A Sequel That Actually Earned the Anticipation
Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrived in theaters carrying the full weight of what No Way Home started – and somehow, it doesn’t buckle under it. The film is a deliberate step inward, trading multiverse spectacle for something quieter and stranger: a Peter Parker trying to disappear from his own life. Critics have landed firmly on its side, with the film sitting at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. That’s not a number that comes from goodwill alone.
Entertainment writers Angeline Barion, Bernice Corral, and Rachel Choy saw it together – same row, shared Kleenex packet, collective opinions formed under theater lighting. What follows is a distillation of what they actually thought, from the performances to the emotional gut-punches to at least one scene that sparked a very specific conversation about organic webbing.
The Most Anticipated Film of the Year, for Some of Them
Bernice Corral called it, flatly, her most anticipated movie of 2025 – from Sony, full stop. Angeline Barion, who describes herself as someone who doesn’t usually broadcast her fan loyalties publicly (her one exception: Minions), had a more dramatic reckoning with the release date. Brand New Day hit theaters around the same time as a Minions release, which she described as producing an “out of body experience” – the level of competing fandoms apparently threatening spontaneous combustion.
That kind of investment sets a high bar, and the film, by their account, clears it. Barion came prepared with a 60-count packet of Kleenex tissues. Between the three of them – all self-described serious Spider-Man fans seated together – they burned through roughly 20 tissues, which accumulated into what Choy described as a full plastic cup of used Kleenex. If that’s not a unit of emotional measurement, it should be.
Tom Holland, Topless, With Feelings
Tom Holland’s performance drew immediate discussion, though not only for the reasons one might expect from a critical assessment. The consensus was that he’s genuinely great in the role – Holland has always carried Peter Parker’s particular brand of grief well – but Corral’s first observation was more blunt: he didn’t necessarily need to be shirtless as frequently as the film arranged for him to be. Choy agreed. Then immediately walked that back.
The scene that generated the most conversation was Holland’s organic web moment. Barion called it “red hot.” Choy’s description was considerably less restrained – comparing the visual to something explicitly biological in a way that had all three of them reacting out loud in the theater. It’s the kind of scene that a film probably intends to read as a body-horror milestone for the character, but lands differently depending on who’s watching and how much they’ve been anticipating it.
What’s worth noting, beneath the jokes, is that Holland’s physicality in this film is clearly intentional. Brand New Day is described as a grounded, serious look at Peter Parker living in deliberate solitude – so when his body transforms or breaks or becomes something unfamiliar, it carries story weight. The shirtlessness has context. The organic web has meaning. The audience reaction is just an honest byproduct of Tom Holland being Tom Holland.
Zendaya also features in the film, and both she and Sadie Sink were part of the performance conversation the three writers had. The film appears to lean into relationship dynamics and emotional connection as its primary architecture – less about the set pieces, more about what it costs Peter to keep people at a distance and why he can’t quite manage it. That’s a tonal shift from what casual viewers might expect from a superhero sequel, and based on the tissue count, it lands.
Sadie Sink and the Film’s Emotional Core
Sink’s presence in the cast was one of the details Barion, Corral, and Choy singled out when discussing what makes Brand New Day emotionally effective. The film’s grounded approach to Peter’s isolation gives supporting performances room to breathe in ways that big-ensemble superhero movies often don’t allow.
The film asks questions that superhero stories don’t always have time for – about what makes a person distinct, about whether connection is something you can opt out of without consequence. Choy noted it’s the kind of movie that sends you out of the theater wanting to call your closest friend. That’s an unusual outcome for a Sony superhero release, and it’s probably the clearest signal that Brand New Day is doing something different from its predecessors.
What the 91% Actually Reflects
A 91% on Rotten Tomatoes for a superhero sequel isn’t standard. The genre’s critical relationship has grown more complicated over the past several years, with audiences and critics increasingly separating films that function primarily as franchise maintenance from ones that work as standalone emotional experiences. Brand New Day, based on both critical reception and the testimony of three people who went in as confirmed fans, appears to be the latter.
The easy read on Brand New Day is that it’s a Zendaya and Tom Holland vehicle riding on the goodwill of No Way Home’s multiverse nostalgia. But the film’s apparent commitment to solitude, transformation, and the specific pain of someone trying to unmake their own relationships suggests something with more internal logic than that framing allows. The press tour has been loud; the film, by contrast, seems to prefer quiet.
Barion almost spontaneously combusted waiting for it. Twenty tissues disappeared between three friends in a single row. And somewhere in the middle of it all, there’s a scene involving organic webbing that nobody who sees this film is going to forget – regardless of how seriously they were trying to take the emotional journey at that particular moment.
