UPDATE 2: CBN’s own verdict is in: 9/10, with Tom Holland delivering his best Spidey movie yet.
UPDATE: The audience has now weighed in, and it went even bigger: Brand New Day debuted with a 98% audience score, tying Shang-Chi for the highest in MCU history and topping No Way Home‘s 97%.
The review embargo has lifted, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day is official: 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, Certified Fresh, from 135 reviews and counting.
The score lands three days before the movie opens Friday, with Amazon Prime early screenings starting Wednesday and previews Thursday.
The Score In Context
Brand New Day is the first MCU movie in theaters since The Fantastic Four: First Steps a year ago, and the only one arriving before Avengers: Doomsday in December.
At 90%, it slots right alongside the Tom Holland trilogy’s track record, which has been the most consistently well-reviewed run in the franchise.
It also completes the pre-release trifecta: premiere reactions pointing to a monster hit, tracking at $180 million to $190 million, and now a Certified Fresh critical verdict.
What The Reviews Say
CBN’s own review lands at 9/10, calling it a fresh, grounded take that gives fans nearly everything they could want from a Spider-Man movie.
ComicBookMovie’s Josh Wilding went a full 5/5, declaring “Spider-Man has never been more amazing.”
The Cosmic Circus scored it 4/5, writing “The MCU finally gets its groove back,” while We Live Entertainment’s Scott Menzel called it the most satisfying live-action Spider-Man movie yet at 9/10.
Austin Burke of Flick Fan Nation praised “the best action we have ever seen from any on-screen version” of the character.
The prestige critics came along too. TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek credited the movie for understanding that actors, not effects overload, are what keep audiences coming back, and the New York Times’ Alissa Wilkinson found Holland’s performance winning even while noting how much of Spidey is computer-generated.
The word that keeps repeating across reviews is “grounded.” Critics repeatedly credit the movie for trading multiversal chaos for personal stakes, street-level threats, and a Peter Parker with real problems.
The Dissents
A 90% still means a handful of rotten scores. Fresh Fiction’s Courtney Howard went 2.5 out of 5, finding the movie overstuffed and unevenly paced, though even she granted its themes hit hard when they land.
Mortal Cinema’s Luke Y. Thompson liked the characters but jabbed that “Marvel scripts ain’t what they used to be,” and Richard Crouse dinged an overblown final reel while still landing at 4/5.
The Sadie Sink Factor
Without giving anything away, multiple critics single out Sadie Sink. Flickering Myth’s Robert Kojder wrote that “it is Sadie Sink who arguably makes a bigger imprint” than Holland himself.
Moviebob’s Bob Chipman teased a mythology bombshell for the Marvel faithful that doesn’t overwhelm the movie around it.
Readers who want to know what all that is pointing at can read what Steve Lacy let slip on the premiere red carpet, spoiler warning included, along with the long-running question about who Sink is playing.
The Scoreboard
As we argued this week, superhero fatigue was always a myth, and the evidence keeps stacking up on schedule.
The reactions delivered. The reviews delivered. The presales already delivered. The box office gets its say Friday.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31. For everything on the movie, check out our complete Brand New Day guide.
