When Tom Holland’s Spider-Man teamed up with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men in the dimensional-straddling No Way Home (2021), he might as well have been cocking a snook. With Brand New Day, not just his fourth solo film, but the start of a second trilogy, he soars past them as the most successful screen webslinger. And it’s hard to argue when, fourth time around, the result is a supremely confident, suitably spectacular and impressively mature.

Picking up from the multiversal previous instalment, Brand New Day drags the webcrawler back to the streets of New York where, alone and adrift after being forgotten by the world, he dedicates his days to helping the police crush the Big Apple’s crime figures. But events, ah events… Peter Parker encounters a chilling enemy who can apparently possess people (except Spider-Man) and is intent on using super-villains to break into the Department of Damage Control for reasons unknown. It’s a threat like none Peter Parker has ever encountered, and further complicated by his pining for lost girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best bud Ned (Jacob Batalon), and an evolution in his arachnid DNA that leaves him with heightened senses and, finally, organic web shooters. 

It’s been a while since Peter relied on others. Can forming alliances with Black Widow (Florence Pugh), Damage Control (led by Tramell Tillman), worryingly happier-than-ever Empire State University lecturer Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) possibly work out?

From the start, it’s striking how much Brand New Day feels like a large but comfortable step up. The high school antics of the Homecoming trilogy are referenced, but feel like another incarnation. With Destin Daniel Cretton now pulling the reins, this is a Marvel movie more in line with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight or Matt Reeves’ The Batman. The director, who proved his Marvel credentials with the unexpectedly entertaining Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) before escaping Avengers: The Kang Dynasty before it was abandoned, is a sure and inspired hand to steer this new chapter of Sony and Marvel’s jewel in the crown. He always seemed like a good choice, but his ability to mash sophisticated, layered, epic emotional superhero storytelling with Spidey-fun proves he’s an exceptional one. 

The parallels with Reeves and Nolan come in its blended superhero journey. This Spider-Man strides confidently through police lines like Robert Pattinson’s Batman, while around him the web of villains, heroes and anti-heroes make the word “overstuffed” as redundant as the peak of Nolan’s trilogy. Despite some inevitable leaps in logic (Punisher driving around with impunity, Parker’s unlimited cash), the appearance of each character feels vindicated. 

Cretton’s hand, and a script refreshingly from two writers, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, know what to show us. This is a playbox that just shows an innate knowledge of the rules and doesn’t need to show everything—that pays dividends.

This time around, the mentor role doesn’t fall on the obvious MCU candidate, Mark Ruffalo’s Banner—there’s a hint that his appearance is more about setting him up for the phase enders (it doesn’t end well)—instead it’s the rather affecting bromance between the desperate Spider-Man and the churlish, unreasonable Punisher Frank Castle.

Holland and Bernthal are old hands at riffing on each other, and they don’t disappoint. Even with some heavy beats, the relationship is delicately handled. And seeing Hulk versus Punisher and Spider-Man is really worth admission alone (“above your paygrade” is how Parker puts it to Castle).

Then there’s the main threat. You may rightly expect Sadie Sink’s villain not to be quite what she appears, but her presence provides a chilling spine. This is the closest Marvel’s come to horror for some time, and Cretton finds unflashy, in-camera ways to make the sinister person (and responsibility) jumping threat grow. It’s a solid follow-up on the creeping menace of the Green Goblin in the previous film. Leaping through innocent New Yorkers, which is reminiscent of the Agents navigating The Matrix, is an excellent way to wring the most out of Spider-Man’s swinging—Cretton manages to find plenty of new ways to show Parker in flight (yes, including the in-mask eye shot), and some are breathtakingly emotional. 

The heart of the movie falls on women, from Dewolff, the cop and mother that Spider-Man befriends and leans on, to Sink’s mysterious villain, the enduring legacy of Aunt May and the complex tragedy of MJ. Zendaya grabs the material she’s given—some lovely and unpredictable scenes between the amnesiac MJ and the pining Parker are highlights. Brand New Day finds a resolution of sorts, and it’s hugely satisfying—one scene where Holland silently listens to Zendaya, his eyes doing all the work, ties up the themes of time and relationships moving on in a bow.

Elsewhere, Brand New Day handles its themes with the perfect mix of universe-broadening and self-contained narrative. Seeded into the plot and Banner’s involvement is the unmistakable thread of ideas set to become hugely relevant to the MCU in Phase 7 and beyond… The notion of controlling and limiting powers, and the penalisation for being special, or gifted, are handled wisely so many years on from this Spider-Man’s introduction in Captain America: Civil War.  Mostly, it feels incredibly and comfortably Marvel.

It also feels incredibly and comfortably Spider-Man.  The often startling deep picture, which picks out the bright simplicity of the popping reds and blues of Spidey’s suit, matches the subject. It looks amazing—to the point it’s a kind of perverse joy that this will dominate standard screens for months after being kicked out of IMAX by The Odyssey (starring Holland, Bernthal, Zendaya). 

Brand New Day doesn’t feel anywhere near the tonal and genre mash it is. Cretton’s masterstroke may be the way he uses the streets the Spider-Man universe has returned to. New York looks stunning, and you see a lot of it. The high-rises, the sprawling boroughs, the steam all get a look in during this city-spanning (and Pinewood-shot) movie. In a series that’s made the series integral, this may be the most New York.