Images: Sony Pictures / Marvel Studios (via the MCU Wiki)
I saw Spider-Man: Brand New Day opening night, and I need to talk about it.
First, the numbers, because they're absurd: biggest opening weekend in box office history — about $360 million domestic in three days — and by mid-August it sailed past $2 billion worldwide. That's past No Way Home. It's officially Sony's biggest movie ever. Tom Holland's Peter Parker came back from everyone forgetting he exists and immediately ate the entire industry's lunch.
So what's it actually about? (no spoilers)
Brand New Day picks up after No Way Home's gut-punch of an ending — the whole world forgot Peter Parker, and he's rebuilding a life nobody knows about. The suit's new and more classic, the tone is smaller and more street-level, and the villain lineup is basically a crime convention: Scorpion, Tombstone, Boomerang, Tarantula, and a small army of Hand ninjas raining out of the sky. Jon Bernthal's Punisher rolls in, Mark Ruffalo pops up as Banner, and somehow it never once feels like clutter. Destin Daniel Cretton — the Shang-Chi guy — directs, and the action has that same clean, weighty feel. You feel every landing.
And that's the trick of it, really. No Way Home was about the multiverse eating Spider-Man's life; Brand New Day is about what he's got left when the universe hands it all back with nobody in it. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon are back, except their characters don't remember him, and the movie keeps finding new ways to make that hurt. It's a Spider-Man movie about loneliness, which sounds like a drag and somehow isn't — it's the funniest one since Homecoming.
The Sadie Sink question — and the theories that nailed it
For over a year the internet guessed who Sink was playing. A new theory every week — she literally said the speculation was "torture." Gwen Stacy? An MJ variant? The guesses got absolutely feral. And then the movie answered: she's Jean Grey. The theories were right, the X-Men reboot just kicked off inside a Spider-Man movie, and I'm still not over how casually they did it. No lab, no speech — just a look, a power display, and the whole theater going "oh, THEY'RE doing it here."
That post-credits scene
Yes, there's a stinger, and yes, it points squarely at Avengers: Doomsday. That's all you're getting from me — but you should know the entire theater made that sound when it hit. Stay through the credits. Both sets. You know the drill by now.
My rating: 9/10
It's really good. Docked one point because the middle act juggles maybe one villain more than it needs to — minor gripe. Everything else? The humor lands, the fights are the best the MCU's done with the character, and the ending is emotional. Like, quiet-down-the-popcorn emotional. Bring tissues, don't ask questions, thank me later.
If this is where Spider-Man lives now — smaller stakes, bigger heart — I'm in for as many of these as Holland wants to make.