Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review: The Best Marvel Film Yet Made

Introduction

This review is part of the MCU Watch Order – explore all Marvel movies and shows in timeline order!

I went in hoping Spider-Man: Brand New Day would be good. I did not expect it to be this good. Four films into Tom Holland’s run and 38 films into the MCU as a whole, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is, without qualification, the best Marvel movie we’ve ever seen — and the best Spider-Man film, period. It’s currently smashing box office records on its way to over a billion dollars worldwide, and for once, the box office isn’t lying to you about the quality.

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The collector's edition — steelbook packaging plus the 4K disc, the Blu-ray and a digital copy in one box.

Officially, this is a 5 out of 5. Honestly, it felt like a 6. Marvel and director Destin Daniel Cretton pulled off something genuinely rare at this scale: a film with massive action, real laughs, goosebump-level spectacle and quiet, patient character work, all in the same two hours and twenty-five minutes, without any of it feeling rushed or bolted together.

Plot: Four Years Alone, and a Reason to Stop Being Alone

No Way Home ended with Peter asking Doctor Strange to erase every memory of him from the world — including MJ’s and Ned’s. Brand New Day picks up four years later, and the cost of that choice is written all over Holland’s performance before a word of dialogue is spoken. Peter is still Spider-Man, still saving the city every night, and completely, thoroughly alone. His powers have quietly evolved in his isolation — he’s generating organic webbing now, something new and not entirely under his control — and that instability becomes the film’s central metaphor before it becomes its plot engine.

The story kicks into gear when Peter crosses paths with Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), a young telepath being held and experimented on by the Department of Damage Control. She reads, at first, like a threat — unpredictable, powerful, dangerous to be near. Peter works against her instinctively, the way four years of solo vigilantism have trained him to treat anything unexplained as a problem to be neutralized. It takes the film’s best stretch of writing to walk that assumption back: Jean isn’t a weapon. She’s protecting her sister from an organization that sees mutants as assets to be controlled, and Peter’s slow realization of that — his choice to stop fighting her and start fighting for her — is the emotional spine the whole film builds toward.

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Mark Ruffalo's street-level Hulk, exactly as he appears mentoring Peter in the film.

Hulk and Punisher: The Integration That Shouldn’t Work, and Does

On paper, dropping Bruce Banner and Frank Castle into a Spider-Man film as street-level mentor figures sounds like exactly the kind of overstuffed, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink move that’s sunk other MCU entries. In practice, it’s one of the film’s biggest triumphs. Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk isn’t here for a cameo punchline — he’s a genuine mentor figure filling the space Tony Stark left behind, and the film uses him specifically as a corrective to Peter’s isolation: someone who’s also spent years managing something dangerous inside himself and has actual, hard-won wisdom to offer.

Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is the trickier needle to thread — a character built entirely around lethal vigilante justice, restrained just enough to fit a PG-13 rating without ever feeling like a different, softer Frank Castle. The film is smart about how it uses him: not as a co-hero exactly, more as proof that Peter’s “no killing” line isn’t naivety, it’s a choice, made harder to hold onto specifically because Frank is standing right next to him arguing the opposite. Both characters get real screen time, real function in the plot, and neither one feels like stunt-casting. That’s a genuinely difficult balance, and Cretton’s script clears it.

Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey: The MCU’s First Mutant, Done Right

Introducing the X-Men into the MCU was always going to be a moment loaded with expectation, and Sadie Sink — already proven on Stranger Things — meets it completely. Her Jean Grey isn’t a simple “hero” or “villain” in this film; she’s a young woman with overwhelming telepathic power, deeply traumatized by what the Department of Damage Control has already done to her, and fighting to protect her sister from the same fate. Sink plays the character’s power as something genuinely frightening even to Jean herself, which does more to sell the eventual Phoenix-scale stakes of this character than any amount of exposition could.

The climax pays off everything Sink has been building: Peter takes a bullet protecting her, and it’s Jean who reaches into his mind and keeps him alive until help arrives — a full inversion of their first encounter, where Peter assumed he’d need to save her. By the time she leaves New York alone at the end of the film, clearly heading toward Charles Xavier and the wider X-Men, you genuinely want more of this character immediately. That’s the mark of a well-executed setup rather than a franchise-obligation tease.

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Jon Bernthal's uneasy ally, restrained for PG-13 but unmistakably Frank Castle.

Peter’s Arc: Accepting the Change He Can’t Control

The film’s real subject, underneath the villains and the mentor figures, is Peter’s refusal — and eventual, hard-won willingness — to accept what he’s becoming. His organic-web ability isn’t framed as a cool power-up; it’s framed as something happening to him that he’s spent the whole film trying to suppress, because accepting it means accepting that the boy who lost everything at the end of No Way Home isn’t coming back. Holland plays that internal war with a control and stillness he hasn’t had room to show in the earlier, more comedic entries. When he finally stops fighting the change — not in a triumphant power-up montage, but in a quiet, resolved moment mid-film — it’s the best acting he’s done in the role, and it’s a genuinely mature note for a summer blockbuster to hit.

