes than you’re used to seeing in a web-slinging Spidey flick, but Cretton was directing an older, wiser Holland who was coming directly from his profound experience making The Odyssey. “You can’t come off a Christopher Nolan movie and not have picked up some great habits,” Cretton said of his leading man. “I would imagine that it potentially allowed him to be more daring, to take more chances, to take bigger swings, to not lead from a place of fear. He was wonderful.”