My son is a massive Spider-Man fan. He’s only six, but he’s already worked his way through every Spidey film (bar the Nicholas Hammond TV movies from the ’70s) and every Marvel film except the Deadpool trilogy… for obvious reasons. He doesn’t just watch the Marvel flicks either, he absorbs them, he really gets them. Multiverses, timelines, variants, the lot. So when Spider-Man: Brand New Day swung into cinemas, there was never any question: he had to see his favourite hero on the big screen.

“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.”

I’ll be doing this review spoiler free, but will probably mention a few things shown in the trailer. Said trailer hinted at something darker, more grown-up, maybe even heavier than the previous Tom Holland films. I went into this relatively blind, no reviews, no leaks, no endless YouTube breakdowns, just that trailer and a hope that it wouldn’t be too intense for my six-year-old and (almost) nine-year-old daughter.

First, the basics of the plot. Spider-Man: Brand New Day takes place in the future of 2028, four years after No Way Home and Doctor Strange’s spell that wiped Peter Parker from the collective memory of every universe. People still know Spider-Man, but Peter? He’s a ghost. A non-person. A life erased.

Spider-Man, oddly enough, is thriving. He’s working with Damage Control, he’s got Detective DeWolff as a police contact, and he’s become a proper fixture of New York again. Crime is down. The city loves him. He’s busy, capable, and highly respected. Peter Parker, meanwhile, is paying the price. No friends. No Ned. No MJ. No Aunt May. Four years of total solitude. And that kind of isolation doesn’t just weigh on a person, it warps them. Even the best superheroes crack and change under that kind of pressure and stress.

As if Peter’s emotional state wasn’t fragile enough, Frank Castle/The Punisher shows up. Spider-Man and the Punisher have never exactly been best mates, and Castle’s arrival coincides with a new threat: a strange entity capable of possessing anyone it touches. It’s creepy, it’s unpredictable, and it digs right into Peter’s psychological scars. Then Bruce Banner Hulks out, properly Hulks out, and suddenly Peter’s juggling loneliness, Punisher, a possession-based villain, and a rampaging Hulk… oh, and Scorpion. It’s a lot on top of his loss of everyone he ever loved and cared about.

This is one of the main motifs of the whole film, loss/loneliness. It also gives Tom Holland a great chance to grow as an actor and show a very different side to the character he has been playing for the last ten years. This isn’t the overly excited high-school kid, gushing over working with Tony stark from the previous films, this is young adult Peter struggling with his solitude, while also having to save the city from a threat as Spider-Man. The wisecracks are still here, but they’re less frequent. This is a more experienced and battle-scarred Peter/Spider-Man who (under the mask) is dealing with very human problems.

While Peter has lost everyone, they’re still present in the story. Ned appears, tracking Spider-Man because he wants to thank him for saving his life back in high-school. He may not remember Peter, but he remembers Spider-Man. MJ returns too. And here’s my confession: I’ve never really liked Zendaya’s MJ in the previous films. She’s always felt a bit… grating. But here? She’s brilliant. Mature, grounded, emotionally rich. Whether it’s the writing, the performance, or both, Zendaya absolutely nails it. I could say more, but I’m already dangerously close to spoilers. Her scenes with Holland are some of the best in the film, full of unspoken history that feels very lived-in. You’d think they had some genuine chemistry between them…

The film does something with the Marvel logo that I’m pretty sure has never been done before. You know how the Marvel logo in the opening usually shows various characters from the previous films? That doesn’t happen. This Marvel logo is Spider-Man focused and it has a great little recap on the previous events and the Doctor Strange spell that made everyone forget who Peter was. It’s clever, stylish, and sets the tone immediately.

There’s a great opening montage that shows how busy Spidey has been over the last four years. It might just be “small potato” stuff… as one character would say, but you get to see Spider-Man take on (and take down) some of the character’s rogue’s gallery, full of nods and references to his comic book history. This film also brings Spidey back home to be that “friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man”. He’s not in space battling aliens, or dealing with a universe level threat. He not teaming up with “Earth’s mightiest heroes”. He’s in New York (which was actually Glasgow) and this gives the film a much more grounded feel. This is what Spider-Man does best.

When the main plot kicks in, the film balances big action with quieter, character-driven moments. The villain is unsettling, tapping into Peter’s trauma in ways that feel fresh for the MCU. Destin Daniel Cretton (of Shang-Chi fame) directs with confidence, the action is slick, but the quieter emotional scenes land just as hard.

This has to be one of the best live-action Spider-Man films in a good while. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve all been good (yes, even Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3.. in parts), but only few have been truly great. I think Spider-Man: Brand New Day is up there with the likes of Spider-Man 2. I say “live-action” as I feel the Spider-Verse animated films are in their own league.

Brand New Day has a much darker, intense, and more adult style and theme. It’s different to the first three films, yet not to the point that it’s totally different. It just feels more “grown up”, not only in the plot/witting, but also the performances (Zendaya especially). Yet, it never went as dark as I anticipated. Still avoiding spoilers, the film does something with Spider-Man that put him on a path that never quite went as far as I was thinking it would do from watching the trailer. As for whether the more adult tone was too intense for my kids? Well, as the credits rolled, I leaned over to my six-year-old son to ask if he enjoyed seeing his first Spider-Man film at the cinema. But I didn’t even have to ask, he sat there, eyes glued to the screen, with a massive smile on his face. That told me everything.