Spider-man: Brand New Day (2026) - Destin Daniel Cretton - film review
77%
By O. Jacobs
Sony Pictures Releasing
August 1st 2026: I'm walking into my local theater to see the new Spider-Man movie, The Strokes have a new album out; Reboots, sequels, and prequels are dominating the cinema-scape… It feels like it might actually be 2004.
That being said - while the socio-political climate in the United States swells with anxiety, aggression, left-right push and pull, the consistent uncovering of government persona backstabs, betrayal from rescinded emergency medical protocol scandals, and as information surrounding the threat level of global war and impending civilian intrusion disguises itself as ‘protection’, people are crying out and yearning for a hero… Someone to save us from the peril of what lies ahead tomorrow. [and also maybe just need a long freakin’ nap, and a day off.]
It all reminds me of a time before this… A place more than twenty years ago, a place in which I was only three years old, but the trickle-down effect this first edition had on me cannot be understated in the slightest… I’m talking about a super-mega, worldwide marketing and comic-book pushing superhero psyop that befell all of us Gen Z, Gen X, Millennials, Boomers, your great grandmother, and your neighbor’s dog just one year after New York takes its biggest national attack on the chin, and sets out for vengeance and U.S. pride in the following years.
Sam Raimi did something spectacular in 2002: In the release of Spider-Man’s first major motion picture, he hoisted up the little baby lion king above the African landscape and for the rest of the world to see - our first iteration of our webbed hero, in Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker.
Spider-Man (2002)
What we got was an amalgamation of decades worth of a passion for the colors, shades, and lighting that exist among the dark in Raimi’s visionary expertise of blending a bold comic-caricature with aesthetics of horror and brutality [Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Darkman] with the beautiful pre-MCU standard of filmmaking in which CGI is merely a tool to enhance the live-action story for the screen, and honor the physical sets and props a multi-layered team of artists and minds-alike, went to work every day for months or years on end - to develop. Slap a Danny Elfman one-of-a-kind, soul-igniting musical score on top of that bad boy, and you have something that’s going to withstand the test of time, while eclipsing everything that came before, or after it. [In the Superhero-sphere]
[Duh, this is just what made movies, movies], yeah i’m aware, but it’s not every day it catches a spark and is applied successfully, to which it’s universally received by the world and with unbelievable acclaim. [Batman ‘89, Star Wars ‘77, Back to the Future, the list goes on]. Spider-Man (2002) immediately found itself among the pantheon of ‘instant all-time greats’ upon its arrival.
To follow that simple description of a turn-of-the-century historically significant, and impactful blockbuster - I will say [like many and most would agree] that what Raimi and his team of magical wizards then followed up said achievement with in 2004 in Spider-Man 2, was nothing short of mindboggling grandiosity - in its emotionally weighted plot, character development [via tragedy and heartbreak] and a portrayal of Spider-Man’s quintessential villain [Doctor Octopus] by Alfred Molina, that not only matches the effectiveness of Willem Dafoe’s ‘Green Goblin’, but builds upon it in almost every way.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
When you retain what makes the first two great, why they were so effective, and the acclaim and worldwide response they garnered, the opinion of the third installment [Spider-Man 3] is a moot point at best. Raimi had already solidified his entries into the greatest Superhero films ever made, genre-defining, pioneering, etc… So what came next not only had a path blazed for it, but the book was written on what multiple generations of Spider-Man fans were looking for in a Spidey film.
What Andrew Garfield’s double-feature missed the mark on wasn’t the charm, or the heart of Spider-Man, but the lack of direction in storyboarding and world building that fell criminally below the aesthetic, production, and written character standards of Raimi’s three-movie universe. [No one is arguing that Jamie Foxx’s ‘Electro’ or Dane Dehaan’s ‘Green Goblin’ hold a candle to the previous hall of villains given to us by the Raimi-verse, but if so - they’d be wrong].
