Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) Review: Even Superheroes Struggle To Maintain a Work-Life Balance

For anybody who likes their Spider-Man emotionally damaged, finally, your time has come.

Directly following on from Spider-Man: No Way Home, the world has forgotten Peter Parker, and Peter Parker has, in many ways, forgotten himself. He is isolated, depressed, and slowly becoming more spider than man—and that’s where the movie shines.

The emotional core of Spider-Man: Brand New Day is incredibly effective, particularly in the moments where we watch Peter (Tom Holland) stalk his former friends, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon), from a distance, watching them live the life he could have been part of. There is something deeply sad about a superhero who can save strangers but can’t save himself, or perhaps chooses not to.

Brand New Day feels older, more textured, and more nuanced than the previous three films. It deals with grief, isolation, transformation, and, perhaps most interestingly, burnout.

There is a complete change in the film’s grading which emphasises this: it’s less bright and vivid with optimism; it’s muted and tinged with a cold blue. This tone and screen language set it apart from the first three films. This isn’t the wide-eyed Peter Parker we’ve watched grow up. This is someone who has lost almost everything and is trying to work out what remains. The phrase ‘physician, heal thyself’ seems to be woven through the fabric of this film and adds a moralistic thread to Peter’s narrative.

We spend a lot of time with Peter in full costume, to the point where it gets a bit silly, but it works, the visual highlighting him receding into his alter ego, a complete antithesis with Tobey Maguire’s rejection of the suit in Spider-Man 2. While we’re on the topic, interestingly, a lot of people seem to believe that this version of Peter Parker has suffered far more than his predecessors, which does raise the question: what kind of lives are we living now that we believe this is more traumatic than being responsible for the death of your uncle and several of your friends?

Perhaps a discussion for another day.

Since The Avengers, we’ve all come to love a superhero crossover. But when does it become too much? And when does a crossover stop enriching a standalone film and start distracting from it?

Brand New Day has plenty going on besides Peter’s existential crisis and two cast members from The Bear. Starting off strong with Jon Bernthal’s, Frank “Punisher” Castle, who is determined to shoot first and ask questions later; Michael Mando, who has been waiting 9 years to reprise his role as Scorpion; and, of course, gentle-souled Bruce Banner, faithfully played by Mark Ruffalo. My problem isn’t necessarily that these characters exist; it’s that there are simply too many of them.

Every time the film gets interesting, there seems to be another subplot or an ‘Oh yeah, remember him!‘ moment waiting to pull us away from Peter. Some of it was nice; all of it wasn’t needed, and a little more focus on Peter’s metamorphosis could have tipped the balance and turned this from a good Spider-Man film into a great one.

The most complicated addition is the movie’s mind-slipping supervillain who is later revealed to be, *spoiler alert*, X-Men’s Jean Grey. Played chillingly by Sadie Sink, Grey’s storyline creates an uncomfortable problem of its own.

If this were simply the story of a person experiencing a superhero existential crisis, there might be room to feel sympathy for her. We could watch her confront what she’s done, accept the consequences and either change or disappear into the world.

But knowing where this character ultimately ends up creates a strange disconnect. She murders civilians without thought, obliterates minds in the name of revenge, and makes Bruce Banner sad, yet we’re simultaneously being asked to see her at the beginning of a superhero origin story? If Brand New Day was interested in the uncomfortable grey area (pun intended) that divided hero from villain, it could have worked; the movie never goes there, and as a result, Grey’s actions don’t allow us to paint her as a redemptive villain.

For all its multiverse-sized ambitions, Spider-Man: Brand New Day works best when it’s small. When it’s about Peter Parker sitting alone, watching the life he lost. When it’s about hiding because you are scared, pushing through life exhausted and trying to figure out who you are when the thing that defined you has disappeared.

There’s something almost both ironic and refreshing about a superhero film concerned with burnout. Perhaps Peter Parker, and the audience don’t need another tangled crossover web. Perhaps we just need a day off.

Rating: 3.5/5

What did you think of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and which of our web-slinging iterations do you think suffered the most?