Movies | Spectacular Spider-Rankings
There have been a lot of Spider-Man movies in the last twenty years, presenting different takes on the world's favourite superhero, but I can't honestly say that I've really loved any of them. Each of them felt like they were lacking at least something about what makes Spidey such a great character - some more so than others.
One quick note about what movies are not included in these rankings: I haven't watched Amazing Spider-Man 2, nor do I have any intention of watching it; Venom doesn't feature Spider-Man at all; and, while Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame might feature the wall-crawler, they aren't stories centred around him, so miss out too.
7. The Amazing Spider-Man
Making Peter Parker a mysterious, brooding guy with model looks, the confidence to stand up to bullies and having the girl he likes interested in him before giving him super-powers was... interesting. It wasn't exactly helped by coming out the same summer as the first Avengers movie, featuring a lot more characters and superhero action on pretty much the same budget.
6. Spider-Man 3
This movie is the perfect example of studio meddling ruining things, by demanding that a fan-favourite character like Venom was included against director Sam Raimi's wishes and giving the movie a split personality of sorts. To be fair, I think audience tastes were already starting to evolve away from Raimi's style and later superhero movies have featured multiple villains with ease.
5. Spider-Man
This movie has not dated at all well, but it shows how poor the two movies already mentioned still rank below it - Spider-Man isn't a bad movie, but it does feel very much like a relic of the time it came out. It's strange to think back to how much of a revelation this movie was when it came out, but the bar was so, so much lower then.
4. Spider-Man 2
Putting this movie here will annoy fans of Raimi's Spidey a lot, but it honestly doesn't deserve to be higher - it was unquestionably great at the time, but what were once minor quibbles now feel like severe faults thanks to the quality of the average superhero movie being so much higher now. It's still very much enjoyable, but I may do a full review to explain just why this doesn't rate so highly now.
3. Spider-Man: Homecoming
Tom Holland is easily the best Peter Parker Spider-Man on the big screen, and the best live-action Spidey full-stop. Michael Keaton is also easily the best villain of all the movies on this list too. Despite that, my opinion of this movie has dropped since I first saw it; thanks to it feeling a little too cautious for most of the movie - it's still a lot of fun, but is just lacking that magic sparkle to make it great.
2. Spider-Man: Far From Home
Didn't this just get a 6/10 when I reviewed it? And it's still second on this list? Well, yeah. Like I said at the start, I don't think any of the movies on this list can count as great Spider-Man movies, but this comes the closest as far as live action is concerned. Holland is still great as Peter, Zendaya's the best MJ we've ever had and the two major confrontations with the villain are the best pieces of Spidey action yet committed to film. Much like The Favourite, I love each individual piece of this movie, but it just doesn't fit together as a cohesive whole at all.
1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Despite not being too hot on this movie either, it's still the best Spider-Man movie made so far and a large part of that is due to it being animated rather than live-action. You can get away with a lot more in animation, with large parts of this movie being pretty much impossible to replicate in live-action without destroying audience's willing suspension of disbelief. It does make for a very fun movie, although one that you shouldn't think too hard about once it's over. It helps that there are so many fantastic, interesting characters to distract you, while also hiding that Miles, the central character, is the least interesting of the lot, with the most formulaic story in the movie.
