A forgotten Peter Parker lives alone as a full-time Spider-Man until mounting pressure triggers a dangerous change and a powerful new enemy emerges. (from IMDb)

When we last saw Tom Holland's Spider-Man, it was five years ago with Spider-Man: No Way Home. That film was an absolutely delightful romp thanks to the multiverse concept. (So far, arguably the only good thing about the multiverse.) In it, Peter's newly revealed identity - due to Mysterio's lies at the end of the previous film, 2019's Far From Home - was causing him, his friends, and his family a lot of trouble. And the fact that his best friends, Ned and MJ, couldn't get into the college of their choice, leads him to seek out the assistance of Doctor Strange. The pair agree for Strange to cast a spell that would cause the world to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. But Peter's youthful enthusiasm and nervousness causes the spell to go awry, so Doctor Strange is forced to contain it instead of implement it. But the spell accidentally causes some characters who know Peter is Spider-Man to enter their world instead. This includes multiple villains from previous Spider-Man movies when Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were Spider-Man, forcing Tom Holland's Spider-Man to face them for the first time. This also eventually leads to Maguire's and Garfield's Peter Parker's to meet Holland's, and the movie just becomes an absolute blast for Spider-Man fans. However, the damage that Peter and Doctor Strange caused makes the multiverse start to fracture and leak into their world, and Peter decides to make the ultimate sacrifice of having Doctor Strange make everyone forget who he is completely. At the end of No Way Home, no one has even heard of Peter Parker... even MJ and Ned.

Enter Spider-Man: Brand New Day. When the movie begins, Peter is helping out a local police detective anonymously and keeping an eye on his friends, MJ and Ned, from a distance. It's an extremely lonely way to carry on his mission as Spider-Man, but he can't see any other real way to do it. At the same time, he's starting to experience some evolution of his Spider-Man powers, and some technology he discovered in No Way Home comes into play here. On top of everything, he meets a mysterious new villain that is taking over people's minds briefly to carry out a secret plot. And when the villain finds that they can't take over Peter's mind - and Peter means to stop them - it becomes their personal mission to threaten everything, and everyone, Peter holds dear.

I'll do my best to not spoil any major surprises - and stick to mostly what's been made known in trailers and such. The film works really well as a follow-up to No Way Home, but since there's been a director change from the first three films to this one, there's a distinctly different feel for Brand New Day. It's darker in color tones and in overall tone, although nowhere near, say, The Dark Knight kind of "dark." It may more so have the edgier tone of Andrew Garfield's The Amazing Spider-Man films, if anything. Holland still plays Peter with an innocence that is charming and lovable, but he's definitely sadder here -- and you can't blame him. But he doesn't let the discouragement deter him from doing the right thing and fighting evil. As rumored, Brand New Day makes good on the end credits tease from Homecoming of Scorpion, although his presence here is pretty minor. Actually, there are a lot of callbacks to Homecoming throughout this movie, and all of them feel pretty right. Holland's Spider-Man movies have their own corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they continue reveling in that world while also pulling in cameos from the films and even the television universe. The latter, of course, is introducing Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle, AKA The Punisher, into Marvel's Cinematic Universe. He first debuted in a Netflix series in 2017 and recently had an ultra-violent Disney Plus special which apparently leads into his appearance here. It's a little odd that Spidey and Frank have a history we haven't heard of before, but I suppose it makes sense they'd have crossed paths while both doing their thing in NYC. Frank ends up being a surprisingly good addition to the film, although one could argue he feels slightly shoehorned in, like some of the other cameos. Still, seeing multiple characters from the MCU show up here makes the world feel larger and more integrated than before - and it's ultimately really fun.

Speaking of Frank... he accounts for most of the film's profanity. He attempts to drop a mother-f... before Spidey hits his mouth with his webs to stop him. But Frank ends up using "J-sus Chr-st" once, "g*dd*mn" several times, and about a dozen uses of the "S" word. Almost all of the film's profanity comes from him, making it more unfortunate that the movie could have had far less profanity had he not been made part of the plot. Other than that, there isn't any sexual content, beyond a woman having a platonic meeting with Spidey in a pool where she is, at the very least, topless beneath the water's murky surface, and her asking if he has a girlfriend or boyfriend. There's quite a bit of action violence. Some of it gets pretty bloody, but it's never gory. For example, a character is shot during one pivotal moment, but we never see the wound, just blood pooling on the floor underneath them. In another fight sequence, we see Peter's face with some scrapes and bruises and blood all around his lips and mouth. Finally, the villain hopping from body to body, taking them over and acting as them briefly, can be pretty unsettling at times. You can tell they tried not to lean too heavily into the horror of the moment, but it's pretty intense and I think it'd probably scare the socks off the younger viewers. It's pretty safe to say this isn't a kids movie.

This entry is easily the most emotional of the bunch, too. At least revisiting No Way Home before watching Brand New Day seems like required viewing, but rewatching all three Holland Spidey films before this one will make the emotional punch of Brand New Day land that much harder. Knowing Peter's history with Ned and MJ - and Aunt May - before experiencing his story here is pretty emotionally weighty. And Holland plays it with such sincerity; he really is a great actor.

Tom Holland has had a pretty amazing run as Spider-Man since his introduction 10 years ago in Captain America: Civil War. The kid wasn't even 20 years old yet, and now Tom recently turned 30. He's appeared in two Avengers films, four of his own Spider-Man movies and the aforementioned Captain America film. All three Spider-Man actors have been great in their own right, but with Brand New Day, Holland may cement his place as the best to date. It's a solid Spidey entry and one of the best Marvel movies in recent years.

Is there a post-credits scene? Technically, yes, but it's honestly not worth sitting through the credits for. It's pretty much a cute way of promising "Spider-Man Will Return," but aside from listening to more of Michael Giacchino's great score playing over the end credits, it's not worth staying just for this little button at the end.

- John DiBiase (reviewed: 7/30/26)