By 
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)
A brand new day starts now.
A fresh start can be difficult when an entire cinematic universe keeps following you home.
After the multiversal mayhem that gave us the three-generations-for-the-price-of-one spectacle of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Brand New Day promised something simpler. With Destin Daniel Cretton taking over directing duties from Jon Watts, the series also had an opportunity to swing in a different direction. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker had lost his family, his friends and his place in the world. Nobody remembered him. The Stark technology was gone. There were no Avengers waiting on speed dial. For the first time, this version of Peter appeared ready to become a proper friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, fighting criminals, struggling to pay rent and carrying more emotional baggage than his tiny apartment could possibly hold.
That version of the movie is here. Unfortunately, so is the next phase of the MCU.
Four years after Doctor Strange’s spell erased Peter Parker (Tom Holland) from everyone’s memories, Peter lives alone in New York and has devoted almost every waking moment to being Spider-Man. MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) — his girlfriend and best friend before the spell — have moved forward without him, while Peter watches their lives from a distance, still convinced that leaving them alone is the only way to keep them safe. Still grieving Aunt May’s death and more isolated than ever, he begins experiencing troubling changes to his spider abilities just as a mysterious figure starts possessing people and targeting the Department of Damage Control.
Peter’s search for answers brings him into contact with Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), whose scientific knowledge may help explain what is happening to his body. It also places him beside Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), a heavily armed vigilante whose approach to crime fighting involves considerably fewer webs and considerably more bullets. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Extremely unfriendly neighborhood Punisher.
Saving New York is easy. Fixing the suit is the real challenge.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a mixed bag. Screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers try to juggle Peter Parker’s grief, an odd-couple partnership with Frank Castle, several street-level villains, a Hulk-sized action detour and enough MCU groundwork to keep Marvel’s release calendar busy for years. Some of those strands stick. Others leave the web looking dangerously stretched.
The strongest material remains the simplest. Peter’s loneliness feels like a genuine continuation of No Way Home rather than a problem waiting to be reversed. He keeps MJ and Ned at a distance in the name of protecting them, but it increasingly resembles self-punishment. His scenes with MJ are the most emotionally effective, carrying a warmth neither fully understands and the lingering sense that something important has been taken from them. Whenever Brand New Day slows down and lets them connect as two wounded people, it finds the heart the rest of the story often lacks.
The street-level material is also fun while it lasts. A sleek opening montage shows Spider-Man swinging through New York, stopping robberies and encountering recognizable enemies including Tombstone (Marvin Jones III), Boomerang, Tarantula and Mac Gargan’s mechanical Scorpion, once again played by Michael Mando. These appearances suggest a colorful collection of neighborhood baddies he could spend an entire adventure battling. Instead, most are treated like highlights from a movie that does not exist. Mando remains an inspired choice for Scorpion, but after waiting almost a decade for the tease at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming to pay off, his return is frustratingly brief. These threats have the presence to become memorable villains in their own right, yet they disappear so the larger MCU machine can continue turning.
The central bad guy ultimately feels less like a Spider-Man antagonist and more like a walking preview for whatever Marvel intends to explore next. Without entering spoiler territory, the threat is connected to ideas far larger than Peter Parker and carries obvious implications for the next stage of the MCU. That may excite viewers already assembling timelines and studying release schedules. Within this particular story, however, it pulls attention away from the hero whose name is on the poster.
Scorpion finally gets his point across.
Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle provides the most entertaining distraction. His partnership with Peter plays like a superhero buddy-cop comedy, with one all hard edges and the other still guided by hope. Bernthal brings his familiar anger and intensity to Frank, while Holland’s nervous humor gives their arguments an enjoyable rhythm. Peter webs away weapons. Frank produces more weapons. Peter lectures him about responsibility. Frank looks ready to shoot responsibility. Their contrasting methods also provide a worthwhile argument about heroism. Peter believes every life can be saved. Frank has spent years deciding some people are beyond saving. The dynamic is funny and occasionally thoughtful, but Frank ultimately feels like a guest star wandering through Peter’s emotional crisis.
Bruce Banner’s inclusion is even more transparent. Mark Ruffalo remains charming and relaxed as the scientist attempting to control the monster beneath the surface, while his work gives Peter a possible explanation for his changing powers. However, the real reason Hulk appears is obvious: somebody wanted an action sequence involving Spider-Man and the big green guy. It is a cool sequence. It is also almost completely detachable.