Andrew Garfield [Spider-Man] (Bottom) , Dane Dehaan [Green Goblin] (Top) - Pictured, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014)
Tom Holland, swinging onto the scene as our newest Peter to wear the red and blue in 2017 - arrived with enormous acceptance and hype among Spidey and MCU fans alike. At this point, Avengers: Infinity War and ‘Endgame’ were just a year or two away from release, with plans to fully incorporate him into those plotlines.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
What we received in ‘Homecoming’ (2017) and ‘Far From Home’ (2019) were solid ‘play-it-safe’ entries, marked by beefier villain performances in Michael Keaton’s ‘Vulture’ and Jake Gyllenhaal's ‘Mysterio’, [the latter film in which I believe is entirely over-hated] but the overtly ‘funny and quippy’, MCU CGI / largely ‘Toyota commercial’ [hilarious but accurate comparison] visual aesthetics just weren’t for me, and wasn’t for a lot of people. But it definitely [was] for a lot of people…
Tom Holland [Spider-Man] (Left) , Jake Gyllenhaal [Mysterio] (Right) - Pictured, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” (2019)
This marked the first time [or at least the most intense time] critics and audiences were truly split between “what was good, what wasn’t”, and “what was better, or not as good” etc… We had seven movies to pull apart and analyze at any time. And while a lot of Spidey to choose from could never be a bad thing [right?] I believe it diluted the direction of Jon Watts’ Spider-verse, and in an attempt to please everybody, it instead divided you into two camps:
Tom Holland is either the greatest iteration of Spider-Man, or he’s the worst.
Online and in-person discourse couldn’t remain casual and subjective anymore, it went to full-on literary blows, derogatory memes, personal attacks, Reddit-mogging, Instagram-battling hype edits, and nostalgia-goggled god-fathering from the OG diehards larping from above as better-than-you film snobs. [I was one of them].
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
When the teaser for ‘No Way Home’ dropped, it ignited an atom-bomb atop the general MCU fanbase and Spider-fandom as a whole, and wiped away any rules you thought may have been set up in each iteration’s subsequent universe. When the film arrived, the jaws were on the floor, good and bad.
Suddenly, a multi-verse-like outing could bring back any and every character you could ever desire. Bring back ⅔ of the Tobey-verse villains in one go? Sure! Resurrect once rejected depictions of established characters for a second chance? Sure! [Electro, Lizard]. Have all the antagonists stand in an apartment, mulling about like a middle school punch party, waiting to have themselves fixed by Peter’s technological dexterity and love + friendship?
Give me a break, I think I'm gonna vomit…
*Insert meme of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park doing the “you were too busy thinking about how you could do it rather than if you should do it”* blah blah, you get the point, it was downright diabolical, childish, lazy, and yeah… I don’t really have a strong opinion on it. [yeesh].
Some may agree with me, some may not, it doesn’t matter. “Art subjective”, “everyone is allowed their opinion”, “unga-bunga, ooga-booga”, [angry caveman noises], whatever…
Deleted scene in which the multi-verse Spider-Man villains take an awkward elevator ride up to Happy Hogan’s apartment, in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021) - Yes, it was almost worse than it already was…
When the fallout from ‘No Way Home’ sits deep in the recesses of your Covid-Locked mind, 2021 doesn’t just feel like five years ago, but more like a decade ago. So much has happened to our psyche in the last handful of years, anything pre 2025 at this point feels like it might as well have been just a fever dream. [Anyone else or just me?]
I’m glad this is the case, because going into ‘Brand New Day’ feels like just that. A fresh start, a reset button, a cleared canvas: “Where can we go from here?”
Well, we got that answer in switching up directorial duties to Destin Daniel Cretton [Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, 2021], with Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers returning as writers. We leave behind Jon Watts’ schoolboy / Iron-Man learned, first-steps Peter Parker tossed into the mix of multi-dimensional battle fodder, for a wiser, stronger, humbler, Peter - who’s portrayed as actively enthralled in the everyday editions of street-level threats, and villain brawls as shown to us in the film’s opening exposition… [Mind you, aside from the movie’s emotionally gripping back-half, the best part of the film].
Jacob Batalon [Ned Leeds]
I’ve never really been a fan of Jacob Batalon’s ‘Ned Leeds’ or Zendaya’s ‘MJ’, so aside from the fact that they’re both probably super nice people in real life, I don’t have much to say about their impact here. The characters themselves play a role in which Peter’s determination and spirit is reignited, but the acting and the person behind those characters? I could take it or leave it. I think you could interchange any viable actor / actress and have a relatively unchanged effect on the emotion here. Sorry… (I think it was an underwhelming casting choice, like a lot of our worldly characters in the Jon Watts setup universe)
As we trudge through the struggles of Peter hanging on by a mental thread of being unknown by his friends, his love interest etc, the companionship / ‘buddy-film’ dynamic of Jon Bernthal’s ‘Punisher’ is a tasteful, funny, and welcome addition to this ride. I didn’t find one moment where it seemed his involvement was pushed too far for the sake of the joke, and this goes for the rest of the script as well. [A very nice change of pace from the previous three Holland films].
