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Our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is back after 5 years. Peter Parker, one of the most stable characters of the MCU‘s turbulent post-Avengers: Endgame (2019) era, is making a fresh start in every sense with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. What’s more, we’re reminded once again just how strong and enduring a character Spider-Man is, independent of the wider Marvel canon.
In this new order where no one remembers Peter Parker, we see our hero truly standing on his own two feet for the first time. This is a Peter who is lonelier, more mature, and who feels the full weight of his responsibilities. The film backs up that loneliness impressively with New York’s dark atmosphere and a visual world that looks like it stepped straight out of comic-book pages.
This review contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Is It Really a Brand New Day?
The flashback sequences that open the film show Peter becoming a more mature and experienced hero over the past five years, while also conveying just how isolated he’s become and how completely he’s devoted himself to being Spider-Man alone. On one side there’s MJ and Ned, whom he still can’t forget; on the other, Aunt May’s grave, which has become his only refuge. Even though the film is called “Brand New Day,” Peter can never quite manage to start that new day. Spider-Man stories usually follow a line where Peter is left alone and has to solve all his problems by himself. But Tom Holland‘s Peter never truly experienced that isolation in the earlier films. He always had a mentor by his side, loved ones who knew his identity, and safe harbors to help him get back on his feet whenever he fell. This film’s opening, however, gives us a genuinely powerful version of the lonely, desperate but persevering Peter Parker we’ve wanted to see for a long time.
As the runtime goes on, though, the film can’t stand behind that choice and pulls back into the safe territory of the classic Tom Holland films. Peter is once again not allowed to stay alone and solve his problems by himself. The change that excited audiences most at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home is almost entirely undone within a single film: Peter gets his best friend back, the same love story, and a mentor to show him the way once more. A film that promises a “brand new day” ends up bringing Peter right back to where he started.
This is exactly where the biggest problem with Marvel‘s new era shows up: the universe hasn’t managed to take a real step forward since Avengers: Endgame. Every film is presented as the start of a new era, every character as the herald of some great future. But none of these stories connect to the next. A door opened in one film is forgotten in another. Characters who are introduced disappear for years (see Moon Knight, Eternals), and major changes find almost no echo in the rest of the universe.
What used to make Marvel films exciting was the sense that, beyond the stories they told on their own, they were part of a bigger, carefully planned whole. Now, even though the films take place in the same universe, they proceed as if unaware of one another. Worse still, Marvel doesn’t even seem to be trying to fix that disconnect anymore. In this narrative pattern that keeps promising new beginnings only to circle back to where it started, neither can the characters change permanently, nor can the universe truly grow.
From Flawless CGI to a Costume That Wrinkles
The change in director turns out to be one of the choices that benefits the film the most. Thanks to Destin Daniel Cretton, we finally get energetic, carefully crafted scenes that genuinely make you feel Spider-Man swinging through the streets of New York. The camera doesn’t just track Peter’s movements from a distance; it dives into the gaps between buildings with him, speeds up, and gets thrown around the city alongside him. As a result, that sense of fluidity and physical motion we’ve been missing for so long reappears.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day makes it clear at every turn that it’s a production that’s had a great deal of technical work put into it. In particular, the fact that the costume and the web-slinging scenes aren’t entirely buried under CGI gives Spider-Man a more real and tangible look than he’s had in a long time. As Peter moves, we can see the costume stretch, wrinkle, and shift with the light along with his body. These seemingly small details strengthen the feeling that the character is a person genuinely moving inside that suit, rather than a flawless, computer-generated figure.
With its use of color, lighting choices, and framing that looks like it’s pulled straight from comic-book pages, the film manages to establish a visual identity all its own. Even though it can’t fully carry through on the freshness it promises story-wise, it’s fair to say that, at least visually, Spider-Man really has moved into a “brand new day.” This is, without question, Tom Holland‘s best-looking, most cinematic film, and the one that visually captures the spirit of Spider-Man most powerfully.
Big Promises, Easy Fixes
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a film that delivers roughly what its trailers showed. There’s no major surprise or strong twist in the story that truly catches the audience off guard. The film tries to keep Jean Grey — whose identity most of us guessed from the very start — under wraps as if she were some kind of surprise element. Watching the trailers, most of us had already figured out she was Jean Grey and assumed the real villain was being kept hidden for the film itself. Instead, almost the entire conflict in the story runs through Jean Grey, and it quickly becomes clear the film doesn’t have much more up its sleeve than that.
Frankly, I don’t think a Spider-Man film is the right place to bring the X-Men characters into the MCU. I would have preferred to watch a more personal story focused on Peter’s new life, his loneliness, and his own enemies. Instead of deepening Peter’s story, the film turns him into a transition point for bringing other characters into the universe. So while Jean Grey’s presence is exciting, it feels like it’s stealing space from Spider-Man’s own movie.
