Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review – A Strong New Start

Rating: 8.5/10

After Spider-Man: No Way Home erased Peter Parker from the memories of everyone he loves, Marvel and Sony were handed something incredibly valuable: a clean slate.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day could have simply rebuilt what came before. Instead, director Destin Daniel Cretton takes Tom Holland’s Spider-Man into noticeably more mature territory, delivering a movie that feels darker, lonelier and more personal than his previous solo adventures.

It isn’t quite the complete reinvention its title suggests. The familiar Marvel Cinematic Universe machinery occasionally creeps back into the picture, and the movie spends more time setting up the future than it probably needs to.

But when Brand New Day concentrates on Peter Parker himself, it becomes one of the strongest live-action Spider-Man movies we’ve had in years.

Peter Parker Is Finally on His Own

And Brand New Day doesn’t immediately undo that sacrifice.

That’s perhaps the movie’s smartest decision.

Peter has grown older, but adulthood hasn’t magically made his life easier. He’s isolated himself while throwing more and more of his identity into being Spider-Man.

The result is a Peter Parker who feels much closer to the fundamental tragedy of the comic-book character: a young man capable of extraordinary things who still can’t figure out how to keep his own life from falling apart.

Holland handles that transition extremely well.

The youthful energy is still there whenever Spider-Man starts swinging through New York, but Peter himself feels different. There’s exhaustion behind him now. There’s loneliness. There’s also an increasing sense that Spider-Man isn’t simply something Peter does anymore.

It’s becoming the person he believes he has to be.

That distinction gives Holland some of the most substantial material he’s received since taking the role.

Tom Holland Gives One of His Best Spider-Man Performances

Holland has always been good at selling Peter Parker’s vulnerability, but Brand New Day asks more from him.

There are fewer opportunities to hide behind the nervous teenager routine that defined Homecoming. This Peter has suffered enough to understand exactly what being Spider-Man costs him — and continues doing it anyway.

That’s where Holland excels.

The movie understands that Spider-Man’s greatest characteristic isn’t his strength, agility or spider-sense.

It’s that Peter Parker keeps getting back up.

Cretton gives Holland enough quiet moments for that side of the character to breathe. Some of the movie’s most effective scenes aren’t massive action sequences at all. They’re simply Peter attempting to navigate a world in which the people who once meant everything to him no longer know who he is.

The relationship between Peter and MJ remains especially important.

Zendaya once again brings considerable emotional weight to MJ, and the movie wisely refuses to treat the ending of No Way Home as something that can simply be reversed because audiences want Peter and MJ back together.

There’s pain there.

And Brand New Day is willing to sit with it.

Spider-Man Feels Like Spider-Man Again

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Brand New Day is its willingness to bring Spider-Man back toward street-level superheroics.

After alternate universes, Doctor Strange, multiple Spider-Men and reality itself beginning to collapse, Spider-Man desperately needed something smaller.

The stakes here aren’t exactly tiny — this is still a Marvel blockbuster — but there’s much more emphasis on New York and Peter’s personal responsibility for protecting it.

That makes an enormous difference.

Spider-Man swinging through the city, pursuing criminals and dealing with threats that actually feel connected to his neighborhood gives the movie an energy that Holland’s previous appearances sometimes lacked.

Cretton also shoots Spider-Man with considerably more momentum.

The web-swinging feels fast.

The fights feel physical.

And several sequences make excellent use of Spider-Man’s agility instead of simply turning every encounter into two superpowered characters punching each other.

There are moments where Brand New Day comes remarkably close to capturing the kinetic energy that made Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies so memorable.

Punisher Is an Excellent Counterweight to Spider-Man

Putting those philosophies against one another creates some of the movie’s most interesting character moments.

Bernthal doesn’t suddenly become a sanitized MCU version of Punisher simply because he’s appearing alongside Spider-Man, either. Frank remains brutal, uncompromising and uncomfortable.

That makes his interactions with Peter considerably more interesting than a traditional superhero team-up.

There’s humor between them, but there’s also genuine philosophical tension.

Spider-Man doesn’t want to become Frank Castle.

The disturbing question hanging over parts of Brand New Day is whether Peter’s increasingly isolated existence might eventually push him closer to that mentality than he’d like to admit.

Sadie Sink Is the Movie’s Biggest Surprise

She’s vulnerable one moment and genuinely dangerous the next.

More importantly, the character forces Peter to confront questions that can’t simply be solved by punching harder.

It’s another example of Brand New Day understanding that Spider-Man works best when the physical conflict and Peter Parker’s emotional conflict are connected.

Hulk Works — But This Is Where the MCU Problem Returns

Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk could easily have overwhelmed the movie.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t.

His appearance provides one of Brand New Day’s biggest action sequences, and seeing Spider-Man attempting to deal with Hulk’s overwhelming strength allows Cretton to stage a battle very differently from the movie’s street-level encounters.