Tom Holland (Spider-Man) [Left] , Jon Bernthal (Punisher) [Right]
What ‘Brand New Day’ succeeds in executing is crafting [For the first time in Holland’s universe], a Spider-Man movie that feels like a Spider-Man movie. Focused, meaningful, accelerative to our protagonists growth, stakes that are high, what will come next? All of those things we sort of kind of… Went without in the first trilogy [2017-2021].
Not to mention, probably the best Spidey suit we’ve seen since Spider-Man 3 (2007).
Without giving away any spoilers, the result of incorporating multiple appearances of villains and characters within the Spider-Man lexicon [whether meant to stick around for a greater purpose or not] aids in the result of this film feeling like a living, breathing world. It feels like the skirmishes with [redacted] on a Tuesday morning, is definitely something that would occur to a seasoned Peter Parker who is depicted as working flawlessly in tandem with the NYPD, setting up an assumption that this operation has been business-as-usual for some time. Holding [redacted] up against a building covered in webs, waiting for the cops to arrive - is just another day for him… I love it.
Michael Mando [Scorpion] (Left) , Tom Holland [Spider-Man] (Right)
This shtick harkens back to the proposed vignette opener we saw in sketched and planned storyboards of a Sam Raimi Spider-Man 4 (2011) [that never happened] where we see Spidey rounding up characters the likes of Mysterio, Kraven, Shocker, Prowler, Rhino, and even Stilt-Man, before facing off against a highly rumoured appearance of John Malkovich as ‘Vulture’.
What I wouldn’t give monetarily, materially, or bodily to witness the passion and terror he would / could have brought to that role, but alas… life goes on.
Spider-Man 4 , Proposed Storyboards
That to me, is where [if anywhere] Brand New Day falls [Just a wee bit] flat for me, and some murmurings of others i’ve already seen online. The way we see Peter rally with his back against the wall is nothing short of inspirational, reinvigorating, and downright lights-out exciting for the character, for Tom Holland, and for Sony / Marvel’s pockets [CHA-CHING] - but it doesn’t change the fact that our ‘Main Antagonist’ [who i’ll avoid naming or going into detail over] acts more as a catalyst for change within themself, and within Peter. [and maybe a few others as a result *wink wink]. A positive change, a reset / refresh, like I mentioned earlier…
There’s no real larger-than-life threat to society, or the greater world we’ve seen established in the film’s opening montage. There’s no real peril Peter appears to be in that we know he can’t ‘Ultra-Spider’ himself out of. [You’ll understand this later].
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a refooting, and a regrounding for Tom Holland’s Spidey, and a massively welcomed one at that. With the drought of entries the MCU house has given to us these last 6 or 7 years, B.N.D. is practically like reliving 2002 all over again. And we’re going to enjoy that as much as we can while we have it, while we don’t know what tomorrow holds, and while the world still knows and believes Spider-Man IS the best, IS the one to save us, IS the one to give us hope.
For now, Tom Holland is ‘that guy’.
Biggest U.S. domestic opening weekend for a film of all time by the way… Yeah, what did you expect?
With a 927 million dollar global weekend take-home, and an estimated 2+ billion dollar gross during its whole theatrical run, if it’s not extraordinarily clear that Spider-Man is the superhero we all need, all want, and sits comfortably at the top of all others - I don’t know what other proof you’d need.
Take that Robert Pattinson.
We can go round and round arguing which lead actor, which era, which movie is better… Just throwing my hat in the ring, I know nothing will ever touch Spider-Man 2 (2004), but that doesn’t matter… for the most part. At the end of the day, any time we can all [mostly] agree that a new Spidey film is a great Spidey film, it’s not only good for our souls, but it’s good for the world.
Long Live Spider-Man, Long Live Sam Raimi, Long Live Tobey, Andrew, and Tom… And whoever dons the mask in the future.
Just don’t ever J.J. Abrams my Spider-Man villains again okay, leave the past in the past, or I will hunt you down and physically harm you.
I’m just kidding. [For legal purposes].