The final act is where the various strands become knotted. Peter’s personal crisis is pushed aside as Brand New Day begins setting up characters, conflicts and ideas that will clearly matter elsewhere. The emotional shape of the climax also resembles Thunderbolts* a little too closely, reaching for another compassionate resolution involving a troubled superpowered figure. The message is worthwhile, but the familiarity removes much of its force. The finale should become more exciting as it expands, yet it steadily loses momentum. Peter becomes a supporting player inside his own climax, the street-level promise disappears and the MCU once again mistakes introducing future possibilities for completing the current story. Spider-Man does not need to carry an entire cinematic universe every time he leaves his apartment. Sometimes, to borrow the movie’s own phrase, small potatoes are enough.
Brand New Day briefly explores grief, identity, repression and the danger of isolating oneself in the name of protection. Peter, Bruce and Frank are all men attempting to bury pain beneath a different kind of mission. Peter hides inside Spider-Man. Bruce hides the Hulk. Frank converts grief into punishment. Each believes control means refusing to acknowledge what is happening underneath, only for that pressure to emerge in increasingly destructive ways. Those ideas connect neatly with Peter’s changing body and his fear that he may be losing the person beneath the mask. The film also asks whether being forgotten has allowed Peter to become more heroic or simply made it easier for him to disappear.
Visually, however, Brand New Day is a welcome improvement over the grey, weightless look that has affected too many recent Marvel productions. It resembles a proper movie rather than an expensive television episode stretched across a cinema screen. New York has color, depth and atmosphere. Night scenes contain actual shadows, daylight does not flatten every surface, and Spider-Man appears to occupy the streets rather than look digitally pasted over them.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton also understands how to stage large-scale action without turning it into the visual slop the MCU has become known for. Spider-Man’s movements are quick but readable, while his final-act battle with the Hand — the ancient ninja clan usually associated with Daredevil and Elektra — delivers some of the best Spidey action in recent years. The geography remains clear, every punch has a direction, and the characters’ positions never become a guessing game. That should not feel like a major compliment, but recent superhero outings have repeatedly demonstrated otherwise.
Even the web-slinging is great. Cretton allows the camera to move with Spider-Man, creating a genuine sense of speed, height and danger. There are moments that recall the warmth and visual confidence of Sam Raimi’s trilogy, while the fluid aerial movement occasionally approaches the exhilarating swinging sequences from Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man outings. That sounds like praise, and it is. But when the best compliment for a new Spider-Man adventure is that it resembles the Raimi series or captures the web-slinging coolness of the Marc Webb movies, does that not simply prove those versions did it better?
Holland anchors the cluttered adventure with his most mature performance as Peter Parker, carrying the character’s exhaustion without losing the nervous charm and humor that made his version so likable. This Peter is older, sadder and deeply uncertain about whether Spider-Man is still something he does or the only identity he has left. Zendaya brings quiet emotional weight to MJ, making even her limited material feel important. She communicates the vague feeling that part of MJ’s life is missing without turning every scene into an obvious hint, while her chemistry with Holland now carries an ache that gives their relationship considerably more depth.
Elsewhere, Jacob Batalon returns as Ned Leeds and provides familiar warmth, even though his role is smaller than expected. Sadie Sink is strong as the mysterious young woman at the center of the larger conflict, bringing intensity and vulnerability to the role. Yet she often feels less like someone Peter has encountered and more like someone Marvel is formally introducing. Tramell Tillman plays Bill Metzger, the director of Damage Control, and gives the character an immediate sense of calm authority. Tillman can make a polite conversation sound quietly threatening, which should have made Metzger a memorable bureaucratic opponent. Instead, the role is so underwritten it is embarrassing. He appears, explains things, withholds other things and occasionally looks suspicious. An actor this good has essentially been hired to deliver exposition while standing in expensive rooms.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day contains enough strong Peter Parker material to show exactly what this series could become. Holland and Zendaya remain engaging, the street-level action is energetic, Bernthal is fun and the web-slinging finally has some real cinematic lift. It looks good, moves clearly and occasionally captures the bruised heart that has always separated Spider-Man from larger, shinier superheroes. Then the MCU swings in, kicks over the neighborhood story and starts advertising its next attraction. The result is good to okay, sometimes within the same sequence. It does not completely miss its swing, but the promised fresh start comes tangled in far too much franchise baggage. Peter Parker deserves a Brand New Day. Marvel gives him another group project.
Still, at least it is better than Iron Man 4. Sorry — cough, cough — Spider-Man: Homecoming.
3 / 5 – Good
Reviewed by Dan Cachia (Mr. Movie)
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is distributed by Sony Pictures Australia