It’s spectacular.

It’s also where the movie begins showing one of its biggest weaknesses.

For all the talk about giving Peter Parker a fresh start, Brand New Day still can’t completely escape the gravitational pull of the MCU.

Punisher.

Hulk.

Larger Marvel mythology.

Connections to future stories.

Seeds planted for characters and movies that haven’t happened yet.

Individually, most of those elements work.

Collectively, they sometimes make you wonder whether Marvel truly trusts Spider-Man to carry a movie by himself.

He can.

And Brand New Day is actually at its best whenever Marvel allows him to.

The Movie Isn’t Quite the “Brand New Day” It Promises

That’s ultimately the biggest criticism of the film.

No Way Home created an extraordinary opportunity.

Peter Parker was anonymous.

He had no Avengers connections.

MJ and Ned didn’t remember him.

He didn’t have Stark technology solving his problems.

Marvel essentially had the opportunity to make a Spider-Man movie about a broke young man living in New York and trying to balance rent, relationships and superheroics.

Parts of Brand New Day absolutely deliver that movie.

Other parts can’t resist reminding you that another massive Marvel crossover is waiting around the corner.

The world-building isn’t disastrous, but it occasionally distracts from a much more interesting story happening directly in front of us.

Peter Parker doesn’t need the universe to be ending for his problems to matter.

Losing MJ matters.

Being alone matters.

Wondering whether Spider-Man has consumed Peter Parker matters.

Those are enormous stakes to Peter.

And because we care about Peter, they’re enormous to us.

The Action Is Some of Holland’s Best

Fortunately, when it’s time for Spider-Man to actually be Spider-Man, Brand New Day delivers.

Cretton brings an impressive physicality to the action.

Spider-Man flips, swings, crawls and improvises his way through fights instead of behaving like a generic superhuman.

The difference is important.

Spider-Man shouldn’t fight like Captain America.

He shouldn’t fight like Hulk.

He should fight like Spider-Man.

Several sequences embrace exactly that philosophy.

There’s verticality to the encounters, constant movement through the environment and some genuinely inventive web usage.

Combined with improved web-swinging sequences, this might be the best Spider-Man has looked in live action during Holland’s tenure.

The Heart Still Belongs to Peter and MJ

Despite everything happening around them, Brand New Day ultimately succeeds because we still care about Peter and MJ.

The movie doesn’t take the easy way out.

Peter made a sacrifice at the end of No Way Home, and there are consequences.

Watching him interact with MJ while carrying memories she doesn’t share creates an emotional imbalance that Holland and Zendaya handle beautifully.

Peter knows their history.

MJ doesn’t.

He knows why she mattered.

He knows what they lost.

And he has to decide whether telling her the truth would be an act of love or selfishness.

That’s a much more compelling problem than another glowing object threatening to destroy the universe.

A Few Too Many Threads Are Left Hanging

The final act will probably divide some viewers.

There’s resolution, but not complete closure.

Some relationships remain complicated. Certain character developments clearly exist to influence future Marvel projects, and several questions are deliberately left unanswered.

That’s understandable.

Spider-Man isn’t going anywhere.

But Brand New Day occasionally feels like it’s simultaneously trying to finish Peter’s previous story, tell a new one and advertise the next one.

A slightly more self-contained movie might have been even stronger.

Verdict

Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t the total reset its title promises.

It’s something better than another routine MCU installment, though.

It’s a movie about Peter Parker growing up.

Tom Holland gives one of his most mature performances as the character, Zendaya remains the emotional center of Peter’s world, Sadie Sink makes an impressive addition to the franchise, and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher provides a fascinating ideological counterpoint to Spider-Man.

Destin Daniel Cretton also gives Holland some of his best action sequences yet, finally allowing Spider-Man’s speed, agility and improvisational fighting style to dominate the screen.

There are still frustrations.

The MCU connections occasionally become excessive. Some future-project setup distracts from Peter’s story, and the movie doesn’t fully embrace the stripped-down Spider-Man adventure that No Way Home’s ending seemed perfectly positioned to deliver.

But those problems don’t erase what works.

For years, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man was defined by the heroes surrounding him.

Brand New Day finally asks who Peter Parker is when nobody is standing beside him.

The answer makes for one of Holland’s strongest Spider-Man movies yet.

GamerXGeek Score: 8.5/10

The Good: Tom Holland’s mature performance, Peter’s emotional journey, excellent Spider-Man action, strong performances from Zendaya and Sadie Sink, and a compelling Spider-Man/Punisher dynamic.

The Bad: Too much MCU setup, an occasionally overcrowded supporting cast, and a reluctance to fully commit to the street-level reset promised by No Way Home.

Bottom Line: Spider-Man: Brand New Day proves Spider-Man doesn’t need the multiverse to make his problems feel enormous. Sometimes Peter Parker trying to put his life back together is more than enough.