Spider-Man: Brand New Day review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 08.02.26
★★★★ 4 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Spider-Man: Brand New Day understands that No Way Home left Peter Parker not just alone but forced into adulthood, and it builds a darker, more grounded New York story around that loss. Destin Daniel Cretton gives the city’s rooftop action real visual force, keeps the threats neighborhood-sized rather than multiversal and moves through two hours and twenty-five minutes without feeling slow. Tom Holland’s Peter is now an experienced hero working without the relationships that once defined his life, which gives the familiar web-swinging a different emotional weight. After the scale of the last film, everyday Spider-Man was exactly the right direction.
Full review — contains spoilers
I've seen this twice now, and it's a solid follow-up to No Way Home.
Probably the most important thing to understand going in to this is what No Way Home took away from Peter Parker.
At the end of that movie, Peter loses Aunt May. Then, to fix a universe he broke, he has to wipe the memory of Peter Parker out of existence. His girlfriend forgets him. His best friend forgets him. His mentors and everyone connected to the Avengers forget him. He basically gives up his identity because that's the only way to fix the world.
He has the opportunity afterward to reintroduce himself to MJ and Ned. He realizes that walking back into their lives means walking the danger of Spider-Man back into their lives too. He doesn't have the heart to do that to them just so he won't be alone.
So his friends go off to MIT, and Peter stays in New York and becomes Spider-Man full-time.
By the time this movie picks up, he's been doing that successfully. Crime in the city is as low as it's ever been. Peter's an adult now, working his city on his own, and MJ and Ned are coming back from Boston as college graduates who've lived the life Peter wanted for all three of them. That's where the story starts.
That's all you need to know going in.
Visually, I liked it. It's a little less colorful and more drab than I normally expect from Spider-Man, but there are some visually stunning scenes, and the rooftop action is great. Honestly, parts of it reminded me of the Spider-Man video games. Watching him move through New York, basically flying through the city, is still awesome.
Destin Daniel Cretton took over directing this one from Jon Watts, and the darker, more grounded look is clearly a choice rather than an accident. It fits where Peter is.
The movie also just keeps rolling. There was never a point where I was bored. I loved The Odyssey, but even in a movie I loved that much there were stretches where I could feel it slowing down. I don't remember anything here feeling slow. It runs two hours and twenty-five minutes and I didn't notice.
Some of that is that the threats are the right size. He's not saving the universe. He's not fighting interdimensional anything. He's fighting New York criminals. Some of them are superpowered or technologically superpowered, because this is still Spider-Man, but nothing out of the ordinary for the character. This is basically everyday neighborhood Spider-Man again, and that was the right call after No Way Home.
My problem with this movie is something I don