Spider-Man Movies Ranked from Worst to Best

In fact, that emotional core drives Spider-Man 3 past its clunkiest moments. For every misstep (the monologue delivered by Harry’s butler), there are two resonate—character-driven scenes, such as Peter and MJ lounging in a web or Harry’s final monologue. Even the prayer Topher Grace delivers as Eddie Brock begs God to kill Peter Parker has an undeniable truth of narcissism to it. But nowhere is that blend of sincerity and silliness more clear than in the Sandman transformation scene, a beautifully shot sequence of the newly destabilized Flint Marko overcoming his grainy state and his sadness to re-solidify. At once absurd and heart-wrenching, the scene captures everything great about Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. – Joe George

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

For all the valid gripes thrown at the MCU version of Peter Parker, there’s one thing the trilogy has nailed: Peter’s high school buddies. Part of the appeal to the Spider-Man comics under Steve Ditko, and later Gerry Conway and John Romita Sr., was the character’s rich supporting cast, consisting of crushes, bullies, and best buds. Spider-Man: Far From Home messes with the comics canon a bit, swapping out Peter’s high school crush for Michelle Johnson and making Peter’s best bud Ned Leeds instead of Harry Osborn, but it nails the breezy vibes and melodrama of high school life. 

That high school focus works particularly well given the movie’s placement in the MCU timeline. Hot on the heels of the galactic stakes of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Far From Home immediately deflates the pretensions of those films, with a cheesy tribute full of Getty Images and a silly look at the return of the Blipped. Even the battle between Peter and Mysterio (an undeniably great Jake Gyllenhaal) over the legacy of Iron Man undoes the hagiography of the previous films, with a narrowly-averted drone strike on a school bus reminding viewers that Tony Stark was an arms dealer. Somehow, despite its European location and shared-universe plot, Spider-Man: No Way Home manages to feel small-scale, friendly-neighborhood located, and ultimately relatable. – JG

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

The dilemma posed for Peter Parker (Tom Holland) in Spider-Man: No Way Home is a conundrum almost straight out of a classic Spider-Man comic book. Peter decides to do the right thing, not the simple thing, but his actions have ramifications for him and his loved ones that put the teenager through the ringer like never before. Despite all he’s seen and done in his young life, he’s still a kid, as his friend Doctor Strange notes, and the decisions he makes can be impulsive and even wrong—only in his case, they can create terrible consequences.

It takes a little while for Spider-Man: No Way Home to get to the heart of the matter, and some of the first half of the film takes some awkward plot turns to get there, but once director Jon Watts, helming his third Spidey film, hits the crux of Spider-Man’s conflict and raises both the stakes and the emotional impact, No Way Home becomes something of an epic.

As we all know now, there’s lots of fan service in No Way Home thanks to the presence of not just five villains from other franchise iterations, but a couple of alternate Spider-Men as well. While both Marvel and DC have struggled with the multiverse concept these past few years, No Way Home somehow makes it work. At the heart of it all is Tom Holland, taking Pete to extremes he has never reached before, and the climactic battle hits some unexpected emotional beats not just for him but for the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions of the character. It’s clearly difficult for a single movie to pull together three different universes and provide them with closure, but this one, incredibly, brings it home. – DK