Tom Holland walked the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY this week, and he wanted fans to know this fourth outing isn’t just another web-slinging romp.
“It’s more mature, and it’s a darker theme,” Holland told Deadline on the carpet, “and it’s a theme that I think is incredibly relatable to young people.”
Holland first pulled on the suit as a teenager in 2016’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, and he’s grown up alongside Peter Parker for a decade now. BRAND NEW DAY picks up four years after SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, in which MJ, Ned and the rest of the world forgot Peter Parker ever existed. That premise leaves Peter fighting crime full-time in a city that doesn’t recognize him, wrestling with isolation while a threat nobody can even see closes in.
“This idea of moving to a new city and feeling like you’re all alone, and sometimes neglecting the fact that the best thing that ever happened to you is standing right next to you,” Holland said, describing the emotional core director Destin Daniel Cretton built the movie around. “I think for me, being able to tell a story that’s relatable on a stage as big as this is such an important responsibility for Destin to carry that theme throughout the movie. I was just really excited at the opportunity.”
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That’s a theme Movieguide® readers will recognize even outside a comic book. There’s the ache of feeling unseen, and the temptation to overlook the people who love us most while we’re busy trying to prove ourselves to everyone else. Peter Parker’s loneliness isn’t just superhero angst — it’s a fairly ordinary, fairly human problem, dressed up in a red-and-blue suit.
Cretton directs from a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, with Holland reprising his role alongside Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando and Mark Ruffalo. The official synopsis promises Peter facing “a powerful villain no one can even see” while sorting out who he is now that “the world may have forgotten Peter Parker, but he hasn’t forgotten them.”
Movieguide® has tracked this movie’s long road to theaters, from its “fresh start” title reveal through filming updates in Scotland and the additional photography Holland shot last year. Fans have waited through years of speculation for BRAND NEW DAY, and the wait is nearly over.
BRAND NEW DAY swings into theaters July 31, following NO WAY HOME’s massive box office run, and Holland made clear this sequel isn’t chasing bigger just for the sake of bigger. Rather than escalating to planet-sized stakes, he’s said the danger this time stays personal — centered on Peter himself rather than another city under siege. For a franchise that could easily coast on spectacle, that’s a notable choice.
Whether BRAND NEW DAY earns the maturity Holland describes, audiences can judge for themselves starting this weekend. Movieguide® gave the movie a -2 content score, praising its “Strong Christian, moral worldview with strong American, patriotic elements where hero is a Christ figure who risks his very life to save the life of another human being” but advising extreme caution due to “40 gratuitous obscenities and profanities.”
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