Spider-Man: No Way Home – Looking Back at Two Decades of Spider-Man
We are days away from the premiere of Spider-Man: No Way Home and the world is PUMPED. After months of almost zero promotion for the movie, the last few weeks have been insane. We’ve had a killer trailer, ads flooding our television screens, and movie pre-sales on a scale comparable to Infinity War and Endgame, COVID be damned.
The attention the movie has garnered isn’t unwarranted either. No Way Home isn’t just another Spider-Man movie or another simple installment in the MCU. The hype is real. Rumors of the plot and the characters involved have been all over the internet for over a year, and the trailers have started to confirm most of them.
The villains of the movie appear to be the villains of the Spider-Man movies of the past decade, including Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and Sandman from the Tobey Maguire franchise, as well as Lizard and Electro from the Andrew Garfield set of movies. As cool as this is, one can only help but feel that the villains would have to be packaged with their respective heroes. While not confirmed, it feels inevitable that we could get our other favorite Spideys in No Way Home, teaming up with Tom Holland as a part of the creation of the first live-action Spider-Verse.
Seeing how important the past Spider-Man movies are going to be in this one, I thought it was important to reflect on the seven live-action Spider-Man movies that have come before No Way Home. There was good, there was bad, but most of it has been pretty fun. Here are my thoughts:
The Movies
There have been seven live-action Spider-Man movies released to this point, with No Way Home being the eighth. We are not going to talk about the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse here because it doesn’t appear to be involved in this movie. The live-action movies break down like this:
Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy directed by Sam Raimi:
Spider-Man (2002)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man movies directed by Marc Webb:
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
Tom Holland MCU Spider-Man trilogy directed by Jon Watts:
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2016)
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Over the past month I have made it a point to watch all seven of these movies. While some of these are great, some pretty average, and other spectacular, the Spider-Man movies have probably been the most polarizing comic-book movies ever released. Before I get into my rankings, I wanted to go over how I got there. After watching them all, I determined that there are four key components that make up any Spider-Man movie: The story, the villain(s), the love interest, and, of course, Spider-Man himself. Let’s rank them by each set of movies:
The Story
1.) Maguire trilogy
2.) MCU trilogy
3.) Garfield movies
Of all the aspects listed, the storylines were the easiest for me to rank. It’s pretty clear. The original movies with Tobey Maguire are all-time from a story perspective. They capture the heart and soul of the character of Spider-Man and redefined the genre in movies. I am choosing to ignore Spider-Man 3 here because it is in fact a hot pile of garbage, but I’m willing to ignore it here because of the strength of the first two. Both of the “Amazing” Spider-Man plots were far from amazing. The forced parents storyline STINKS. The forced attempt at creating the Sinister Six failed and nothing felt right, story-wise. What will always be true in any movie is that forced storylines don’t work. The plot has to develop naturally. The MCU installments, meanwhile are also very good. While they are very well done, there are times where there is a little too much focus on Tony Stark and the Avengers and less so on Spidey himself, so I dropped them to second here, although it is still close. Maybe this is different in a week…
The Villains
1.) Maguire trilogy
2.) MCU trilogy
3.) Garfield movies
This one was also very simple, and clearly similar to the last section. Willem Defoe’s Green Goblin1 and Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus are two of the premier villains in comic-book movie history, let alone Spider-Man movies. Both of their performances are phenomenal, and probably the reason why it would appear that they are going to be the lead villains in No Way Home this week. Meanwhile, the villains in the Garfield movies just didn’t feel right. The CGI of Lizard felt off, blue Electro was a terrible idea, and the late inclusion of Green Goblin Harry was done too quickly. Clearly the worst set of Spidey villains so far… other than Spider-Man 3. In the MCU, Michael Keaton’s Vulture kills it and even Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio was great, although, again, their motivations stemmed from anger toward Tony Stark and not Peter Parker, so I docked some points.
The Love Interest!
1.) Emma Stone – Garfield movies
2.) Kirsten Dunst – Maguire trilogy
3.) Zendaya – MCU trilogy
This one is closer than the first two, but still pretty clear cut, in my opinion. Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy was fantastic. The chemistry with Garfield is near perfect, she plays an integral role in helping Spidey throughout the movies, and her performance simply stands out. She may not have been MJ, but she was the best of Peter’s love interests. When it comes to Kirsten Dunst versus Zendaya, it really comes down to screen time for me. Dunst is a pivotal character in the Maguire trilogy, while Zendaya plays a very minor role in Homecoming and then Peter suddenly develops feelings for her in Far From Home. Do I think this will change after No Way Home? Yes. But for now, I’m going with the OG Mary Jane.
Spider-Man
1.) Andrew Garfield
2.) Tom Holland
3.) Tobey Maguire
There can be a lot of opinions about these movies, but one aspect that has always been nailed is the casting of Spider-Man himself. This category was the hardest to judge. Each actor brought his own unique take to the character and each of them did and have done a great job. For me though, Andrew Garfield was the perfect Spider-Man. He brought the perfect combination of youth and maturity to the character, always delivering laughs, gasps or tears, depending on the situation. He’s also the best actor of the bunch, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. Second place was close, but the edge has to go to Tom over Tobey. While Tobey was fantastic and gave the world the character for the first time on the big screen, nostalgia isn’t enough to carry the vote. Tom Holland has been fantastic as Spider-Man, even more so during his other MCU appearances than in his own solo movies. I love all three of these guys, but man do I love watching the Garfield movies purely for his work as Peter Parker. Me at 1:16 AM watching The Amazing Spider-Man.
The Rankings
Taking all of that into account, here is my official Spider-Man rankings:
1.) Spider-Man 2
2.) Spider-Man: Homecoming
3.) Spider-Man
4.) Spider-Man: Far From Home
5.) The Amazing Spider-Man
6.) The Amazing Spider-Man 2
7.) Spider-Man 32
Not a lot to see here, although I’m sure some will jumble up the top four differently and others will say the Garfield movies are the bottom two. Spider-Man 3 is near unwatchable, so let’s just end that conversation now. Again, I think Garfield and Stone are so good together on screen that I could watch those movies every week. Despite that, the top four still beat them for the other factors listed. Who knows where No Way Home will land in these rankings, but nothing would make me happier than having it move into the top spot next week. Go see this movie, you won’t want to miss it.
Oh, and if you have any problems with my opinions, this is what I got for ya:
