Fuzzy Mushroom › Films of 2026 › Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Spore Score: 79/100 · The Pros: 77 · The Punters: 82 · 4 sources
Released 31 July 2026.
Worth a watch. Spore Score 79/100. The Pros and The Punters broadly agree.
By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 15 November 2026 · The Pros 77 · The Punters 82 · Spore Score 79 · How we write our takes
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a crowd-pleaser that critics also signed up for. The Pros give it 77, The Punters 82, and the Spore Score sits at 79, a mostly clear result with only a 5-point gap. Audiences edge slightly ahead, which is usual for a big Marvel release with a loyal fan base, but the two camps are close enough to say the film does what both wanted: a more grown-up Peter Parker story that still feels like Spider-Man.
Tom Holland's fourth solo outing picks up after No Way Home, where a spell made the whole world forget who Peter Parker is. Destin Daniel Cretton, who made Shang-Chi, directs from a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. Peter now lives alone as Spider-Man, watching MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) get on with lives that no longer include him. His body starts changing in alarming ways, and a mysterious, mind-hopping villain played by Sadie Sink begins targeting the Department of Damage Control. Jon Bernthal's Punisher and Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner join the fight.
The loneliness is the hook. Holland plays a Peter who is cheered as a hero but invisible as a person, and the scenes where he drifts back into MJ and Ned's world are some of the most affecting in the series. Bernthal is a scene-stealer as a reluctant partner, the fight with the ninja clan The Hand is a standout action sequence, and Sink brings real weight to a character who turns out to be more than a villain.
It is long, and it carries a lot of extra luggage. Several classic villains appear only briefly, and some of the crossover moments feel like set-up for the next Avengers film rather than part of this story. Viewers who do not follow the wider Marvel films may find a few threads hard to place.
Anyone who grew up with Holland's Spider-Man, and especially fans who felt the last few Marvel films had lost their focus. You will get more out of it if you have seen No Way Home.
Worth a watch, with a Spore Score of 79. A heartfelt, well-staged return that critics and audiences rate almost the same, held back only by its running time and its job of setting up what comes next.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a 2026 film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Genres: Action, Comedy, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Superhero/Franchise.
| Site | Side | Site score | Adjusted /100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CinemaScore | The Punters (audiences) | A | 76 |
| IMDb | The Punters (audiences) | 7.9/10 | 89 |
| Rotten Tomatoes | The Pros (critics) | 90% | 87 |
| Metacritic | The Pros (critics) | 66/100 | 72 |
The Pros' sites said 73, adjusted to 77; The Punters' sites said 85, adjusted to 82. Every review site has habits: some score high, some low, some bunch everything in the middle. We measure each site's habit across thousands of films and iron it out, so a 7/10 from a generous site and a 7/10 from a harsh one aren't treated the same. Then critics and audiences each get one figure, and the Spore Score sits between them. How the Spore Score works.
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