Spider-Man: Brand New Day review: Holland is excellent as a lonely Peter Parker

Peter Parker spends his days stopping crimes in New York. At home, he watches the videos his old best friend Ned posts online. Ned is enjoying college with MJ, Peter’s former girlfriend. Neither of them remembers Peter. They do not even know that he is the person watching their updates. That routine makes Tom Holland’s fourth Spider-Man film sad before the next villain appears.

Here is the background if you have not seen the earlier films. Peter can climb walls, move unusually fast and use webs to travel between buildings or stop an attacker. He hides his face when he fights crime. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, a spell made everyone forget Peter Parker to stop a dangerous crisis. People still remember the masked hero, Spider-Man. They have forgotten the person inside the suit, including their own friendships with him.

Brand New Day takes place four years later. Peter’s aunt May has died, MJ and Ned have finished college, and Peter is living alone. Director Destin Daniel Cretton makes his attempts to talk to people again worth watching. The film is less convincing when it needs to solve his new physical problems. Those problems could have changed how Peter lives and fights, but the solution arrives surprisingly easily.

Scope and spoilers: This is our review of the complete 145-minute theatrical film, rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence and some language. We discuss character identities and important plot details below. The US digital release is announced for October 6, 2026. That is a home purchase or rental release, not a confirmed subscription-streaming date.

Peter Parker / Spider-Man (Tom Holland) is the young crimefighter trying to live without the people who knew him. MJ (Zendaya) is his former girlfriend, now back in New York after college. Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) was Peter’s best friend. He still admires Spider-Man and is trying to discover who wears the mask.

Frank Castle / Punisher (Jon Bernthal) is an armed vigilante who kills criminals; Peter wants to stop people without killing them. Bruce Banner / Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is a scientist whose body can change into a huge, violent creature. He helps Peter understand what is happening to his own body.

Jean Grey (Sadie Sink) can affect minds and control other people’s bodies. She is looking for her missing sister, Sara. Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman) runs Damage Control, a government organisation dealing with dangerous technology and people with powers. Mac Gargan / Scorpion (Michael Mando) fights Peter using armour with a mechanical tail.

Peter meets his friends as a stranger

The problem is not that Peter has forgotten how to talk to MJ and Ned. He knows them well. They are the ones starting from nothing. When MJ introduces herself to him, he has to respond to a woman he used to date as if this were their first meeting. Ned notices that they do not know each other. The audience understands why Peter finds an ordinary introduction so difficult.

Holland is good at making that encounter uncomfortable without turning Peter into someone who only looks miserable. He has to get through the conversation without explaining their whole history. Zendaya can be friendly and curious without playing MJ as someone who secretly knows all the answers. The two actors make us want them to keep talking. That is more useful here than another speech about how much Peter has lost.

Ned’s attempt to identify Spider-Man gives Peter a different problem. At the apartment, Peter finds Ned’s wall of Spider-Man pictures and investigation material. Ned has even made an app to track sightings of the hero. He does not realise that Peter is standing there looking at the work. Ned is searching for a friend he no longer recognises. The scene is funny because Ned is so committed to the search, and sad because Peter cannot enjoy it as their old shared secret.

These meetings are the reason the film’s slow progress with MJ becomes frustrating. Peter can get close enough to introduce himself and spend time with her, but the film repeatedly returns to how painful it is that she has forgotten him. We wanted more time showing what Peter and MJ learn about each other now. Their introduction is good enough to make the limited progress afterwards disappointing.

Frank Castle makes helping people more difficult

Peter wants to stop criminals and keep people alive. Frank Castle also wants to stop criminals, but he uses guns and is willing to kill. When they work together, Peter has to watch the person he is supposed to be helping as well as the people they are chasing. Frank is useful to Peter, but he is not someone Peter can safely leave in charge.

Their van encounter makes the disagreement easy to understand. Frank has a gun; Peter uses webbing to stop him using it. Frank’s annoyance is funny because he treats Peter’s interference as the problem, even though Peter is trying to prevent a shooting. Bernthal does not need to become cheerful to make that scene enjoyable. His impatient responses give Holland a good reason to keep talking and trying to manage him.

