All 10 Spider-Man movies, ranked from worst to best

10. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Sony’s marketing team infamously released about one-fifth of the movie online before the film’s release…which is merely the most obvious reason why The Amazing Spider-Man had a been-there-seen-that quality when it hit theaters in 2012.

Less of a reboot than a shameless do-over, Marc Webb’s first Spider-Man film tells a more protracted origin story, with half the fun and twice the self-importance (the film earns a rare dead-dad hat trick). There’s also a learning-the-powers montage that involves skateboarding and Coldplay, but the worst thing about Amazing 1 is how it even faithfully repeats the bad parts of Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man: Here again, the bad guy’s an unconvincing-looking green dude, driven to evil by science and attacking people on a bridge. Worse than bad, it’s inessential. —Darren Franich

9. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Bad but essential, the second Amazing movie is a mess of misconceived world-building ambitions. Intended as a dark-dramatic sequel, it plays more now like a prequel to several unmade spinoffs. In their second film together, then-real-life paramours Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone still can’t strike sparks onscreen: He’s too mopey, she’s trapped in the role of someone patiently waiting for her boyfriend to chill. As the villains, Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan are trapped in Z-movie outfits and motivations — Foxx’s Max Diillon is a Spidey fan transformed by an eel attack, DeHaan’s Harry Osborn is basically a vampire.

But there’s a lush quality to Amazing 2. It’s shot on 35 mm in real New York locations, with an unexpectedly swagger-y score (by Hans Zimmer, Pharrell Williams, and a supergroup called “the Magnificent Six.”) I mean this as a compliment and a critique: This is the most GIFable Spider-Man movie, great in 16-frame segments, lacking all the connective material that used to be what movies were. —D.F.

8. Spider-Man 3 (2007)

A botch job of oppositional motivations practically disowned by its own director, the messiest Spider-Man movie is a near-constant tonal misfire, simultaneously more serious than its predecessors and more willfully goofy. The misfires are many — Topher Grace’s Eddie Brock and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy seem painfully wedged in as fan service, and it’s frequently difficult to tell the difference between what’s purposefully silly and what’s just accidentally funny.

But Raimi’s visual imagination reaches a new peak with Sandman (Thomas Haden Church). And there’s an endearingly shaggy side to this film, all the more shocking given its then-record cost. James Franco officially enters his weird phase when he swears the pie is “so good.” For no obvious reason, Raimi fits in a few dance numbers. At the center of this indifferent strangeness, Kirsten Dunst gives her best performance in the series, as Mary Jane falls from Broadway heights to lounge-singing lows. Spider-Man 3 isn’t a good movie, but it’s a real movie. —D.F.

7. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

The second installment in a Spider-Man film series is often key to its legacy, either expanding the themes of the original film (Spider-Man 2) or doubling down on its worst tendencies (The Amazing Spider-Man 2). The second Spider-Man movie of the Tom Holland era falls somewhere in the middle, offering a great villain and fun character dynamics but also having to carry the burden of being tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its ever-evolving saga.

The chemistry between Holland’s Peter Parker, Zendaya’s MJ, and the rest of his high school classmates makes this a good hangout/vacation film, and Jake Gyllenhaal is exceedingly well cast as a guy Peter (and the audience) wants to trust but there’s just something slightly off. Though somewhat inessential, Far From Home is a fun diversion with a killer mid-credits sequence that beautifully sets up the third film. —Kevin Jacobsen

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

And is Homecoming a real movie? What is a movie anymore? The first Spidey film of the MCU era iterates off the problems and solutions of past films, adding back all the comedy that the Amazing films lost and refocusing Peter’s adventures with outer-borough particularity. Tom Holland’s Peter has a favorite bodega, chases bad guys through backyards, and struggles to mix superhero-ing with the academic decathlon. Homecoming‘s been praised as a genuine high school movie, which is only half-true; it’s also a weird exercise in MCU world-building, depending on regular once-per-half-hour check-ins from Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark.

This last bit is either what you love about Homecoming or the most annoying part of the movie. It seems to me that all the Marvel stuff gets in the film’s way — that what could have been a sensitive human comedy about Spider-Man’s neighborhood and his high school keeps getting hijacked by the broader necessities of continuity. (The last and worst action scene literally takes place on a plane carrying detritus from 2012’s The Avengers.) But the cast of characters at Spidey’s high school is an all-time ensemble. The stage is set for a brilliant sequel! Which is teased in a post-credits scene that plays out almost exactly like the post-credits scene from the first Amazing Spider-Man. The more things change… —D.F.

5. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Even if it was one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood, the catharsis of witnessing all three live-action Spider-Mans together was pure ecstasy. By this point in the Tom Holland era, the idea of the multiverse had been introduced and popularized — hell, the Spider-Man franchise already centered it in Into the Spider-Verse three years prior. Still, No Way Home felt like a satisfying continuation of Holland’s version of Peter Parker and his existential crisis as well as pure fan service to celebrate nearly 20 years of Spider-Man on the big screen.

The way the film gets to that epic crossover moment is a little messy — Peter’s intentions of trying to rehabilitate invading villains like Doc Ock and the Green Goblin are noble but sadly naïve in a frustrating way. Plus, with so many heroes and villains in the mix, it’s inevitable for this to feel overstuffed. But the sheer emotion of Holland’s performance as he bears the weight of the world on his shoulders makes this one of the more effective executions of the “With great power comes great responsibility” through-line. —K.J.