That maturity extends to the ending. Ned’s memory of Peter comes back through their old signature handshake — a small, perfectly-earned beat after four years of Peter grieving a friendship he could see but couldn’t reach — and MJ and Peter’s relationship gets rebuilt from honest, hesitant scratch rather than a convenient reset. It’s the rare fourth entry in a franchise that finds a genuinely new emotional register to play in rather than repeating what worked before, and it’s the best acting Holland has done across all four films.

The Swing: Why the Opening Scene Gives You Goosebumps

Whatever else this film does, it remembers that Spider-Man’s core appeal is physical. The opening sequence — Peter swinging solo across Manhattan before a word of plot has happened — is some of the best pure movement filmmaking the MCU has ever produced. The camera holds long, unbroken lines through the city instead of cutting away every two seconds, and the sense of momentum is close enough to Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man games that it sent us straight back to the PS5 afterward to relive it. If you’ve played those games, you’ll recognize exactly what this sequence is chasing — and catching.

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Michael Mando's Mac Gargan, with the bendy-wire tail — a comic-accurate villain figure done right.

Villains: Scorpion and Tombstone Give the Action Real Teeth

While Jean Grey and the Hulk/Punisher dynamic carry the emotional weight, Michael Mando’s Scorpion and Marvin Jones III’s Tombstone give the film its physical antagonists, and both are genuinely comic-accurate in a way Sony’s recent Spider-adjacent output has struggled to manage. Mando in particular makes Mac Gargan menacing without tipping into camp, and having two real, dangerous Spider-Man villains sharing the screen with the hero himself — rather than off in their own spinoff — is exactly the format that’s worked best for this corner of the franchise before.

From the Screen to the LEGO Table

One small, specific detail we loved: in a quiet scene, Ned and Peter build the actual LEGO Star Wars X-Wing Fighter (75301) together — a real, ordinary-kid moment of friendship tucked into a movie about a guy who’s lost the ability to have ordinary moments. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it beat, but for anyone who’s built that exact set with their own kid, it landed harder than most of the CGI in the film. Want to recreate it? the same 474-piece X-wing is still findable, and it’s exactly the set they use on screen.

LEGO also went straight to the source with two official movie tie-in sets. The Spider-Man Hero Figure (76346) is a posable, shelf-ready build of the exact suit from the film’s back half, and the Prison Transport Chase (76349) packs in four minifigures for an actual scene, not just a static display piece. Between the three sets, this is genuinely the best LEGO tie-in wave a Spider-Man film has gotten in years.

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A posable, buildable Spider-Man figure for the shelf — the official movie tie-in set.

For the Bookshelf: Where the Story Came From

The film borrows its title and premise from Zeb Wells, Mark Waid and Dan Slott’s real Spider-Man: Brand New Day comic run — worth tracking down if the film’s central idea (Peter starting over with everyone he loves) hooked you and you want the source material. For a look behind the camera, the official Art of the Movie book covers the concept art behind Jean Grey’s design and the evolving suit, and it’s a genuinely good coffee-table pickup for a fan rather than the usual thin cash-grab tie-in.

Want to catch it again — or catch up on the trilogy first? Prime Video’s 30-day free trial has the rest of Holland’s run streaming while you wait for the disc release.

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions

Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day worth watching?

Absolutely — it’s the best Marvel film we’ve ever seen. Tom Holland’s best performance across four films, a genuinely great Jean Grey introduction, and an Avengers-style ensemble that still finds room for a personal, small-scale story.

What is Spider-Man: Brand New Day about?

Four years after No Way Home erased every memory of him, Peter Parker is still fighting crime alone as Spider-Man. His powers are evolving into something he can’t fully control, and a young telepath named Jean Grey — held by the Department of Damage Control — pulls him into a fight that eventually forces him to accept the change he’s been resisting.

Who directed Spider-Man: Brand New Day?

Destin Daniel Cretton, who also directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It’s his second MCU film and easily his best work in the franchise so far.

Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day suitable for kids?

It carries the same PG-13 rating as every MCU Spider-Man film. The one thing worth prepping a younger viewer for in advance: the Punisher is on screen as an ally, and while the film keeps his violence restrained for the rating, he’s still a character built around lethal vigilante justice.

How does Jean Grey fit into the MCU?

Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey is the first mutant/X-Men character formally introduced into the live-action MCU films. She’s introduced as an apparent threat controlled by the Department of Damage Control, but the truth is more complicated — and her departure at the end of the film points directly at the X-Men’s arrival in the wider MCU.

Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day connected to Avengers: Doomsday?

It’s set before Avengers: Doomsday in the MCU’s Phase Six timeline, and the film’s ending — plus its post-credits scene — plants threads that point toward it and the wider Secret Wars storyline.