“The Best Movie In All 3 Series”: Spider-Man: Brand New Day First Reactions Are In & They’re Spectacular

Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures are closing out the summer with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one of their biggest movies in years. The fourth standalone outing for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker arrives as the 38th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, reuniting Holland with Zendaya’s MJ Jones-Watson and Jacob Batalon’s Ned Leeds while introducing Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle, Sadie Sink, Michael Mando’s Scorpion, and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk to the story. That crowded roster helped the film post the strongest first-day advance ticket sales any movie has managed in five years, a mark last set by 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. With Destin Daniel Cretton’s film finally unveiled at its Los Angeles premiere Monday evening, the audience that packed the Dolby Theatre for the first public screening wasted no time sharing exactly what they saw.

Among those in attendance was ComicBook’s own Ben Kendrick, whose verdict on Brand New Day set the tone for how the outlet’s team responded to Cretton’s film. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day is excellent, and it’s 1 of (if not the) best movies in all 3 series. It’s emotional, funny, and the action is better than ever. Yet, the marketed “secrecy” around it may actually leave fans surprised/let down by how straightforward it all actually is,” Kendrick wrote.

Other ComicBook members echoed that same enthusiasm. Kofi Outlaw framed the film as a definitive statement on the character himself. “#SpiderManBrandNewDay is a movie that’s ABOUT Spider-Man Set In a full #MCU world of characters w/ NYC as a main character And some of the best action (& drama) of the #SpiderMan franchise. It’s the comic book come to life in modern context,” Outlaw wrote. Nicole Drum, meanwhile, pointed to the film as a turning point for how grounded the Holland trilogy has become. Drum said, “#SpiderManBrandNewDay is easily the best of the Holland Spidey films to date, delivering the most mature & grounded version of the hero yet. The story doesn’t quite go where you think it will and is a beautiful examination of becoming who you are meant to be. My favorite yet.”

Is the Love for Spider-Man: Brand New Day Universal?

Reactions from outside the ComicBook team followed a similar pattern, with several critics highlighting how different Brand New Day feels compared to the Spider-Man movies that preceded it. Fandango‘s Erik Davis credited Cretton with striking a more mature tone than Holland’s previous two solo films managed. “Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day injects a ferocious energy into Spidey’s latest adventure, delivering all the thrills you’d expect from a Tom Holland Spider-Man movie while feeling deeper, more thoughtful and more mature than the previous trilogy,” Davis wrote. New Rockstars‘ Erik Voss went further, praising the film’s technical craft above nearly everything else in Holland’s run. “With incredible stunts, VFX, and coloring, it’s the best looking Spider-Man film since the Raimi era. The webbing has never been stickier. The Hulk sequence was my favorite Marvel action scene in years. Sadie Sink is devastating in her role, and I can’t wait to see more of her in the MCU,” he added.

Not every reaction landed as unreservedly positive, and a handful of viewers flagged the same structural concerns. The Holo Files offered one of the more detailed breakdowns of the film’s uneven stretches, praising its opening while criticizing its back half. “Unfortunately, the film mirrors Spider-Man 3 in being overstuffed with far too many elements and having stop-start pacing. The humor doesn’t land, in part due to how disappointingly relegated to the background Ned is. Despite a strong turn from Sadie Sink, the third act is hijacked by her character and culminates in a painfully flat climax.” The outlet summarized their take by saying “There’s a lot to love and a lot to be frustrated by with Brand New Day.”

DiscussingFilm‘s James Preston Pool had a similar complaint about how the film balances its title character against the rest of its cast. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day has some of the best visuals and characterization its title character has gotten onscreen. Yet its notable shine is dulled by an overstuffed script that puts MCU interconnectivity and cameos over its title character,” Pool wrote. Taken together, the early consensus points to a film that has won over the vast majority of its first audience while still drawing criticism about specific creative choices.

That “overstuffed” complaint is not a surprising outcome given how many characters Brand New Day stars. The film marks the Punisher’s first theatrical appearance in the MCU, the story unleashes the Savage Hulk for the first time since Avengers: Infinity War‘s opening scene, and Mando’s Scorpion adds to a rogues’ gallery that also includes Marvin “Krondon” Jones III’s Tombstone,  Boomerang, Tarantula, Ramrod, and even the ninjas of the Hand. All that with Sink’s mysterious character — rumored to be Jean Grey — setting the future of the franchise. Layering that many established and new figures onto a story about Peter rebuilding his life was always going to test how much plot a single two-hour film can carry. The reactions suggest director Cretton mostly succeeded, but not without the seams showing in the film’s back half.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31st.

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