Click to view the trailer. Photograph: Jay Maidment ©2026 CTMG
In the most captivating scenes of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the viewer gets to experience the heights through Spider-Man’s eyes, with creative GoPro-like angles as he leaps from roof to roof and skyscraper to skyscraper.
The trouble is that the quieter scenes can drag. When Spidey and the rest of the cast go searching for human connection, the movie’s energy starts to sag.
That struggle is really the center of this fourth installment with Tom Holland as the wall-crawler. He has lost everyone, either to death or to memory erase, and the film keeps returning to that wound. The joke’s over, but Spidey has to keep jumping.
That would matter more if the movie felt less familiar. After nine mainline live-action Spider-Man films, much of the 145-minute runtime feels like replay, even if Hollywood had every reason to keep going after the last installment made $1.9 billion.
The Tobey Maguire trilogy helmed by Sam Raimi won hearts in the early 2000s; the Andrew Garfield era in the mid-2000s was watchable; and the Tom Holland era, beginning with Homecoming (2017), delivered heartfelt laughs and real human connection in its two follow-ups.
Still, the best of this one comes in the scenes between MJ (Zendaya) and a maskless Holland as Peter Parker.
The rest is familiar territory, and not much of it lands as either chills or thrills.
‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ premieres in cinemas on July 29.
FILM DETAILS
Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Sadie Sink, Mark Ruffalo, Jacob Batalon, Michael Mando, Tramell Tillman
Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Screen writer: Steve Ditko, Chris McKenna
Running time: 145 minutes
