Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review: Solid Ground

When a character has been in constant publication for 64 years, there will be times when you’ll like the writing, and times you won’t. Take Spider-Man. My least favorite runs have tended to be the mythology-heavy ones, with all the clones and mystic spider spirits. I prefer the arcs from the early-to-late Eighties, centered around his complex home life and his struggles in New York’s never-ending gang wars, and how Peter Parker struggled to navigate the two.

Fortunately, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth feature with Tom Holland under the mask, leans heavily into that street-level era, and the inherent contradiction of being New York’s most beloved hero but the loneliest man in the Five Boroughs. The closest thing he has to a friend is furious killer Frank Castle (the impeccably prickly Jon Bernthal), aka the Punisher. Yet his problems, as one cameoing Avenger puts it, are small potatoes. Head out, beat up Tombstone (Marvin Jones III), talk with his quasi-friend on the force, Det. Jean de Wolff (Liza Colón-Zayas, The Bear), head back to his lonely attic apartment, and mourn the happiness he cast aside to protect the two remaining loves of his life, former girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), and eternal bro Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon).

Of course, when a big potato falls into his lap, no one believes him, even when a mysterious entity that can seemingly jump between bodies suddenly starts targeting the government’s superpowered division, the Department of Damage Control.

This is how Brand New Day introduces an important element to the MCU, the idea that superheroes can be truly terrifying. It’s easy with the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who now-professor Bruce Banner has shoved back into his psychic locker. But the new threat is a longstanding element of Marvel Comics that is something truly to be hated and feared, and Spidey’s got to deal with it while something weird is happening with his own powers.

The Jon Watts-directed trilogy of Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home centered on Peter Parker the high school kid but also established the tensions that run throughout the character’s whole life. Too much of a regular Joe to be a superhero, too much of a superhero to be a regular Joe, and now he’s dealing with the choices he’s made. Wisely, Holland has absorbed artist John Romita Jr.’s version of Spidey in his 20s, stooped shoulders and tousle-haired, often beaten-up and rag-dolled around. He doesn’t jump from buildings. He plummets.

While Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) takes over from Watts, a degree of continuity comes with returning writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. Thus, this doesn’t feel like the somewhat hard reboot that some feared after Sony’s failed attempts to build a Spider-verse. Indeed, Brand New Day still locks in hard to the core MCU, while the script focuses on the idea of rebirth. If it always seems like Holland’s beleaguered Spidey is caught in multiple grinders at the same time, that’s pivotal to the character: Ya gotta be crushed to be reforged.

This darker, more mournful tone is reflected in Cretton’s New York. Watts’ NYC was a perpetual early summer day, gleaming and not yet sweat-drenched. Cretton’s is the city of autumnal gloom, rainclouds looming over streets filled with pedestrians rather than cars, and that certain midtown gray that defines the city. More than any depiction of NYC in the MCU, this feels like modern New York, with even hints of William Basinski’s experimental 9/11 eulogy The Disintegration Loops woven into Michael Giacchino’s score.

Granted, Brand New Day is another chapter in the ever-growing MCU catalog, but it feels like an important one, like how Captain America: The Winter Soldier gave the franchise the course correction it needed. Brand New Day, with its mix of universe building, top-notch buddy comedy with Frank and Peter, and a richer vision of Spidey from Holland, is a chapter you may well come back to.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

2026, PG-13, 145 min. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, Jacob Batalon, Sadie Sink, Liza Colón-Zayas, Marvin Jones III, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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