Film Review - Spiderman Brand New Day (2026)

Spiderman Brand New Day is the fourth Marvel Studios/Columbia Pictures Spiderman film and the fourth solo movie with Tom Holland in the role, this story takes place after the events of No Way Home where Peter Parker has been living a lonely life now that the world has forgotten who he is while fighting crime as Spiderman but when a mysterious new enemy emerges just as his powers begin to malfunction he faces a difficult challenge ahead.

Spiderman Brand New Day is a mixed bag for me, don’t get me wrong this isn’t a terrible movie but it also has some big flaws, for me this movie works best when its just a Spiderman movie where Peter has to bear the burden of great power and great responsibility alone and cannot share that burden with others lest they be put in danger and Holland is as good as ever in this role and does the heroic and emotional sides of the character very well, Zendaya has felt wasted as MJ in these movies but this time she is given a proper character arc and some good emotional moments and it feels like a relief that her great talents are given good use here.

The film is also well directed by Destin Daniel Cretton who did Shang Chi in 2021 and was to direct Avengers the Kang Dynasty before that film fell apart and he got this movie instead and one thing I like about his camerawork here is the sense of height when Peter is atop a tall building in NYC as you really feel like your up there with him that high and it looks good on a big cinema screen though during those moments I did think of the recent Insomniac games (the first of which I played and enjoyed doing so.)

But where this movie falls over is in its ties to the broader Marvel universe and for me it took away from that core feeling you should have when watching a Spiderman movie which is that the burden of Peter Parker as a hero is one he can only bear on his own and when there are other heroes in that world for him to share with it takes away a little from that core idea and makes it feel less impactful.

And also some of those characters either get very little to do or I just downright resented them being here in this movie, Mark Ruffalo is great as Dr Banner/The Hulk but he’s in so little of the film it feels like a waste of his great talent and that role could easily have been Dr Curt Connors/The Lizard without changing the storytelling a great deal, Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher is okay but really only serves as a comic relief foil for Peter and that didn’t work well for me.

As for the other 2 characters one of them is in it so little I find myself wondering “why are you here” and the other just made me mad in the cinema primarily because of the road that led to that person being here to begin with.

And lastly I think I’m starting to tire of the shared universe concept for these characters as it makes so tiring to try and follow in terms of the storytelling and the characters, a slog to have to sit down and watch all of these movies and shows so you don’t sit there in a cinema seat feeling lost as to who’s who and where’s where and how did they get here and it also cheapens the stakes of the storytelling and lessens the emotional connection to the characters because nothing bad can really happen to them because they have to be alive for the next film or others can come in and help them share their burden in the case of Spiderman and it makes Peter’s struggle in that role feel weightless.

And so that was Spiderman Brand New Day and it is well directed and the 2 leads are great but if this had been a standalone Spiderman film with no ties to the MCU I would like it a lot more than I do, 2 and a half out of 5.