For all the talk of superhero fatigue, one reality is abundantly clear. Spider-Man is still very, very popular. The world of the MCU may not know who Peter Parker is anymore, but the friendly neighborhood webslinger still brings crowds to the theaters.

The title Brand New Day suggests a kind of new adventure for Spider-Man. The film itself isn’t exactly interested in that. Instead, it’s mostly concerned with the ramifications of the end of the last film, a new era firmly rooted in the past.

Peter (Tom Holland) is by himself in New York, eating Little Caesars pizza and being a computer genius in a dumpy apartment. He’s very upset that Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) have moved on without him, sharing an apartment in New York together after graduating from MIT. On his own without The Avengers, Peter is embracing the character’s origin as a street hero, occasionally teaming up with The Punisher (Jon Bernthal).

But something isn’t right with Peter. His spider hormones are all out of whack. A visit to Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) leads him to take his healthcare into his own hands, a process that might have yielded better results if a mysterious figure (Sadie Sink) wasn’t going around possessing all the people around him.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton does an admirable job making Brand New Day feel like something original. The cinematography is gorgeous, and the pacing is different from typical Marvel fare. Holland has grown up quite a bit over the years. This version of Peter Parker is certainly compelling, even if the story around him isn’t all that interesting.

While Brand New Day might look a little different from the rest of the MCU, the story is still firmly rooted in franchise tropes. There are too many characters for anyone to have a chance to breathe. The action sequences are fairly underwhelming, with lackluster special effects. The decision to mess around with Peter’s powers feels like something out of Superman.

The biggest casualty of the film’s lack of focus is Zendaya, reduced to the mere object of Peter’s affection. Agency lies at the heart of her story, as she lost her memories of Peter at the end of the last film. That lack of agency predictably pigeonholes what Zendaya can do with the character.

That whole dynamic weighs on the concept of a “brand new day.” This is not a new day at all. It’s merely picking up the pieces from the last movie. The first three Holland Spider-Mans formed a trilogy of sorts, with “home” in the title. This new movie suggests a different path that never really comes, which kind of makes sense. Those movies were not really a trilogy. All four are part of the MCU, playing by the MCU rules.

There is still a lot to enjoy in the movie. Holland’s chemistry is pretty perfect with the whole cast, but particularly Bernthal. The film might have been better off letting the two of them do their own thing the whole time, a buddy street crime film. The stakes aren’t exactly earth-shattering here, which is a refreshing change of pace, but the third act doesn’t exactly jell either.

Brand New Day is very entertaining, while never quite breaking free from the problems that have stagnated the broader MCU. The film is too tethered to its franchise obligations to ever get a chance to do its own thing. Worse than that, it feels oddly small at times, and not in a good way.

These movies used to think bigger. Now, hormones are the villain. Loneliness is an interesting subject for a superhero movie to tackle, and certainly a compelling one. The trouble is, the MCU is far too busy to ever let Peter have a moment to himself. The end result is the same cluttered mess we’ve seen dozens of times before.

It can be easy to overcomplicate the troubles that have plagued film adaptations of DC Comics for the past decade. Zack Snyder’s Ayn Rand grimdark nonsense was never going to have a ton of mainstream appeal, but efforts to course-correct the franchise hit plenty of avoidable snags. Time and time again, these movies just weren’t very good.

James Gunn and Peter Safran were brought on not just to execute a soft reboot, but to make good movies. Last year’s Superman was a promising start for the new administration. Just a year later, the abominable Supergirl takes us right back to where we started.

A loose adaptation of Tom King’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the film takes us away from Earth, as Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) tries to find her place in the universe after the destruction of her homeworld. Depressed and lonely, she spends her days drinking on planets in orbit around a red sun, which suppresses her powers, and her liver. Her libations are interrupted by a young girl Ruthye (Eve Ridley), whose family was murdered by Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). What started as a typical Western revenge story takes on additional emotional stakes as Krem shoots Krypto, Kara’s pupper and breakout star of Superman, with a poison dart, sending Kara scrambling to find the antidote within seventy-two hours.

Alcock is very comfortable in the lead role. The Supergirl character has been a challenge for DC Comics for decades. The CBS/CW Supergirl leaned into that all-American image that her cousin is known for. Director Craig Gillespie definitely doesn’t want Kara to be emulating a Boy Scout, but this version of the character doesn’t really have a ton of personality either. She’s an alcoholic. That’s pretty much her whole characterization.

We get some flashbacks of Krypton falling apart and the subsequent fall of Argo City that might appeal to hardcore fans, but the pieces don’t really come together in a way that doesn’t feel like a generic coming-of-age story bending over backwards to create stakes. This dynamic is on display most with how often the film needs to tell us what kind of sun each system has. Part of the problem with depicting the Superfam on screen is how ridiculously powerful they all are.

To create drama, people have to be able to challenge the hero. The film could achieve that either by having a really strong villain or a lot of Kryptonite. Krem is kind of a joke, a cookie-cutter comic book villain with no personality. Gillespie has zero ability to manage Kara’s power level, making the whole exercise into a pathetic plot device. She’s powered up when she needs to be, and screwed when the mechanics of narrative demand it.

For whatever reason, this film felt the need to include Lobo (Jason Momoa, who previously led the DCEU as Aquaman) in an extended cameo. The special effects are really bad. Part of what made Tom King’s original story work so well was that it felt like its own thing, with beautiful artwork from Bilqus Evely. This film looks like every other D-list superhero romp sitting at the bottom of the bargain bin.

Gillespie never really overcomes the original sin at the heart of this mess, an entire movie built around a single woman’s problem with drinking. It’s often said that alcohol is not a substitute for a personality. James Gunn might have kept that in mind with this woefully pathetic narrative.

We can certainly have sympathy for Kara’s plight, being one of the last survivors of the Kryptonian race. But beyond the generic hero’s call to “do good,” there’s just nothing really here to leave any kind of impression. The film desperately wants to lean into Kara as an anti-hero, but the film spends no time exploring her as a person.

That might not matter as much if this film had anything going for it. The action sequences are terrible. In some ways, it’s nice to have a superhero narrative where the world isn’t ending, but this third act is a joke. Even at a brisk 108 minutes, the whole thing feels way too long.

Much has been said over the past few years regarding how superhero films don’t really feel essential anymore. Genre fatigue is an easy excuse that doesn’t really apply here. Gunn built a lot of goodwill by delivering a strong Superman movie last year. For whatever reason, the new DCU chose to squander all of that with an absolute nothing of a feature. Supergirl is boring, ugly, and sloppy. Worst of all, I don’t think anyone can explain why it exists.