On top of that, resolving the entire conflict through a psychological confrontation similar to the one in Thunderbolts is a choice that feels both lazy and like a sign that Marvel is repeating itself. In Thunderbolts, that resolution was backed by a strong emotional foundation. The characters in that film were psychologically burned out, on the edge of suicide, and truly starting from below zero in life. That’s why leaning on each other and climbing out of the darkness together felt like a natural outcome of the story. The problems the characters here go through don’t carry the same weight or depth. When Spider-Man: Brand New Day tries to reach a similarly emotional conclusion, the choice feels far more artificial and inevitably shows.
It’s a separate disappointment that the story of the Damage Control director, who is clearly shown to be malicious from the very beginning of the film, isn’t tied off with a proper conclusion. The character is positioned as a significant threat for a long stretch, but the film never quite figures out what to do with him. The same problem applies to Spider-Man’s evolution. I don’t think the change Peter goes through is conveyed well enough. Even though the film presents it as a major turning point, the matter is resolved in short order. Peter quickly finds a way to stop it, and what happens has no lasting effect on the story. Because of that, yet another section that should have mattered ends up feeling glossed over. Watching the film, it’s hard not to think that the script went through serious changes during filming. Plenty of ideas are thrown out, but none of them are fully developed or brought to a satisfying conclusion.
A Mask That Will Keep Inspiring Generations
At this point, I want to step away from the general flow of the piece for a moment and talk about the personal connection I have with Spider-Man. I’m sure Spider-Man has touched the lives of many kids like me — not just as a superhero, but as a companion in whom they could find a piece of themselves. My story with Spider-Man began with the DVD of Sam Raimi‘s first Spider-Man film, which came into our house when I was four years old. I obviously had no idea back then that what I was watching on screen that day would come to hold such a special place in my life for years to come.
Before long, almost everything in my life started filling up with Spider-Man: from my bedsheets to my curtains, from my toys to my clothes, his mark was on everything around me. I imagined every corner I found in the house as New York’s tall buildings, and myself as Spider-Man, swinging from web to web. I watched the same film over and over, memorized its scenes, and felt the same excitement every single time, as if I were encountering it for the first time.
If the people I now call my closest friends are in my life today, if I’m interested in design and video, if I can put on a French New Wave film and watch it with the same excitement, if I’m so passionately attached to cinema, and if I want to create things for Arakat Mag, all of that is, in some part, thanks to Spider-Man. The four-year-old who watched that DVD, and the kid who couldn’t sit still with excitement seeing the black Spider-Man suit on the poster for the third film in a movie theater, were both with me as I walked into this one too.
Years have passed, I’ve grown up, but that excitement has stayed in exactly the same place inside me. I’m certain Spider-Man will keep touching the lives of many more kids like me. Because even if the person under the mask changes, that mask will keep sharing in children’s dreams and inspiring them across generations. In short, Spider-Man isn’t just a hero left over from my childhood for me — he’s where the journey to who I am today began.
Brand New Day, Postponed Once Again
As for the characters brought into the film from the MCU, Punisher genuinely adds a nice flavor to the story. Still, the character we get is more of a Disney/Sony-filtered, softened-at-the-edges version than the harsh, uncompromising Punisher we know. Even so, watching him is quite enjoyable. In particular, the contrast he creates with Peter and the dynamic between the two of them gives the film the energy it needs. Peter’s idealistic approach of trying to save people clashing with Punisher’s ruthless methods makes for one of the film’s most fun and highest-potential elements.
On the Hulk and Bruce Banner front, a similar loss of potential occurs. Bruce, who’s brought into the story in connection with Peter’s evolution, finally gets his savage Hulk form back — the one we last saw in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and have been waiting years to see return — once he falls under Jean’s control. But this transformation is so brief that it feels less like a natural part of the story and more like something added purely to provide material for trailers. Showing this long-awaited Hulk for a few minutes excites the audience but doesn’t give the character any real function. Because of this, the film ends up spending yet another one of its strongest cards purely for a brief burst of excitement.
Despite all these problems, Spider-Man: Brand New Day manages to deliver an enjoyable viewing experience through the sheer excitement of seeing Spider-Man back on screen. Because whatever its shortcomings, watching Peter put on the suit and swing through the streets of New York is always a pleasure. Still, once the film ends, a familiar feeling lingers: at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, we said “Here we go, we’re finally going to see the real Spider-Man!” Now, at the end of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, we find ourselves saying the exact same thing. Let’s hope that this time, we actually do.
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