2026 | PG-13 | starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, Sadie Sink, Tramell Tillman | directed by Destin Daniel Cretton | 2 hrs 25 mins | 5 out of 5 stars |
Having wished everyone forgot about Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter (Tom Holland) now works exclusively and anonymously as Spider-Man, watching from afar as his former best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya) go off to college while helping the NYPD bust street-level criminals. Suppressing this side of himself is causing his spider DNA to mutate bringing out his more animalistic side, all the while a powerful new villain that can remotely possess any body, hiding behind average citizens to strike out against the super-human Department of Damage Control. These dual conflicts force Parker to seek help from Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) to suppress his instincts and The Punisher, Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), to take on the mysterious telepath while trying to save his friends and the city.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day probably still works as a stand-alone movie. It’s that sturdy and that satisfyingly self-contained, but it works even better as a payoff to the promise of Spider-Man delivered not just with No Way Home’s cliffhanger, but in all of the Tom Holland series, and frankly in every Spider-Man film since Sam Raimi’s gold standard Spider-Man 2. It’s an evolution in the story, characters, tone and maturity for a character that for decades was shackled in reboot mode while Sony recast and restarted it trying to just keep the copyright. Now Spider-Man is 4 films deep, given room to breathe and evolve, with character dynamics that effortlessly pay off between his friends and his late mother (Marisa Tormei). This movie doesn’t just take the set-up from the end of No Way Home, resolve it and move onto the next adventure. It explores what it’s like for Peter to completely lose his friends, family and his touch with reality in order to keep them safe for its entire running time.
Starting at the top. The movie is gorgeous. The visual style embraces that more somber tone with Manhattan given a greyer, overcast, but no less lived-in look instead of the usual bright cartoony gloss. The web-swinging is always a highlight of these films and Brand New Day plays around a lot with zero-gravity visuals as Spider-Man whips and glides dizzyingly between the skyscrapers. The fight scenes are equally clever, giving Spider-Man an arsenal of new tools and a 1-2-punch combo where he both knocks back and saves a person in the same motion. Where most super-hero movies have become big-CGI super-powered action figures beating on each other, there is a ballet to the way Spidey shoots, dodges and leaps around in every new fight scene.
If the plot sounds overstuffed, it doesn’t come off that way. We’re at a point in the Marvel Universe now where these characters and actors can simply cross paths in each other’s story and not need their own story. If a character is going to fill the role of the informant, why not have it be Black Widow Yelena (Florence Pugh) in a sauna. It doesn’t stuff the story it adds character and support to it in a balanced way these movies usually don’t have the restraint to do. The same goes for Banner and Castle, who remain in support roles only serving a function to advance Peter’s journey, instead of inserted as fan service. The biggest problem I can see people having with this movie is the way it neuters a character like Frank Castle into a PG-13 side-kick role. It’s a little jarring, agreed, but Bernthal and Holland work well together to develop a surrogate father-son dynamic. And speaking of Banner, this movie’s body-possessing villain also solves one of the more persistent Marvel problems: forcing allies to fight each other just because, you know, it might look cool if The Hulk fought Iron Man.
Also working, for maybe the first time in a long time, is Marvel’s strategy of having indie directors helming big superhero adventure films. Destin Daniel Cretton broke out with Short Term 12 and cut his teeth on Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings. All of that experience mixes well here, balancing the action with the character beats and the gloss with the grittier look of a New York indie film. All of that combined with the best villain in a superhero movie in a while. The film’s central mystery – who is possessing all of these people – is deeply compelling and the script has a lot of fun with the way the Telepath jumps from person to person, creating chains of people as it leaps through crowds. It’s a great visual. As we’ve been saying with Marvel’s villain problem, a stronger villain means a more satisfying turn for our hero to overcome them and Brand New Day’s climax is satisfying in a way I haven’t felt in a comic book movie in a very long time.
There is a lot going on here, but Creeton never loses control over it, weaving the various characters, arcs and battles together effortlessly. And this movie actually takes itself, Peter’s journey and the threat seriously. It doesn’t wink at the camera or cut off a dramatic scene with a one-liner. It doesn’t play identity politics where the women are infallible, and the men cower in the corner like everything else. The Joss Wheden influence isn’t present. But it doesn’t just fix the recent MCU movie problems, this one is special. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the best Spider-Man movie of this era and the most well-construct, satisfying, cheer-the-heroes studio-built summer blockbuster in quite some time.