Movie Review – ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ is a slower, deeper Spidey — for better and worse

Spidey is back! Four years after the world forgot who the man behind the mask was, Peter Parker (Tom Holland), aka Spider-Man, is back in action in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. For those who forgot, at the end of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker asked Dr. Strange to cast a spell that erased everyone’s memory of who he is — including his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and the love of his life, MJ (Zendaya). That great responsibility Parker feels every day means doing whatever it takes to protect the people he loves.

With no friends and no life, Parker is left protecting the city on his own, his only real connection is with Detective Jean DeWolff (The Bear‘s Liza Colón-Zayas). DeWolff and Spider-Man have a solid working relationship, and like the rest of the world, she has no idea who’s under the mask. Still, even in their brief exchanges, she can tell Spider-Man can’t keep doing this alone. Meanwhile Ned and MJ, both recent MIT grads, are roommates in the city while Parker holes up in an abandoned, spiderweb-covered apartment across town.

When a new threat emerges, Spider-Man has to stop the villain before the city — and MJ and Ned along with it — gets caught in the crossfire. It’s best not to say much more, since part of the fun here is not knowing who else shows up from earlier films and who reported addition Sadie Sink (of Stranger Things fame) plays. See it soon, and steer clear of spoiler-heavy articles if you can. Director Destin Daniel Cretton told The Hollywood Reporter, “I wish people didn’t know anything when they go in to watch this movie, but we’re not doing it for any other reason but to protect the experience of the fans. And whoever goes on opening weekend, you are going to have a much cooler experience if you go in not knowing certain things.”

Cretton, who directed 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and more recently a few episodes of Wonder Man, takes on his biggest job yet behind the camera. Spider-Man: Brand New Day invests in character development far more than any Spider-Man before for better and worse. Digging into Parker’s psyche gives Holland a meatier role than he’s had in the past, but it also means less action overall. Working from a grounded script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, Cretton uses all 145 minutes to sit with a lonely Peter Parker and the toll that isolation takes on him. Stressing the all because this is the first Spider-Man film when clock watching doesn’t feel inappropriate.

To its benefit (or maybe detriment), the film piles on villains like no film before with the ultimate one being far too obvious to anyone who has watched a movie before. One late fight scene, however, where Spider-Man takes on multiple threats at once, ranks among the best-shot action sequences in Marvel history and will leave fans wanting more.

2026 is shaping up to be Tom Holland’s summer, with back-to-back number-one openings that could both end up crossing a billion dollars. Two weeks in, Spider-Man: Brand New Day — riding the biggest first-day U.S. presale since Spider-Man: No Way Home and the strongest UK and Australian presales in a decade — is projected to clear $500 million in its opening weekend alone, while The Odyssey has already crossed $630 million worldwide in just two weeks. At this point, the only thing standing in Holland’s way might be Holland himself, since theaters only have so many screens to go around.

The two films premiering back-to-back almost didn’t happen — nor did Holland’s part in The Odyssey as both movies were scheduled to start filming on the same day. As the story goes, Holland called Sony himself and got them to push Spider-Man’s start date, a move that also freed up Cretton to direct. Holland has said, “The Odyssey almost saved Spider-Man because we wouldn’t have had Destin.” Zendaya, for her part, joked she’d have left him if he’d skipped The Odyssey. Suiting up for a fourth solo outing (seventh counting Avengers films), Holland still passes for a young Peter Parker despite turning 30 this year and here he plays the character at his most vulnerable yet.

Holland isn’t the only actor doing double duty. Zendaya appears in both films too, as Athena in The Odyssey and MJ here, while Jon Bernthal plays King Menelaus and Frank Castle. Zendaya and Holland’s chemistry is electric in every scene they share in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. One of Hollywood’s best-dressed and most gifted young actresses, Zendaya gets to show a new side of MJ here. Bernthal, meanwhile, brings the Punisher to the big screen for the first time, though like a lot of the Marvel TV crossovers, he doesn’t quite land with the same impact as the original superheroes. Mark Ruffalo’s return as Bruce Banner/Hulk has the same problem — six films in nine years, the character and his CGI alter ego are starting to feel worn out.

After half a decade of shrinking theater attendance, 2026 looks like a record-breaking year, driven, somewhat surprisingly, by Gen Z and millennials, while Gen X and boomers mostly stay home. Even with DC’s Supergirl flopping, Spider-Man: Brand New Day — along with smaller, sharper films like Obsession and Backrooms — proves people still show up when there’s something worth showing up for. Hopefully studios take the hint, and superhero movies keep trending toward better writing from here.