Marvel's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" has begun showing in Russian cinemas through unofficial, or "shadow," distribution channels, since major Hollywood studios no longer release films officially in Russia. The film stars Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo and Florence Pugh, with critic Pavel Voronkov reviewing the film for Gazeta.Ru.
According to Voronkov, the film has climbed to fifth place among the highest-grossing films in history and topped the 2026 global box office with $2.22 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
Competing with a domestic release
The film's Russian run has coincided with the release of Kolobok, a domestic film made on a budget of 1 billion rubles, whose creators had reportedly clashed with viewers online over the delayed Russian release of Spider-Man. Citing estimates from BK-Media, Voronkov wrote that Spider-Man earned about 900 million rubles in its first weekend in Russian theaters, while Kolobok had taken in 758 million rubles over two and a half weeks.
Voronkov also noted that a track by the singer Monetochka, who has been designated a "foreign agent" in Russia, was cut from the film by both Ukrainian and Russian distributors. The Instagram logo, however, was left in the film despite Instagram's owner Meta being classified as extremist and banned in Russia, as were jokes referencing fan fiction.
Peter Parker's fresh start
The story picks up after a spell cast by Doctor Strange at the end of the previous film erased Peter Parker from everyone's memory, restoring his anonymity as Spider-Man. Peter now fights crime on his own while secretly following the social media of his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), and his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon), too afraid to reconnect with them in case they suffer the same fate as his late aunt May (Marisa Tomei). MJ and Ned have since finished university and now share the apartment the three of them once dreamed of renting together.
Peter's routine of catching criminals is disrupted by two developments: he starts undergoing unpleasant physical changes, including producing organic webbing similar to the Tobey Maguire films, and a series of attacks hit branches of the Department of Damage Control, the agency created after the Battle of New York in the first Avengers film.
An open secret villain
As with 2021's "No Way Home," the marketing around "Brand New Day" concealed an open secret. The mysterious attacker, played by Stranger Things star Sadie Sink, turns out to be the telepathic mutant Jean Grey, who is hunting something called V-Max, which Voronkov compared to the mysterious "Rosebud" from Citizen Kane. Jean can control other people's minds but cannot stay inside Peter's for long, though she still works out his identity and who he is protecting. Unable to face her alone, Peter enlists the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Black Widow (Florence Pugh), and consults Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) on medical matters.
Holland's Nolan influence
In recent interviews, Holland said that working on Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," which delayed the Spider-Man production by six months, showed him how large-scale blockbusters should really be made, and that he pushed Nolan's principles onto Marvel and Sony. Voronkov wrote that despite this, "Brand New Day" does not stand out much from the rest of the Marvel lineup, and that the previous film, "No Way Home," left a more vivid impression through its unabashed fan service and nostalgia.
Critic's verdict
Voronkov found little reason for the film's two-and-a-half-hour runtime, and wrote that its action and computer graphics often left something to be desired, its jokes mostly missed, and its promised grounded tone gave way again to a large-scale epic.
He singled out the web-swinging sequences, shot in first person by director Destin Daniel Cretton, who began his Marvel career with "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" (a film that never got a sequel but whose martial arts traditions carry over into this film's fight scenes with ninjas from the Hand). Voronkov compared the immersive effect to the Insomniac Games Spider-Man titles and the parkour game Mirror's Edge.
He also praised the melodramatic subplot involving Zendaya's character forgetting her boyfriend, crediting screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who reworked the script with Cretton during the six months Holland, Zendaya and Bernthal spent filming "The Odyssey." Voronkov suggested the love-triangle material felt personal for Kuritzkes, pointing to "Past Lives" by his wife, director Celine Song, and his own script for "Challengers," which also starred Zendaya.
Sink's Jean Grey was named the strongest antagonist in Holland's Spider-Man films since Michael Keaton's Vulture in "Homecoming," a character who also clashed with the Department of Damage Control. Voronkov noted that, unlike Hollywood convention, her arc does not end with a restoration of the status quo.
Release details
Voronkov compared the film to Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 2" with Maguire, which he described as a film about impotence, saying Cretton's film instead deals with puberty and suppressed sexuality. He concluded that "Brand New Day" leaves a fairly pleasant impression and, despite its formulaic Marvel construction, feels more like an actual film than the next Marvel release, "Avengers: Doomsday," directed again by the Russo brothers, risks being.
"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" premiered in Los Angeles on July 27, 2026, and was released on July 31, 2026, reaching Russian cinemas on August 20, 2026. It runs 145 minutes and is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. The cast includes Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, Jacob Batalon, Lisa Colon-Zayas, Florence Pugh, Michael Mando, Tramell Tillman, Marvin Jones III, Marisa Tomei, Naomi Watts and Keith David.
