Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review — The Best MCU Spidey Movie Yet? (Spoiler-Free)

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a beautiful mess — and it might be the best MCU Spider-Man movie yet. Both hosts land on 8/10.

We weren't planning to cover this one. Then we saw it, and we had to record an emergency bonus episode. Brian and John break down why Destin Daniel Cretton's Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the most grounded, consequence-driven Spidey film Marvel has made — and why it owes more to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 than to anything in the Home trilogy.

Jon Bernthal's Punisher steals the movie. Florence Pugh's "small potatoes" bathhouse scene is already a meme. Sadie Sink shows up as a telepath Marvel is still being coy about. Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is… there. And Peter's new organic webbing sets up the single funniest unintentional metaphor in the MCU.

What you'll get out of this episode:

Why this Spider-Man finally takes itself seriously — and how it escapes the quip-undercuts-everything problem The specific Spider-Man 2 (2004) DNA running through the whole film Where the Punisher lands after One Last Kill, and whether the chili speech works The six-armed Spider-Man that almost happened, and who killed it What the post-credits scene sets up heading into Avengers: Doomsday Whether Marvel's endless X-Men teasing is finally going somewhere ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 – Intro: why this emergency bonus episode exists

1:58 – Taking our kids to see it (and the No Way Home nostalgia)

3:08 – Sadie Sink, Jean Grey rumors, and Marvel's endless X-Men problem

4:41 – Why Brand New Day finally takes Spider-Man seriously

6:08 – Jon Bernthal's Punisher is back, and he's incredible

6:29 – Florence Pugh's "small potatoes" scene (already a meme)

8:32 – How much this borrows from Raimi's Spider-Man 2