The embargo broke Tuesday morning at nine, and for once the verdict on a Marvel movie is not a shrug. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is being reviewed as the moment this version of the character finally grew up, and the praise landing on Tom Holland is the least hedged we have seen aimed at him in four solo films. There is also one complaint showing up in review after review, almost word for word, and it has a green tint.
The world premiere ran Monday night, July 27, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, with Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal, Jacob Batalon and director Destin Daniel Cretton on the carpet. Reviews went live Tuesday at 9am ET. The film runs two hours and twenty-five minutes and opens in theaters Friday, July 31. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and the identity of its central villain.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is being reviewed as the moment this version of the character finally grew up, and the praise landing on Tom Holland is the least hedged we have seen aimed at him in four solo films.”
Let us characterize the consensus honestly, because the headline numbers flatten it. This is not a clean triumph and it is not a 50-50 split. It is a strong positive majority with a real, articulate minority pushing back hard, and the pushback is concentrated at Variety and IndieWire. Rotten Tomatoes’ own editorial roundup had it at 91 percent as of July 28, but the review count was still climbing while we wrote this and other outlets cited figures a point or two either side of that, so treat any score you see as a snapshot rather than a settled verdict.
On Holland, the reviews converge. David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter opens with “Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man grows up,” and credits “a never-better Tom Holland” for finding “soulful new notes to play in his fourth solo turn,” in a film that “foregrounds the humanity that has always been Spidey’s greatest strength — with an extra dash of angst.” David Crow at Den of Geek, who gave it four stars out of five, says Holland is “in better command of the character than ever before.” John Nugent at Empire lands on the same read from a different angle, calling it “the most comics-faithful entry so far, tactile and ground-level,” and singling out “an earnest performance from Tom Holland.” Nugent also thinks the film’s opening stretch is “the strongest of the film and among the best bit of mainstream superhero filmmaking in a long while,” which is not faint praise from Empire.
The genuine surprise is Bernthal. Every review we could read goes out of its way for him. Rooney calls him a “terrific Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, aka The Punisher,” and says “the spiky camaraderie between this more mature Spider-Man and rough-hewn vigilante Frank provides an extra dose of heart.” Crow is more effusive still, calling the Punisher “a genuinely wonderful addition” and describing him as “Spidey’s quasi-demented, high-strung friend from work” who “imbues so much warmth, anger, and humanity into only a handful of scenes.” For a character who has been through three screen incarnations and a Netflix series, getting described as the warmest thing in a Spider-Man movie is a genuinely funny outcome.
Now the complaint. It is Mark Ruffalo, and the reviewers are not being subtle. Crow writes that Bruce Banner feels “needlessly and superfluously stuffed into the yarn.” Nugent says the Hulk sequence “slows things down, smashing not only buildings but also the narrative pace.” Two critics at two outlets independently reaching for the same word — stuffed — is usually a sign that a scene exists for reasons that have nothing to do with the movie it is in. Banner is reportedly a mentor here rather than a villain, mostly in human form, and the read from reviews is that the film did not need him and knew it.
That folds into the broader structural gripe. Crow’s central critique is that the film becomes “heavily preoccupied” with franchise-building and ends up “cluttered with its meta-franchise obligations.” Nugent says “the back half of the film feels a little sluggish.” Rooney, from the positive side, concedes “the occasional patch of sluggishness and the usual overly convoluted plot contortions.” Nearly every review flags the runtime. David Gonzalez at The Cinematic Reel, who otherwise calls it “the closest the MCU’s Spider-Man has come to capturing the heart and spirit of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man,” still says “the screenplay occasionally feels overstuffed, leading to an unnecessary two-and-a-half-hour runtime.”
