Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Fighting crime full-time as Spider-Man in a world that doesn't remember him—and the pressure of seeing his old friends move on without him—sparks a change in Peter Parker he may not have the power to control. But that transformation might also be the only thing that can stop a shocking new threat to the city and those he loves - a powerful villain no one can even see.

Critics broadly responded to Tom Holland's performance and the film's more emotionally grounded approach to Peter Parker, but the gap between positive reviews and middling critic scores tells the real story: plenty found it overlong, pacing-challenged, and too tangled in MCU franchise machinery to fully deliver on its ambitions. Holland's work is the rare point of near-universal agreement; almost everything else — the villain, the second half, the balance between standalone story and universe-building — divides reviewers sharply.