From a low-budget CBS pilot in 1977 to the Nicolas Cage noir detective Spider-Noir in 2026, Spider-Man has been around in live-action for nearly 50 years, although not all releases are of equal quality. Spider-Man is one of the longest-running superhero franchises in history, debuting with Nicholas Hammond’s CBS series in 1977 before becoming a blockbuster at theaters thanks to Sam Raimi in 2002. There have now been three movie eras, with Tobey Maguire’s trilogy, Andrew Garfield’s duology, and Tom Holland’s ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe outings. Cage now adds to the list with his own multiverse variant of Spider-Man on Prime Video.
This means there have been 10 live-action Spider-Man releases that have aired in the United States, and they range from a low 52% Rotten Tomatoes score to a pair of releases that hit 93%. These are the best of the Spider-Man live-action movies and TV shows, ranked by quality.
The first appearance of a live-action Spider-Man came in 1977 when Nicholas Hammond starred as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the network TV show The Amazing Spider-Man. This series featured little that fans knew from the comics, as the main villains were generic thieves, mind-control scientists, and industrial saboteurs rather than the supervillains from Spider-Man comics. The pilot was hugely successful, but CBS ended up canceling the series after only 13 episodes. It ranks last because it has dated effects, boring villains, and a refusal to actually lean into the comic book stories.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was Andrew Garfield’s second Spider-Man movie, and it ended up being his last despite teases for what was coming in the third part of the proposed trilogy. Directed by Marc Webb, this had Spider-Man fighting Electro (Jamie Foxx) and the Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan), while also telling the “Death of Gwen Stacy” storyline from the comics. It set up some interesting future storylines about Peter’s parents, but it ended up with a franchise low 52% Rotten Tomatoes score, and Sony stopped making Spider-Man movies until it struck a deal with the MCU to bring Spider-Man into that world.
The first two Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies were beloved by critics and fans, but things changed in the third part of his trilogy. The studio demanded that Raimi add Venom to this third movie, even though Raimi didn’t want him there. As a result, there were good parts of Spider-Man 3, which mostly involved Sandman’s story, and some lackluster parts, which were mostly about Venom. It was clear years later in Spider-Man: No Way Home, when the movie brought back Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman and ignored this version of Venom, that Raimi was right. The movie has a 63% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 51% from the audience, which is even lower than Amazing Spider-Man 2’s audience score.
The first Marc Webb Amazing Spider-Man movie brought in a new-look Peter Parker in Andrew Garfield and introduced the wisecracking elements from the comics that Raimi’s movies mostly ignored. This allowed it to receive high praise from critics for Garfield’s performance and what he brought to the character. However, the movie also received criticism for its plot and the depiction of The Lizard, who was a tragic figure from the comics, but ended up as a pure villain in the movie. The film does have a 73% Rotten Tomatoes score, although critics complained that the movie rehashed the 2002 Raimi movie’s beats too closely. Garfield and Emma Stone (as Gwen Stacy) were great, but the story was a bit lacking.
The second Tom Holland Spider-Man story is the lesser of the three he has been in before this year’s fourth entry, Spider-Man: Brand New Day. In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter and his friends, MJ and Ned, head to Europe for a class trip, and while he is there, he ends up involved with two mysterious villains called the Elementals while working with a hero named Mysterio. Of course, the twist is that Mysterio is the real villain and planned all this. There are some good parts to this movie, including Spider-Man dealing with Tony Stark’s death and his work with Happy Hogan, but it doesn’t have the same level of storytelling as the other two MCU films.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is the first MCU movie with Tom Holland in the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and it goes a long way in developing him as a hero closer to his comic book counterpart than either the Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield versions. The movie has Robert Downey Jr. in it as the veteran voice trying to help Peter, and the villain is fantastic. This is Michael Keaton as the Vulture, as he is also the father of Peter’s girlfriend, Liz Allan. Spider-Man: Homecoming has a strong emotional connection, and it helped prove that Spider-Man is best suited for the MCU over what Sony had ended up developing him into on his own.
Spider-Noir is the brand-new live-action Spider-Man series on Prime Video, and it might be the wildest and most unpredictable Spider-Man ever made. Here, Peter Parker isn’t the hero. Instead, it’s Ben Reilly as The Spider, an aging private investigator and superhero in 1930s New York City. Nicolas Cage is fantastic as The Spider, and the fact that the series was released in both black-and-white and color offers up different options, one for fans who want to see the best version and one for people who don’t like black-and-white. The Spider-Noir reviews are incredibly positive, with a 91% critics’ score and a 93% audience score.
The first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie is still a love letter to fans of the comics. Tobey Maguire is Peter Parker, and this is an origin story movie, with him being bitten by a radioactive spider and learning how to use his powers. This delivers Uncle Ben’s death, and it skips Gwen Stacy and moves straight to Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). It also has the incredible Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin, a perfect villain for Spider-Man’s first movie outing. This is the movie that defined Spider-Man cinematically, and if Raimi kept making movies like this instead of Spider-Man 3, there is no telling how many great Spider-Man movies he could have made.
Spider-Man: No Way Home might be more of a gimmick movie and nostalgia trip, but it does both of those things perfectly, and what results is the best Spider-Man movie in terms of pure fun in history. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is depressed and wishes he weren’t Spider-Man anymore because everyone knows his identity, and his Aunt May ends up dying as a result. When he asks Doctor Strange to make people forget him, it goes wrong, and villains from both Sam Raimi’s and Marc Webb’s movies show up, as do Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men. This movie has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score, tied for the best ever, and it made almost $2 billion worldwide, one of the highest-grossing superhero movies of all time.
The best Spider-Man movie ever made remains Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. There are several reasons why this still sits above the rest. It starts with Tobey Maguire coming into his own as Peter Parker/Spider-Man here, and he delivers the best performance of his three starring movies. Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus is still the best villain in any Spider-Man movie, both thanks to his performance and the villain’s sympathetic story. Raimi stretched his directing muscles here, and with more studio trust, he brought in some of his trademark filmmaking techniques Evil Dead fans might recognize, making this a movie that was as visually a Sam Raimi film as it was a Spider-Man movie. With a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score and the best story and villain of the franchise, there isn’t a Spider-Man movie better than Spider-Man 2.
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