The dissent is worth reading on its own terms rather than dismissing. Owen Gleiberman at Variety calls the film “watchable without ever being transporting” and “busy and self-serious,” and while he credits Cretton with staging “the Spidey action with a clever, leaping grandeur that delivers what these movies need to,” his summary is brutal: “If the movie is fun at times, it’s also arduous, overly episodic and half an hour too long.” Variety’s own headline frames it as “A ‘Mature’ Adventure Trying Too Hard.” David Ehrlich at IndieWire goes further, headlining it “A Dull and Downbeat Marvel Sequel,” and his most quotable shot is also his sharpest — the film is, “at its most functional, a movie about how much it sucks to make friends after college” — alongside a real structural objection, that it is “maddening how often the film sidelines its core relationship to spend time on villain’s rote backstory.” On the other end, William Bibbiani at TheWrap calls it a “Sensational Spidey Sequel,” writing “we don’t get many great MCU movies anymore. That this is one of the highlights feels amazing,” while admitting that “on the car ride home, you realize the villain’s plan makes no sense.”
Which brings us to the villain, and to the strangest way a Marvel reveal has ever leaked. Reviews confirm the mechanic without naming anyone: Rooney describes “a threat of almost unprecedented magnitude through which telepathic mind games enable the misunderstood fiend to hop from one host body to the next,” and Nugent calls the character “spooky and well-played” with effects that are “freaky and psychologically horrifying.” Two reviews at two outlets, so the body-hopping telepath is solid. Critics deliberately withheld the identity.
Then a musician blew it on a red carpet. Steve Lacy, attending the Dolby premiere, was asked which character he was most excited to see and answered: “Jean. I like Jean. She’s the villain, but there’s a reason to her madness.” That quote has been reported by Yahoo, ComicBookMovie, TheWrap, Forbes, SuperHeroHype and Complex among others, and the industry press has treated it as an accidental confirmation that Sink is playing Jean Grey — a role rumored for months. Here is the part we want to be precise about, because it is exactly the kind of thing that hardens into fact through repetition: what is confirmed is that Lacy said those words. Marvel has not named the character, Cretton has reportedly kept declining to confirm it, and there is no official credit. A guest’s carpet comment is not a studio announcement, however much everyone wants it to be.
Critics did notice Sink regardless. Crow says “Sink is quite good in the role” with “perilous chemistry” with Holland. Kaitlyn Booth at Bleeding Cool goes bigger, saying her performance “breaks the movie, and for many reasons that are impossible to get into without spoiling,” which reads as praise wearing a warning label.
A note on what we are deliberately not running. There is a detailed description of the post-credits scene circulating, and it is sourced to leak-aggregation sites rather than to any critic or to Marvel. We are not printing it. What we can attribute is that reviews reference a closing “Spider-Man will return” card, and that no review we could access ties this film to “Avengers: Doomsday” on December 18. Every Doomsday connection currently in circulation is inference, not reporting — worth remembering when the theories start Friday night.
On the carpet, Holland framed the film the same way the reviews have. He told Deadline it is “more mature, and it’s a darker theme,” and described the emotional core as “this idea of moving to a new city and feeling like you’re all alone, and sometimes neglecting the fact that the best thing that ever happened to you is standing right next to you.” On working with Zendaya across four films he said, “I’m so grateful with how this has all ended up — professionally and personally.” Zendaya, asked about her much-dissected press-tour wardrobe, told fans they “have to go to the movie and see for yourself.”
Our read heading into Friday: the reviews describe a film that got the character right and the corporate housekeeping wrong. If you are going in for Peter Parker, Bernthal, and a Spider-Man movie that finally has weather in it, the critics say you are covered. If you have been fatigued by connective tissue and setup, this is not the film that fixes that — it is a film where three separate critics reached for the word stuffed. That is a much better problem to have than the ones the last few Marvel releases were dealing with, and it is a fair distance from where the Holland trilogy left off. Do not be late; by all accounts the opening twenty minutes are the best thing in it.
What Do You Think? If the body-hopping telepath really is Jean Grey, does dropping her into a street-level Spider-Man film honor the character or burn her before the X-Men reboot even has a cast? Is Ruffalo’s Banner the clearest evidence yet that Marvel cannot resist padding a good standalone with connective tissue nobody asked for? And with critics split between “sensational” and “dull and downbeat,” which camp do you expect to look right a month from now?
See you on the next binge!
