Dadnology Week 32: A Perfect Spider-Man, LEGO Star Wars & GTA 6
Week 32, 2026: Spider-Man: Brand New Day earns a perfect 5/5 and the #1 spot on our Marvel ranking, three LEGO Star Wars sets get reviewed, GTA 6 gets a Netflix reveal date, and Avatar Aang, X-Men and The Running Man round out a huge movie week.
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🕷️ The Week That Was — A Perfect Score, and a Very Full Slate
This is the week Spider-Man landed at the top of our Marvel ranking. Spider-Man: Brand New Day hit theaters and turned out to be exactly as good as the box office numbers suggested — a perfect 5/5 that debuts at #1 on a freshly rebuilt Top 10 Marvel Movies list — good enough that a full cluster of Spider-Man coverage grew around it: a case for Tom Holland as the best live-action Spider-Man, a spoiler-filled end credit scene breakdown, and a genuinely lovely piece tracing a LEGO Star Wars thread through all four Holland films. That last one hands off directly into LEGO territory, where three Star Wars sets got the review treatment this week, including the exact X-wing that shows up on screen. Beyond the superhero stuff, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender and The Running Man both turned into pleasant surprises on Paramount+, X-Men (2000) got a nostalgic look back, gaming had one real story worth knowing about, and our fog machine review finally explains what’s been hiding inside our LEGO diorama photos all along.
Jump to: 🎬 Movies & TV · 🎮 Gaming · 🧱 LEGO & Family · 🏠 Smart Home, Camera & Tech
🎬 Movie & TV News This Week
Spider-Man: Brand New Day earns a perfect 5/5
We do not hand out perfect scores lightly, so it means something that our Spider-Man: Brand New Day review lands on a full 5 out of 5. Set four years after No Way Home erased Peter from everyone’s memory, the film pairs him with Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey — the first mutant formally introduced into the live-action MCU — and drops Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher in as street-level mentors who somehow earn every minute of screen time they get. Michael Mando’s Scorpion and Marvin Jones III’s Tombstone supply the physical villains, and the whole thing is currently closing in on a billion dollars worldwide, which for once is not the box office lying to you about the quality. The 4K steelbook edition is already up for pre-order if you want it the day it hits shelves.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (4K UHD/BD Combo + Digital + Steelbook) (opens in a new tab)
The film we gave a perfect 5/5 this week — the steelbook collector's edition with the 4K disc, Blu-ray and a digital copy.
The case for Tom Holland, and where Brand New Day fits in the ranking
Two companion pieces went up alongside the review. Why Tom Holland Is the Perfect Spider-Man makes the full case across all four films — the stunt work, the teenage awkwardness nobody else has attempted, and the Zendaya/Jacob Batalon chemistry that turns a superhero trilogy into a real coming-of-age story. And with a new contender in the mix, we rebuilt our Top 10 Marvel Movies ranking from scratch — Brand New Day takes the top spot, ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy and the original Avengers, with no nostalgia free pass handed out anywhere on the list.
Every Easter egg, and what the end credit scene means for the MCU
If you have already seen it, our end credit scene and Easter egg breakdown is worth the full spoiler read: Jean DeWolff and Silk deep cuts, direct nods to Netflix’s Daredevil, and a single wordless shot of Ned’s tracker device that reveals Spider-Man is no longer on Earth — a direct thread into Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. There is also a genuinely great piece we did not expect to write: the LEGO Star Wars thread running through every Holland Spider-Man film, from the Death Star Ned drops in Homecoming to the exact X-wing he builds with Peter this time around. That set gets its own review below.
Beyond the Spider-Verse finally has a release date
Sony confirmed the trilogy-closing Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse for June 18, 2027, and we could not resist writing up why we can’t wait for it — the Across the Spider-Verse cliffhanger has been unresolved since 2023, and the film’s whole premise is a kid fighting an entire multiverse bureaucracy for the right to save his own father. Across the Spider-Verse is the essential rewatch before June 2027.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (4K Ultra HD) (opens in a new tab)
The cliffhanger Beyond the Spider-Verse has to resolve in June 2027 — worth a rewatch now that a date is confirmed.
X-Men (2000): the film that made this whole genre possible
Before any of this week’s Spider-Man content existed, there was X-Men (2000) — the film that convinced Hollywood comic-book adaptations could be serious business again, two years before Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man turned the genre into a mainstream phenomenon. Our review lands on a fair 3.5 out of 5: Hugh Jackman announces himself as Wolverine immediately in a role that would define his career for the next two decades, and the Xavier/Magneto rivalry between Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen still carries real weight, but the effects and the 104-minute runtime show their age today. The Beginnings Trilogy is the way to revisit it.
Avatar Aang and The Running Man: two Paramount+ surprises
Two reviews from earlier in the week are worth a second mention if you missed them. Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender brings Team Avatar back as genuine adults still carrying the weight of the war they won, and it earns a confident 4.5 out of 5 — the strongest family pick of the week by a wide margin. Right behind it, The Running Man (2025) turned into a pleasant surprise while browsing the same Paramount+ catalog: Glen Powell and Josh Brolin carry a strong 4 out of 5 remake of the Schwarzenegger classic, though this one is a date-night pick, not a family movie night — it carries an R rating for real violence. Avatar Aang and The Running Man are both streaming now.
