Spider-Man: Brand New Day gives us an isolated Peter Parker who, despite being kept busy saving New York City, feels empty. That disconnection from everyone he loved fuels the most emotional entry of Tom Holland’s Spidey era.
Of course, there’s no shortage of massive action set pieces – it’s a rare 15-minute stretch that doesn’t include at least one major epic fight. But Peter’s packing a plethora of pensiveness, pining for his past. (Sorry for breaking out in alliteration; couldn’t resist.)
Picking up five years after Spider-Man: No Way Home, no one knows Peter Parker’s secret, and he’s keeping it that way to make sure MJ (Zendaya, The Drama) and Ned (Jacob Batalon, Reginald the Vampire) stay safe. However, that doesn’t stop him from stalking their socials, despite the pain it causes to see them living their best lives without him.
A super quick recap bridges the end of No Way Home with current events, which find the webslinger working closely with NYPD’s Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas, The Bear). The cops have come to depend on his superpowers to take down villains, including Scorpion (Michael Mando, Better Call Saul), while Peter’s constant monitoring of the police scanner serves as a way to keep busy as much as to help clean up the streets.
Peter’s continued emotional attachment to MJ, the love of his life (both on and off screen), wreaks havoc on his system and triggers a major meltdown in his hybrid human-spider DNA. He gets angry, his eyes darken, and what comes next isn’t pretty. Fortunately, it’s that emotional upheaval that helps him stave off the film’s big baddie. No spoilers here, but Spider-Man’s big foe in Brand New Day is one of the franchise’s most engaging.
And “engaging” is really the key to Brand New Day. We love Tom Holland’s Peter, and in this outing, he breaks our hearts while breaking bones. He’s surrounded by a stellar roster of Marvel Universe favorites, and it’s fantastic to see Mark Ruffalo hulking around. He’s like the wise old man to Peter’s upstart young’un – or, more aptly, a grizzled tutor to an aspiring student. Hulk smashes, battles Spidey, and generally causes chaos. And fans will love it.
Zendaya and Jacob Batalon are MJ and Ned. Period. They give the film its heart and ground Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Florence Pugh’s the comic relief, popping in while not wearing much as Yelena Belova and talking about Peter’s small-potatoes problems compared to what the Avengers deal with. And Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) is absolutely fantastic, solidifying her place as one of the most interesting actors of her generation. But Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle/The Punisher is half of a Spider-Man pairing we didn’t know we needed but definitely deserve. They fight, they make up, they hang out – it’s like an old married couple, if both spouses spend their days saving the world.
As for Tom Holland, he’s truly grown into the role. Holland channels Peter’s loneliness, his self-imposed isolation, and his commitment to remaining a decent human being despite the intrusive spider DNA coursing through his system. Asking if Holland’s the “best” Spider-Man isn’t fair, as the quality of the films (the screenwriting, direction, production design, and effects) is vastly different, and those elements impact our embrace of the actors who don the iconic Spider-Man costume. Holland has always been consistently solid, but Brand New Day sees him deliver his most textured, complex Spider-Man performance yet.
The effects deserve whatever praise is thrown their way, and the fights look genuinely brutal. What ultimately makes Spider-Man: Brand New Day such an entertaining addition to the franchise, however, is the lack of multiple multiverses and the need to keep track of which version of each character is involved in the action, when they are from, and how they know each other. This is a much more straightforward, easy-to-follow comic book film – and as someone who only knows these characters from their onscreen incarnations, I for one welcome this “brand” of storytelling.
GRADE: B+
Rating: PG-13 for some language, sequences of action, and violence
Runtime: 2 hours 25 minutes
Release Date: July 31, 2026
Directed By: Destin Daniel Cretton
This post was last modified on July 29, 2026 12:19 am