‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Review: An MCU Reboot That Can’t Break Free

Within the Marvel universe and its orbit, Spider-Man has remained one of the few long-term sure bets. The Avengers had their moment, all their multiversal offshoots did too; new headliners have come and gone, and in most cases faded, lost ground, blurred out and disappeared. But the “friendly neighborhood” hero is still there—reliably at the top of the box office and occupying a space that, at least within the MCU, feels relatively grounded, plausible, almost realistic. “Small potatoes,” as someone says here. Problems of little consequence in the cosmic scheme of things.

The previous installment, No Way Home, blew the multiverse door wide open and then shut it again by the end, effectively resetting the saga without swapping out the actor. Brand New Day is—or should be—Marvel’s attempt to reconfigure Spider-Man without starting from scratch. All it takes, as anyone who saw the last film knows, is for a few key characters to lose their memories. That’s the 2.0 launch point for this Peter Parker, who returns to smaller stakes: stopping muggings and low-level villains on the streets of Manhattan, working with the police, becoming once more the local hero beloved by kids and families.

There are differences, though. This Peter (Tom Holland, a touch more unsettled than usual) is older, lonelier, more bitter, carrying the pain of losing not just relatives who have died, but also his girlfriend and best friend, who are still alive yet have no memory of him. There’s something of Batman about him now—minus Bruce Wayne’s fortune. He lives alone, focuses on work, and, privately, is not doing well at all. Brand New Day pits him against that loneliness and sense of abandonment while introducing a new, mysterious adversary who doesn’t present itself directly but instead moves from host to host, possessing people like a vengeful spirit. Everyone except Peter, who seems able to resist its attempts to enter his body and mind.

At the same time, the film explores how Peter copes with the absence of MJ (Zendaya) and his friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), and with a kind of depression that may even jeopardize his powers. Along the way, a few familiar faces from different phases and platforms of the MCU show up around him, helping—or not—while he tries to uncover who is behind these strange possessions and what they want. Anyone who’s seen a trailer or skimmed a production page will know who I mean, but to keep the spoiler police at bay, I’ll leave it there.

Brand New Day works in fits and starts, its energy rising and falling every fifteen or twenty minutes for no clear reason. Scenes that range from charming to genuinely moving with MJ and Ned give way to routine, overly digital action beats; a well-crafted set piece—one in particular showcases director Cretton’s flair for action—leads into another that doesn’t quite land. By the midpoint of what you might call its extended second act (Marvel movies tend to have several, like a TV season compressed into two and a half hours), things begin to feel tedious and repetitive. It’s the moment when you check your watch, realize there’s still an hour to go, and wonder what they’ll come up with to fill it. They do come up with something, of course—but it no longer has much impact.

There’s a discernible trend—more interesting thematically than narratively—toward more recognizable, human villains whose wrongdoing is, to some degree, understandable. So much so that you could argue the film’s “villain” (played by Sadie Sink) barely qualifies as one. This approach—one increasingly common in both film and television, especially when the antagonist is a woman—creates a certain dramatic imbalance in the action, undermining many of those sequences. Who really wants to see half a city destroyed and dozens of people killed if the villain is, in truth, a troubled, confused person with no real malicious intent?

Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t the MCU relaunch some might have hoped for, nor does it signal a return to basics. Still, it won’t disappoint fans of the web-slinging hero. It delivers on the core promise of a character whose appeal has proven remarkably resilient, despite countless subplots and multiversal detours. Peter may be more burdened—guilt-ridden, wounded, struggling even to control his powers—but he remains one of the most recognizable superheroes in the contemporary canon. And that, even when the films don’t always match him, is something he hasn’t lost.