AdThe Running Man (2025) [4K/BD Combo w/Digital Copy] (opens in a new tab)
Glen Powell and Josh Brolin's Stephen King remake, reviewed this week at a strong 4/5.
🎮 Gaming News for Dads
GTA 6’s next reveal is landing on Netflix, not YouTube
Gaming had exactly one real story this week, but it is a genuinely unusual one. Rockstar and Netflix announced that the next GTA 6 extended look premieres on Netflix on August 27 at 3pm ET — a full six hours before the same footage goes up free on Rockstar’s own YouTube channel. Nobody actually gets locked out of anything: Netflix subscribers just get a six-hour head start on footage everyone can watch for free after dinner. What is worth noting is the signal it sends. Netflix itself is calling the anticipation around GTA 6 “unprecedented,” and a streaming giant attaching its name to a video-game trailer the way it would a tentpole show launch is a real vote of confidence for a title that has already slipped its release date twice. Expect the footage to stay close to Jason and Lucia’s story in the fictional state of Leonida rather than a full gameplay deep dive, and expect the usual cycle after August 27 — frame-by-frame breakdowns and a pre-order bump, but nothing that changes the November 19 date, which Rockstar and Take-Two have reaffirmed repeatedly. Pre-orders for PS5 are open now, and digital stock does not sell out, so there is no reason to rush.
AdGrand Theft Auto VI (PlayStation 5) (opens in a new tab)
The Standard Edition pre-order — no rush, digital stock doesn't sell out.
🧱 LEGO & Family Round-up
Three LEGO Star Wars sets, including the exact one from this week’s Spider-Man film
Three LEGO Star Wars reviews landed this week, and one of them ties directly back into the movie section above. Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing Fighter (75301) is the 474-piece T-65 build that Ned and Peter assemble together on screen in Spider-Man: Brand New Day — swing-wing S-foils, four Original Trilogy minifigures, and a genuine 4.5 out of 5. If you want the play-first option instead, the AT-ST Attack on Endor (75424) matched that same score, built almost entirely by our own 6-year-old — a swooshable AT-ST, a speeder bike, and a proper Wicket minifigure for around fifty dollars.
And for the display shelf rather than the toy box, the Brick-Built Star Wars Logo (75407) earns a solid 4 out of 5 — no minifigures in the box, but it turns any existing Star Wars collection into a real display the moment it goes up.
LEGO Star Wars Luke Skywalker's X-Wing Fighter (75301) (opens in a new tab)
The exact 474-piece X-wing Ned and Peter build together in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Last call: the free X-Files set closes tomorrow
One more reminder before it is too late: LEGO’s free Scully’s Lab gift-with-purchase, tied to the Ideas X-Files set from our August 2026 buying guide, closes on August 10 — meaning it is gone the day after this roundup goes out. If that set was already on your list, today is genuinely the last day to act on it. Between that guide’s wave of new releases and this week’s trio of Star Wars back-catalogue reviews, LEGO is easily the most active category on the site right now, and it is worth bookmarking the guide regardless of whether the free lab makes it into your cart.
🏠 Smart Home, Camera & Tech Round-up
The fog machine behind almost every one of our LEGO photos
No breaking tech news this week, but a review we have been sitting on for a while finally went up: the PMI SmokeNINJA portable fog machine, at a full 5 out of 5 after weeks of real use across our LEGO dioramas, including the AT-ST scene reviewed above. It is a remote-sized device, 14cm tall and 286g, that hides behind a rock or a minifigure and turns a plastic set into something that looks like it was shot on an alien moon. Despite the name, it does not actually use dry ice — the “Dry Ice” mode runs the same food-grade Cloud Formula fluid through a nozzle that lays the fog down low so it pools across a tabletop instead of drifting into the air, and a haze mode does double duty lighting the background. The only real downsides are a light residue on bricks that needs a quick wipe and a 60-second burst cap before it needs to cool down; outdoor performance is still untested. The full kit is the reason our recent LEGO Star Wars photography has looked noticeably better than it used to.
PMI SmokeNINJA Portable Fog Machine (Full Kit) (opens in a new tab)
The fog machine hiding inside almost every one of our LEGO diorama shots — reviewed this week at a full 5/5.
Dadnology Take
Perfect scores should be rare, and this week’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day earns its 5/5 outright, taking the top spot on our Marvel ranking in the process. But do not let the superhero coverage crowd out the rest of a genuinely strong week: Avatar Aang is the better family pick if the Punisher on screen gives you pause, the X-Wing review connects directly to the movie if your kid wants to build what they just watched, and the X-Files gift-with-purchase disappears the moment this newsletter lands in your inbox. If you only click one thing this week, make it the Spider-Man review — we mean it about the 5/5.
The Dadnology Week archive: missed last week? Catch up with Dadnology Week 31.
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❓ FAQ
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Disclaimer: This review and its visuals were created with the help of AI. Some links may be affiliate links – we may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review: The Best Marvel Film Yet Made
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the best Marvel film we've ever seen. Tom Holland delivers his finest performance across four films, Sadie Sink's Jean Grey is a genuine highlight, and the Hulk/Punisher integration works far better than it has any right to. Action, comedy, goosebumps and quiet moments, all in one film. A perfect 5/5.