Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened July 30 and by Sunday had earned $355 million domestically — the second-biggest opening weekend in history, trailing only Avengers: Endgame. Director Destin Daniel Cretton — the first director other than Jon Watts in Tom Holland's run — set the story four years after No Way Home: Peter Parker living alone, stripped of everyone he knows. It's the franchise's biggest moment since the MCU started losing steam — Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts had underperformed, and Supergirl bombed earlier this summer. Every audience metric was historic: 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, an A on CinemaScore, and a $72 million Thursday preview that beat Endgame*'s all-time preview record.

Fans Scored This Film Higher Than No Way Home

The $355 million opening and a 98% audience score — the highest of Holland's Spider-Man run — say audiences trust this franchise more than critics do.

The $355 million says more than any review can. Tom Holland put it plainly before the weekend: "Superhero fatigue is real. Spider-Man fatigue is not." The Ringer called Brand New Day "the antidote to Marvel fatigue" and "a love letter to the multimedia titan that is Spider-Man." Forbes's Erik Kain called it "the best MCU movie in years." All global records landed too: $927 million worldwide in its opening weekend, second only to Endgame's $1.2 billion.

The 98% audience score is the highest of Holland's Spider-Man films, beating the beloved No Way Home. Audiences gave it five stars across every demographic — parents, young adults, general audiences. The CinemaScore A puts it on the same line as Homecoming and Far From Home; only No Way Home scored higher, at A+. That's not brand loyalty on autopilot. That's a film landing.

But Critics Say the MCU Formula Is Still Broken

A 91% critics score — the lowest of Holland's Spider-Man run — carries pointed complaints about overstuffed plotting and franchise mechanics crowding out character.

This is the worst-reviewed Holland Spider-Man film. IndieWire's David Ehrlich called it "a dull and downbeat action sequel" that "wastes its chance for a fresh start" and "goes out of its way to epitomize why the mega-franchise has lost so much of its sauce over the last seven years." Variety called it "arduous" and "trying too hard," writing that the film "sidelines its core relationship" to serve a villain backstory that "stops the movie dead in its tracks." Rolling Stone wrote it offers "nothing new."

Critics are fine with Spider-Man. Their problem is the franchise around him. Vanyaland's review headline: "Good Spidey, bad MCU." Holland's performance draws praise across the board. Critics keep flagging the structural weight of phase-building — the forced character crossovers and plot mechanics that crowd out what the story is actually about. A 91% is still good — but the consistent complaints across negative reviews point at the same thing.

Though the Test-Screened Cut Was the Worst One

Tom Holland says the version Marvel built from focus-group notes was so bad the cast walked away from it.

Focus group notes nearly broke this film. Holland revealed in an interview that one cut incorporated all the notes from test screening audiences. When the cast and crew watched it: "We hated it. It totally didn't work. It was what the people were asking for, but it wasn't quite what we wanted as the creatives." Marvel and Sony didn't move forward with that version.

What worked was keeping it personal. Director Destin Daniel Cretton told the A.V. Club his "secret to not making a shitty Marvel movie is to keep things personal." In his own 20s, he went through profound loneliness and loss — the same territory Peter Parker occupies in this film. That creative conviction is what audiences scored at 98%. The director and cast walked away from the version built to satisfy what test audiences said they wanted.

Where This Lands

Brand New Day broke records, got middling reviews, and then Tom Holland told everyone the studio had nearly ruined it by following audience feedback. All three facts are true at once. Fans point to $355 million and 98% and say that is the answer. Critics point to 91% — the lowest of Holland's run — and note the film's brand loyalty isn't the same as the MCU solving its quality problem. Holland and Cretton point to the test-screened cut — the one that gave audiences exactly what they said they wanted — and note that everyone who watched it hated it. The film that ignored the data is now the second-biggest opening in Hollywood history. What audiences wanted and what audiences asked for turned out to be different things.

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