Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened July 31, 2026: the fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man in the MCU. It finally puts Peter Parker in a more traditional lane, forced to be self-reliant without Tony Stark’s tech or an Avengers bench, the exact crutch fans had dinged Holland’s run for. The film is far from perfect. Cameos, the villain, and the MCU connective tissue all have real problems. It also contains a Tom Holland performance that may be the best comic-book Spider-Man put on a live-action screen.

Four years after No Way Home, the world no longer knows who Peter Parker is. Aunt May is gone. Happy is gone. The Avengers are gone for more reasons than one. MJ and Ned went through college with no memory of their friendship with Peter, though they seem to remember being rescued by Spider-Man. Alone, Peter pours almost everything into the mask: Manhattan threats, friendlier-neighborhood Spider-Man than we have seen in a while. Isolation starts chewing more than his head. His arachnid powers shift: natural web fluid, a spider-sense cranked to overwhelming, a more ruthless fighting style he cannot fully control. He has to juggle the power change, a body-hopping possession threat, and whether he should try reconnecting with his best friends.

That much is in the trailers. From here the discussion needs spoilers.

This is a comic-book movie in the best and thorniest sense. Action-packed, with some of the best web-swinging and fight work in any Spider-Man film to date: flashy, satisfying, with bite, clearly inspired by the Insomniac PlayStation games Holland has said he used. I was not being hyperbolic earlier. Holland’s work here is a real contender for best live-action Spider-Man and Peter Parker. He nails it. He is cooking. Easily the best part of the movie. When anyone else is on screen, you want to cut back to him.

The solitude focus lets him show range as a depressed, challenged Peter: grief, isolation, panic, then the quick-witted quippy Spider-Man that feels pulled from the comics. He lands all of it. The costume is one of the best comic-to-screen adaptations the character has gotten. He also nails something I do not remember prior screen Spider-Men owning as hard: being a New Yorker. In the back-and-forths with Jon Bernthal’s Punisher he thickens the accent, and as someone who grew up in the city, that was fun. Aside: both Daredevil: Born Again and this movie love Staten Island references. Staten Island, the fifth and forgotten borough. Conflicts never actually go there because Staten Island is a dump. My home. A dump. Worst-built roads in the United States. That is what it is known for.

Bernthal is strong. So is Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner. Both used sparingly, never overstaying or stealing focus, thematically mirroring the pieces of Peter’s life he is juggling. They help the film feel like a living Marvel Manhattan out of an animated series or a comic.

The comic-book nature cuts both ways. This movie lives in “don’t think about it” territory. Ask questions and holes open. Not enough to ruin the night, but noteworthy. Apply real-world logic and specific bits turn to sand. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 are great movies first, comic books second. Brand New Day is a great comic-book movie.

MJ and Ned are in it. I did not care for them. Not bad; if you liked them before, you will like them here. They are actually at their best in this run, which is not saying much, because I have never liked them. Please get rid of them. They also eat a little too much runtime, as they always have. Those stretches can feel like a second film glued on. Their story purpose matters; the structure could still fit better.

Mega-spoiler territory: Banner and Punisher complement Peter’s internal fight. Other guests are misused. Yelena Belova is shoehorned in like Kevin Feige’s favorite desk toy demanded a scene. She shows up for an inclusion beat that mostly says: hey, you know Yelena, her office is a bathhouse, ain’t that silly, she is in Doomsday, you are going to see Doomsday, right? Her job is informant. I wish that seat went to a Spider-Man character. The intro montage of Spider-Man saving the day, recreating comic shots, taking down Scorpion, Tombstone, the Hand, is great. How cool would a visit to a prior villain or street-level colleague have been to dig for intel? Instead Yelena is a Doomsday marketing cameo and a billboard that this is small-potatoes New York street-level Spider-Man, not space, not yet. She also demands he strip and join her in the bath as intimidation and to confirm he has “no other weapons.” That is a Disney insert tell: the male-superhero humiliation gag. Swap the genders. Suddenly nobody is laughing.

Scorpion’s dynamic with Spider-Man works; I wanted more of him and more of the gallery. Spider-Man’s villains define him. Raimi’s films understood that with Green Goblin and Doc Ock. Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina were iconic, and those roles elevated Spider-Man.

Which brings us to the main “villain” Sony and Disney want you to believe is not a villain, despite the terrorism. Sadie Sink plays a Jean Grey in name only. The performance is Max again, or proof Sink mostly plays Sink. She attacks Damage Control, hops bodies with psychic power, and torments minds to save a sister Damage Control kidnapped. That is not Jean Grey’s origin. Adaptation latitude is fine; for anyone who wanted a proper Jean on screen for once, it is a disservice. Iron Man once hijacked Peter’s origin into the MCU. Peter has now hijacked the foundation of Marvel Girl. In the comics Professor X finds Jean; she is the first student, compassionate, kind, soft in the strong sense, later almost motherly. The MCU’s official Jean is a deranged terrorist it will be hard to claim never killed anyone while she explodes buildings and crashes cars, hijacks bodies into nightmarish terror people cannot remember, and assaults both MJ and Peter on a rooftop. Out of character for Jean. Unforgivable bad-guy territory besides.

Her story works inside this film: Spider-Man as the empath trying to help someone drowning in power. Satisfying on those terms. Better if it were not Jean Grey, because this was never Jean Grey’s story. Soft-launch for the X-Men into the MCU instead of a complete Spider-Man movie. What we got was good. It could have been better. She has control of her powers, which means agency, Hollywood’s favorite word, and she uses that agency to strip others of theirs. Conscious choices. She could have body-hopped into Damage Control quietly without blowing anything up. The plot would land harder if she lacked control, or if another villain held the mind-control reins.

Brand New Day is a great comic-book movie and the best Holland-led Spider-Man the MCU has made. Refreshing. Takeaway: I do not care about seeing Avengers or MCU stack movies anymore. The Doomsday cast lineup fills me with dread. Give us more Spider-Man like this, learn from the flaws, and that is something to look forward to. Spider-Verse first; everyone else cameos. Plenty of you will love it. Have a good time. For us: 7.5 out of 10. I look forward to catching it again on the small screen.