Spider-Man: Brand New Day has a problem before the movie even begins. It has to follow Spider-Man: No Way Home.
No Way Home brought together three generations of Spider-Man and turned familiar faces walking onto a screen into moments that could send an entire theatre into chaos. Once a superhero movie has done something on that scale, it becomes difficult to imagine what the next one can possibly do to create the same feeling. Brand New Day does not create that same feeling.
That does not mean it is a bad movie. It is actually a very good Spider-Man movie. It just is not the event No Way Home was.
Audiences certainly have not lost interest. As of Aug. 9, Brand New Day has already made more than $1.25 billion worldwide after opening July 31.
The movie picks Peter Parker up in a world that no longer remembers him. His old friends have continued with their lives, while Peter has devoted himself to being Spider-Man. That isolation and the pressure that comes with it form the starting point for the film.
Tom Holland has now played Peter Parker long enough that the character feels different from many of his other roles.
Holland is a very good actor, but there are performances where it can still feel like you are watching Tom Holland playing another Tom Holland character. Spider-Man is different. He has spent years with Peter Parker, and that familiarity shows.
No Way Home demonstrated that particularly well during Aunt May’s death. Holland’s performance in that scene gave it enough emotional weight to silence a theatre. Brand New Day gives him some quieter emotional material, but it works for the same reason. Peter eventually has to confront something painful. The people he cared about did not simply stop living when they forgot him. Their lives continued.
There are moments where Holland communicates that realization without needing a huge speech. Peter can see the consequences of what happened right in front of him, along with the possibility that some things may not simply return to the way they were.
Zendaya is equally important to making those scenes work.
Her MJ still feels like MJ. The movie does not treat her as someone who can simply be handed information about the past and instantly return to the person Peter remembers. She remains cautious, independent and true to the personality established in the earlier films. That makes the emotional distance between the characters more convincing.
Jacob Batalon also remains an important part of that history. Friendship is one of the underlying foundations of Brand New Day, with the film quietly suggesting that some connections can endure even when circumstances change. In a world that feels increasingly divided, that message about friendship and human connection gives the story even more weight.
The performances may be one reason director Destin Daniel Cretton was a good choice for the film. Before Spider-Man, Cretton built much of his reputation through films including Short Term 12 and Just Mercy before moving into Marvel with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. His earlier work put a heavy emphasis on characters and performances. That ability to work with actors matters here.
Jon Bernthal brings Frank Castle, the Punisher, into Spider-Man’s world while retaining the harder presence associated with that character. Mark Ruffalo once again gives Bruce Banner a personality beyond simply being the man who turns into the Hulk.
Sadie Sink is another standout. That is about as much as I want to say about her. Her casting has been public from the beginning, but the movie is much more enjoyable if you know as little as possible about her character before seeing it.
Brand New Day is also much scarier than I expected. There are scenes that create genuine unease instead of simply putting something frightening in front of the camera.
The film finds ways to make familiar faces feel unsafe. At times, there is a real uncertainty over where the danger is coming from and who could suddenly be caught in it. That changes the stakes. When a movie makes you believe that even an important character might not be safe, the tension becomes much more effective.
The Hulk is another example. Marvel audiences have spent so many years with the character that it is easy to forget what being anywhere near that amount of power would actually feel like. Brand New Day remembers how frightening that kind of power can be. When control starts to slip, some of the film’s best tension comes from simply wondering what could happen next.
The action is excellent too, with sequences that push speed, movement and scale far beyond older superhero movies. That heightened style may especially connect with younger veiwers already used to anime, where impossible physical feats are part of the action.
The movie also remembers to be funny. Holland’s awkward Peter Parker humour is still there, and some of the best comedy comes from putting Peter into ridiculous everyday situations rather than stopping everything for another superhero joke.
One particular encounter in a lift is a perfect example.Explaining what happens would ruin the joke, but it begins with Peter finding himself in an embarrassing situation and somehow gets worse when another person enters the lift. It is stupid in exactly the right way. More importantly, it feels like Peter Parker. That balance between humour, horror, emotional drama and enormous action scenes gives Brand New Day its own identity.
Where the movie disappointed me slightly is in how little it appears to point toward what comes next. Brand New Day is the final MCU movie before Avengers: Doomsday, although VisionQuest arrives on Disney plus in between. That series may still have something to add before Doomsday. But in Brand New Day itself, I expected a clearer hint of what is coming next.
Marvel has trained audiences to look for those hints. For years, seemingly small scenes have pointed toward Avengers movies, introduced characters who would become important later or provided one more clue about where the larger story was going. There are connections here, and eagle-eyed viewers will undoubtedly find smaller details buried throughout the film. But for an ordinary viewer expecting a clearer bridge into Doomsday, there is surprisingly little to hold onto.
In one way, that is actually refreshing. Spider-Man gets to have a Spider-Man movie instead of spending its running time advertising the next Avengers film. But I still expected something more obvious by the time the credits started rolling.
Which brings us to the post-credits scene. There is no mid-credits scene, but there is one scene after the credits have completely finished. Without spoiling it, the scene is brief, strange and does not give the kind of clear Doomsday setup I was expecting.
For me, it was not worth the wait. Still, a disappointing post-credits scene does not change the movie that came before it.
Brand New Day cannot reproduce what No Way Home accomplished, and trying to do so probably would have been a mistake. There are familiar Marvel characters here. There is spectacle. There are surprises. But the movie is strongest when it stops worrying about being enormous and lets its characters matter.
Holland and Zendaya carry the emotional side. Cretton gets strong performances throughout the cast. The action understands how far superhero spectacle can now be pushed. The humour still feels like Spider-Man, while several sequences bring a level of horror and uncertainty I did not expect from the film.
No Way Home was an event. Brand New Day is a movie. And it turns out that being a very good Spider-Man movie is more than enough.
Arjun Pillai is the City Hall reporter for the Prince Albert Daily Herald. When not covering the news, he enjoys relaxing with a good movie.