4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Five years after releasing the boundary-pushing, Oscar-winning Into the Spider-Verse, Sony Pictures Animation doubled down on the eye-popping visuals and mind-bending multiverse-jumping with this sequel. Across the Spider-Verse smartly elevates Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) to essentially co-lead status as she and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) struggle with the weight of the impact of their Spidey responsibilities on their respective personal lives. The creative decision to have Gwen narrate the opening is a bold step in the right direction as the sequel builds upon the themes of the first film in exploring what it means to be a Spider-Man (or Woman).

Like its predecessor, we soon find ourselves hurtling across the Spider-Verse as Miles and Gwen try to hunt down the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), whose mutable inkblot design is one of the best examples of what makes the Spidey world so perfect for animation. The world-building and set pieces are on a whole other level here, and while the lack of resolution ultimately makes this feel incomplete, the horror of the ending as Miles realizes he’s, well, far from home, is incredibly tantalizing. —K.J.

3. Spider-Man (2002)

History judges Raimi’s first film for the janky special effects and the first (of three!) terrible Green Goblin outfits, but Spider-Man boils over with genre-launching ambition. Like the first X-Men film, it plays in hindsight like an imperfect but fascinating big swing, an attempt to bring all the variable tones of a character’s comic book history together onscreen. Raimi’s impulses as a comedian run smashing into his impulses towards retro melodrama: Spider-Man’s “debut” is like a WWE spoof, and that segues right into the theatrically dramatic death of Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson).

But the film overflows with childlike wonder, a comic-strip dream of girls next door and nerdy weirdoes growing muscles with puberty. The scene of Spider-Man kissing Mary Jane upside-down in the rain has been oft-imitated but never really bettered — it’s still the series’ high point for romance and weirdness, and it’s a reminder of how strange superhero movies were when superhero plots still swirled around secret identities. (Late in this first film, Peter finds himself at two different points of a romantic triangle.)

Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborn has all the defining problems of the franchise’s villains — he seems fully unstable from the very beginning. But he gets a great exit. And don’t underrate how perfectly this first film captures something about Spider-Man’s central tragedy. By the end of the film, his best friend hates Spider-Man but loves Peter, and Mary Jane loves Peter but they can’t be together because of Spider-Man. Superpowers have rarely felt less empowering. Spider-Man practically invented the modern-day superhero movie, but it’s also a downbeat road not taken. —D.F.

2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

The first animated Spider-Man feature has a rollicking high energy — and a feeling of newness remarkable in a franchise as old as this century. The wild visuals bring a psychedelic new kineticism to the web-swinging, and teenage Miles Morales is a compellingly modern hero, a sweetly arty Brooklyn kid fish-out-of-watering through a fancy prep school.

But Spider-Verse is a new-model superhero movie, which means the story of Miles Morales is also the story of Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), a shaggy older version of the familiar hero, struggling through a half-baked midlife crisis. And the movie’s also a super-teaming of the whole Spider-Man concept, clashing infinite earths of Spider-People together into a banter-y arachnoid squad. The sheer muchness means some key characters get short-shrift. We see more of Gwen in the sequel; I hope we never see Liev Schreiber’s Kingpin again. Spider-Verse is a fun ride with a wacky porcine Spider-Ham, but you’re left with the eerie feeling that Sony constructed this film as a Trojan Horse: Here’s the origin story for a new Spider-Man that’s really a redemption saga for the old Spider-Man. —D.F.

1. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

There’s a new theory brewing that superhero films are best when they pick a tone, whether it’s grimdark DC serious or sitcom Marvel funny. A film like Logan earns raves for its heavy-man profundity (with megaviolence!), while a lighthearted romp like Homecoming gets extra credit for turning everything into a cameo-comedian laugh line.

And then there’s Spider-Man 2, a sumptuously silly-sweet adventure that riffs on “mad-scientist” horror, Old New York noir, and some of the High Tropes of the rom-com era. Peter delivers pizza through an anti-realistic Manhattan, full of downtown elevated trains, sinking waterfront warehouses, and moody Gothic penthouses where a sad-sack billionaire heir plots vengeance. There’s a chainsaw, and there’s a montage set to “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” Spider-Man suffers something like an existential crisis, and he’s passed around unconscious by New Yorkers arms spread out like a Christ figure. Mary Jane gets engaged to an astronaut, and she leaves him at the altar.

It’s a rollicking film, the best evidence that Raimi’s mash of tones can produce genuine cinematic wonder. Alfred Molina doesn’t solve this franchise’s villain problem — the tentacles made him evil? — but his Doctor Octopus is a great visual creation, his squiggling robot arms as grotesque as anything in a Guillermo del Toro film. And this is Maguire’s best showcase: The Peter we find in this movie is both a sincere nerd and a desperate man, trying to hold off his better angels in an attempt to live a normal life. You can’t really reduce Spider-Man 2‘s achievement; there are moments that approach spoofdom and moments of high drama. At its core, it’s a pure cinematic romance, unbounded by the necessities of cinematic universes, or fandoms, or big plans for Phase 4. —D.F.