We liked these scenes more than the arrival of another famous hero simply to provide information. Peter and Frank have an immediate job to do and a clear disagreement about doing it. Peter has to stop Frank from shooting, not just tell him to be careful. It would have been worth giving them more time to work through that disagreement instead of making room for so many other characters.

The fights also benefit from Peter having to move and improvise. When several red-clad fighters attack him in an enclosed room, there are weapons and people approaching from different sides. He cannot just stand in front of one opponent and trade punches. He moves around them and uses webbing to interfere with their attacks. We can follow what Peter is trying to avoid and how he responds. That makes this sequence more enjoyable than watching a powerful character throw somebody through another wall.

Scorpion is a less satisfying opponent. He has armour and a mechanical tail, so Peter has something different to dodge. Michael Mando also gives the man a clear dislike of Spider-Man. But the film does not spend enough time with Gargan to make him as interesting as Frank or Banner. Scorpion gets the equipment for a good fight without much of a story of his own. If he is the character you were most excited to see, there is less here than his return might suggest.

Peter’s changing powers deserve a harder solution

Peter’s body starts changing in ways he cannot control. This matters because climbing walls and firing webs are normally the things that let him protect people. If he cannot trust his own body, those same abilities can make a rescue dangerous. Peter goes to Bruce Banner because Banner has already had to deal with an unwanted physical transformation. Peter wants to keep the useful abilities and remove the dangerous changes.

Banner is a sensible person for him to ask. Their conversation has a specific question to answer, and Ruffalo makes it pleasant to watch Peter looking for help rather than pretending he can work everything out alone. Banner’s own device, which suppresses his transformation into Hulk, also explains why Peter thinks a similar approach might work for him.

The disappointment is how quickly a small device worn around Peter’s neck settles the mutation problem. Earlier, he has been frightened by changes he does not understand. Then the device lets the story move on. The fix is easier than the problem deserved. We wanted Peter to spend more time adapting to those changes, or to have a clearer difficulty choosing what he was willing to give up to control them.

Jean Grey creates another kind of danger. Her powers let her control other people, so Peter cannot deal with the threat just by catching one obvious attacker. Metzger asks for Peter’s help because Peter can sense the threat and is immune to its control. An ordinary person in the street can be made to attack him. Peter needs to stop the attack without treating the person being controlled as the villain. That gives his refusal to kill a practical purpose beyond his arguments with Frank.

Jean wants to find Sara, her missing sister, and her search brings her into conflict with Damage Control. Sink makes Jean’s distress believable. But the film spends less time on the harm she can cause to the people she controls than on explaining why she is desperate. Jean’s missing sister matters, and so do the people she puts in danger. Following her decisions more closely would have made her more interesting than adding another explanation of the agency’s secrets.

Banner eventually becomes a much larger problem when he transforms into Hulk and attacks Peter. The size difference makes the fight dangerous: Peter cannot simply overpower him. By then, Peter is dealing with changes in his powers as well as Jean and Damage Control. The film also needs time for Frank, Scorpion and Hulk. That leaves less time for MJ and Ned. The extra fights leave less time for Peter and his old friends to get to know each other again.

Pixel Twelve Score: 7.5/10 — Good. Holland makes Peter’s reunion with people who no longer know him worth seeing, and Bernthal makes his efforts to work with Frank funny and difficult. The action often gives Peter more to do than hit somebody harder. We are less satisfied with the quick answer to his changing powers, Scorpion’s limited role and how long it takes the film to move beyond Peter missing MJ. Those are the reasons this is a good Spider-Man film for us, rather than one of the best.

Watch it if you liked Holland, Zendaya and Batalon together in the earlier films, or want Spider-Man and Punisher trying to work together. You do not need to know every other Marvel story: the important background is that Peter’s friends have forgotten him. If you mostly want a complete Peter-and-MJ romance or a film that concentrates on Scorpion, those parts get less attention than the cast list might lead you to expect.

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