Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

Tom Holland admirably tries to keep Spider-Man alive, but Marvel's formula insists on dragging him back down.

Taking my seat on opening night at my local cinema to see the new Spider-Man film was a chore. I don’t recall ever going to a day one screening of a Marvel film, and on the evidence of the audience behaviour for Brand New Day, I won’t be doing so again. It’s great to see a packed cinema, of course it is, but that goodwill only lasts as long as the etiquette remains. By the time I had waded my way through the sweating sea of grown adults, giddy in the same way some brutish hound might drool over a juicy bone, I already wanted to leave.

There were children there too, of course there was. Spider-Man is one of the most beloved superhero characters in the history of cinema, despite only being on our screens with any sort of heft since Sam Raimi’s Spiderman in 2002. That film is arguably one of the most important in modern cinema; paving the way for the superhero boom that was to follow, and perhaps also responsible in part for the headaches we now endure when these indestructible gods hit each other for hours at a time on the biggest screens imaginable.

But there’s no getting around the fact that they make money, and just like FIFA with the World Cup, it doesn’t matter how dogshit the product is; people come to see it in their droves. And that’s why my local was packed. These are people who don’t visit the cinema with any frequency; more likely, they spend most of their days in their rooms on their computers, visiting theatres only when the latest iteration of world-ending baddies attack the heroes who adorn their wallpapers and bookshelves.

You might think such a statement is unfair; these are kids you’re talking about surely? But no. A grown woman was escorted out of the cinema just as Brand New Day was about to unleash itself upon the swooning masses, screaming at the cinema’s duty manager in an aggressive and particularly uncoquettish fashion. “Get out of my face!” she yelled at him, before being reasonably told to grow up by an audience member. But once she had departed, kicking and screaming alongside her four unabashed children, a latecomer snuck in and took the only remaining spare seat in the theatre, right next to me. He proceeded to chat with his friend whilst checking his phone, stopping only to actually answer a phone call twenty minutes into the film. He seemed baffled when I asked him what on earth he was doing, before proceeding to put his phone away and happily chat away to his friend, rubbing his hands with perverted glee every time Zendaya appeared on screen.

This is what I was up against, as I tried desperately to simply watch Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Following on from the events of No Way Home (2021), a superhero film brimming with ambition and one that genuinely impressed me, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker now lives in complete anonymity once more. After Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) spell erased him from everyone’s memory, Peter struggles on as Spider-Man whilst glimpsing his former girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), neither of whom remember anything about him. Brand New Day is at its best when it’s focusing on the human side of Peter, and Tom Holland remains as good as ever in the role. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 remains my favourite of the entire franchise, and part of the reason is the way it deals with Peter’s isolation as he decides he no longer wants to be Spider-Man. It’s the relationships and the meaning Peter gives to them, and on the other side of the law, you have the same battles raging in the mind of Alfred Molina’s Dr Otto Octavius. There’s heart, there’s grit, and there’s real jeopardy.

Here, there are similarities, and Brand New Day and Spider-Man 2 share more DNA than you might think. Indeed, here, DNA is the problem, as Peter’s Spidey senses hit puberty, forcing him to rethink his approach to crime fighting. There are some familiar faces for those in the know, with welcome turns from Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher and one from Sadie Sink whose character’s reveal is one of the high points of the film.

However, despite the excellent opening twenty minutes of action here, Brand New Day falls back into a pattern that every superhero film since Avengers: Endgame (2019) has suffered from. By the time we got to Endgame, there was enough going on to keep you engaged; it had all been building to something that ultimately paid off (although it remains a shame that the bold ending to Infinity War [2018] was almost instantly reversed). After that, the quality of Marvel’s output almost inevitably dropped. Thanos was the big bad, so after he’d been defeated, where do you go? Indestructible people hitting each other for hours on end. The jeopardy is non-existent.

Yet Tom Holland’s outings as Spider-Man have ranged from thoroughly enjoyable to impressively ambitious. This is a character who’s been around long enough to keep people interested, me included. And there’s enough in Brand New Day to keep you entertained for about an hour and a half of its staggering near two and a half hour run time. There’s a definite endpoint after ninety odd minutes following an attack on a building holding something of importance to Sadie Sink’s baddie, and the Hulk turns up for a rather pointless cameo. Unfortunately, the film then drags on for nearly another hour, with endless fight sequences and a total lack of any real danger, while you wonder how on earth people still lap this stuff up.

Throughout the film, the audience was enthralled around me, gasping, crying and cheering. And they all know more about the character and the dynamics of this franchise than I do. So how is it, after seeing this same blueprint repeated over and over and over again, that they still feel shock, jeopardy, or excitement?

I was sadly reminded of the Star Wars franchise. When Rian Johnson had the bollocks to veer away from the same rinse and repeat model that Star Wars continues to be, with The Last Jedi (2017), and actually attempt to send the series in a new direction, he was castigated and abused by fans. Even though The Last Jedi was a misfire, Johnson had dared to do something different. Such was the fan backlash and power of these people- some of whom genuinely believe Jedi to be a real religion- the studio cast Johnson’s ideas aside and returned to the formula that the fans insisted upon, ensuring that The Rise of Skywalker (2019) was one of the most boring franchise films ever released.

Brand New Day feels like Spider-Man, despite the best efforts from everyone involved, has reached such a point. This is nowhere near the levels of Star Wars; let me be absolutely clear about that. Tom Holland, Zendaya, and everyone involved in the most recent iteration of Spider-Man have achieved something impressive; that is, to keep me engaged in a superhero, many films after I’d given up on the rest of Marvel.

We all know Marvel should take a leaf out of Christopher Nolan’s book, but they won’t. Nolan opened Batman not just to superhero fans (I know he’s not a superhero) but to film fans, creating a contemporary world that feels genuine and lived in. The danger is real in Gotham City. Brand New Day, sadly, is apparently the first of a new Spider-Man trilogy. And for ninety minutes you’re reminded that this can be great fun. But for the rest of it, your head slumps; you’re either falling asleep, or you’re despairing at every other person in the cinema whooping and cheering. They’re the ones that will ensure this funeral march continues. ★★½ 6.2/10