Spider-Man: Brand New Day
2026, Destin Daniel Cretton
“Spider-Man belongs to every generation. Brand New Day knows exactly which one it belongs to.”
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
How it sticks: Cut on Credits
First Look
I generally enjoyed Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The action is good, there is enough humor to keep its two-plus-hour runtime moving, and Tom Holland continues to understand the particular spirit that has made his version of Peter Parker work for nearly a decade. It is fun, energetic, and unmistakably Marvel.
But what interested me most wasn't necessarily the story. It was how deliberately Brand New Day seems to understand Spider-Man's place as a generational superhero.
Every generation gets its own Peter Parker. And this one is ours.
On how it’s made
Soundtrack
The standout for me was the soundtrack. Brand New Day fills Peter's New York with contemporary artists like Tame Impala, giving the movie a distinctly youthful identity. These aren't just trendy needle drops. The music helps establish who this version of Spider-Man is for. It feels current without feeling like Marvel is desperately trying to prove that it's current, and it reinforces the larger idea that Spider-Man continually evolves alongside the generation watching him.
Action
The action is consistently good, and Destin Daniel Cretton brings a slightly different energy to Spider-Man after directing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. There is enough visual personality to keep the set pieces exciting without losing the playful physicality that Spider-Man needs. The humor woven into the action also works well, keeping the movie light even when the larger story starts pulling Peter toward heavier territory.
Tom Holland as Spider-Man
Tom Holland remains the anchor. He has always been particularly good at balancing the physical confidence of Spider-Man with the awkwardness and vulnerability of Peter Parker. That distinction is essential to the character, and Holland still makes it look effortless. Even as the MCU around him gets bigger and more complicated, his performance keeps Spider-Man grounded in the youthful energy that made this version of the character work in the first place.
Theory moment
Spider-Man Is a Generational Superhero
There is something unique about Spider-Man compared with most superheroes: he is perpetually young.
Batman can be middle-aged. Superman can become a father. Wolverine can quite literally be played by the same actor for decades. Spider-Man has to remain close to youth.
Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker belonged to the early 2000s. Andrew Garfield's Peter belonged to the early 2010s. Holland's Spider-Man emerged in the age of smartphones, social media, and the MCU, and Brand New Day makes the case that Marvel is still consciously shaping him around the generation that grew up alongside him.
The younger cast matters. The humor matters. The soundtrack especially matters. Even the choice to introduce another young Marvel character through Sadie Sink reinforces the sense that Marvel is assembling a new generation rather than simply extending the old one.
That is probably why Spider-Man has survived superhero fatigue better than almost anyone else. The costume changes. The music changes. The cultural references change… but Peter Parker doesn't.
He's still a young person trying to figure out who he is while carrying responsibilities that feel impossibly larger than himself. That's an idea Marvel can package for almost any generation because growing up never stops feeling like that.
One Moment I can’t stop thinking about:
Strangely, my biggest reservation about the movie comes from one of its most consequential choices: Sadie Sink as Jean Grey.
Jean Grey is a difficult character to bring back right now.
Fox already tried to make the Dark Phoenix story work twice, most recently with Dark Phoenix, and neither attempt gave Jean the cinematic legacy that a character of her importance deserves. Now Marvel is trying again, this time with Sink, while simultaneously preparing the MCU for its next enormous crossover era. That makes her introduction feel less like a casual casting choice and more like a gamble.
Sink's Jean plays an important role in Brand New Day, and the movie positions her alongside Peter as another young person struggling with powers and isolation. Some critics have found that parallel effective. I wasn't as convinced.
Part of the problem may simply be the baggage Jean Grey carries with her. We already know where this character can eventually go, and we have already watched filmmakers struggle to get her there. Introducing her again means asking audiences to invest in another interpretation of a character whose biggest cinematic storyline has become almost synonymous with disappointment.
At a moment when Marvel seems willing to take increasingly large swings to recapture the cultural dominance of the original Avengers era, Jean Grey feels like one of the riskier ones.
And that raises a much bigger question about the state of Marvel… but that deserves its own post.
The Tradeoff
Brand New Day works best when it remembers that it is a Spider-Man movie and not an advertisement for the next phase of Marvel.
That's also where the film occasionally gets into trouble. The MCU machinery is always humming somewhere behind it. Jean Grey points toward the X-Men. Other established characters expand Peter's corner of the universe. And Avengers: Doomsday is close enough that it's difficult not to see certain choices as pieces being moved into position for something larger. That criticism has appeared elsewhere too, with reviewers arguing that the film occasionally sacrifices its independence in order to prepare Marvel's next crossover.
Jon Bernthal's Punisher is the opposite problem for me: I wanted more.
Bernthal has such a strong command of Frank Castle that his presence immediately changes the energy of a scene, and putting his brutal worldview against Peter Parker's fundamentally optimistic one gives Marvel an interesting ideological pairing. The movie even finds humor in forcing the R-rated Punisher into Spider-Man's PG-13 world.
I would have happily traded some of the MCU connective tissue for more time with the two of them.
Still, Brand New Day understands something Marvel desperately needs to remember. Audiences don't necessarily need every superhero movie to redefine the genre. Sometimes they just need a character they like, a few great action sequences, a soundtrack they'll actually listen to afterward, and enough personality to make the whole thing feel alive.
Rewatch value: Worth revisiting before Avengers: Doomsday.
Key takeaway:
Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn't a Marvel movie I'm going to reach for constantly, and I'm not sure it completely escapes the franchise's current obsession with setting up whatever comes next. But it's a fun, youthful Spider-Man movie anchored by another strong Tom Holland performance and one of the better uses of contemporary music in the MCU.
More importantly, it reminded me why Spider-Man keeps surviving every reinvention Hollywood throws at him.
