Spider-Man in film - What is the best?

You know what? I didn’t feel like writing two reviews this week, and I had a weird Spider-Man craving. So instead, I’m going to write a long-winded discussion on the 8 movies of one of my favourite superheroes and rank them at the end. These will be music, the Spider-Suit, the VFX, direction, villains and the character of Spider-Man. Let’s get to it!

Music

Spider-Man, Spider-Man

Does whatever a spider can…

Music is so important to Spider-Man. It’s always playing in the background, and you always find yourself humming some sort of music while reading the comics or watching the movie/TV series. So it makes sense to start here.

The first two Spider-Man’s from 2002 and 2004 were scored by Danny Elfman, who went for a charming, bombastic score with a ton of heroism and heart behind it. Spider-Man 2, especially, had that more sinister and emotional undertone for Doctor Octopus and that more emotional core overall, as well as a fantastic moment involving the song “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”. That specific scene is awesome in many ways, but it’s the music which really makes it. It definitely has the best music out of all of the Spider-Man films.

Spider-Man 3 went in a bit of a stranger direction, with Christopher Young taking over but still retaining Elfman’s themes. It’s not quite as good as the first two, because there are some really bizarre moments like the jazzy music playing as Spider-Man struts down the street (man, if you haven’t seen these movies, you’re gonna be lost reading this). But the emotional core of the music, as well as some of the action chords, are still really well made.

Then we move to The Amazing Spider-Man. I actually really enjoy the score for the FIRST Amazing Spider-Man, which was done by the great James Horner (rest in peace). Swapping out some of the traditional heroic brass for a more intriguing and mysterious score with a touch of epic, it played right into the more realistic and contemplative goal that The Amazing Spider-Man was aiming for.

The 2nd one…is a mixed bag, to say the least.

When I looked on the iMDB for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I was shocked to see that there were SIX composers credited for the main score (as well as 7 others for “additional music” a bit further down). And it really shows…or hears, or however you would say it for auditory things.

You have this excellent main theme tune for Spider-Man himself, a thematically more heroic and confident tune which is very catchy and easy to hum. But then for Electro, there’s this stupid, overblown dubstep music which is just so f*cking hilarious to listen to in isolation. And everything else is elevator music.

Moving onto the MCU Spider-Man. I legitimately cannot remember any of the music in the MCU Spider-Man movies, which may be worse than remembering the bad pieces from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (although it still isn’t). Even the songs in the background, not just the compositions, are relatively forgettable. It’s a real shame, given that the composer for both of them, Michael Giacchino, was the guy behind such movies as The Incredibles, Up and many other great movies.

Finally, Into the Spider-Verse. If I were to consider just the song selection from Into the Spider-Verse, it would be an A+ movie (“Sunflower”, in particular, is such a great song). The actual score, by Daniel Pemberton, is this electronic, unstable, messy score which perfectly fits the lead character of Miles Morales. It’s distorted at the beginning, but eventually gives way to a more confident and unique musical score which ties in perfectly thematically.

1. Spider-Man 2

2. Into the Spider-Verse

3. Spider-Man

4. The Amazing Spider-Man

5. Spider-Man 3

6. Spider-Man: Far from Home

7. Spider-Man: Homecoming

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Suit

Spider-Man’s suit is easily what defines the character the most. The bright colours show Spider-Man as a symbol of hope and joy to the world, and the big eyes show his openness and sensory skill. Yet it also hints at his developing nature, a nimbleness and uncertainty that older superheroes don’t have.

The first three movies all had suits designed by Oscar-winner James Acheson, with help from Gary Jones and Katina Le Kerr on 2 and 3 respectively. In all 3 movies, the suit is fantastic. Big eyes, bright and colourful, both smooth and realistic-looking, it looked great both in action and when Tobey Maguire was wearing it with the mask off.

The Amazing Spider-Man suit, on the other hand, is pretty bad in comparison. I get what designer Kym Barrett (Aquaman, The Matrix) was going for – they were trying to make a more grounded and realistic Spider-Man movie, and so they needed a more practical suit. But Spider-Man is an inherently silly character, and shouldn’t really be tied down by realistic design. And that realistic design is ridiculously small eyes, a bizarrely faded/dark colour scheme and a texture that, to quote YouTube’s second-most subscribed film critic, “looks like a basketball”. To me, it’s more of an expensive Halloween costume.

Thankfully, the sequel ditched that suit in favour of Deborah Lynn Scott (Titanic, Back to the Future), who gave us a bright, vibrant suit that was much more appealing to look at than the basketball that was the previous film. With big eyes and popping colours, it looked just like the comics, and it’s also just really great as a costume overall.

I’m actually not a fan of the MCU Spider-Man suits, designed by Louise Frogley and Anna B. Sheppard. When I see them, I think they are just way too smooth, as well as looking too computer generated. And they’re not computer-generated, I think. Compared to the previous movies, which were densely textured and had all of these bumps and ridges which made it feel real and lived-in (even the basketball one), the MCU ones look like video game characters.

Into the Spider-Verse has a ton of suits, and they’re all so fantastic. Every single one is so detailed and characterful for whoever is wearing them, especially the ones worn by Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen in the movie. They don’t look so computer-generated as the MCU ones, nor do they look cheap or uninspired. They are easily my favourite of the bunch.

1. Into the Spider-Verse

2. Spider-Man 2

3. Spider-Man 3

4. Spider-Man

5. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

6. Spider-Man: Far from Home

7. Spider-Man: Homecoming

8. The Amazing Spider-Man

VFX

Moving onto VFX, the vast majority of VFX for all Spider-Man films were done by Sony Pictures Imageworks, as Sony owns Spider-Man as a property and so could just cheaply do it with their own VFX house.

The first three all had their fair share of both computer effects and genuine practical stuntwork. It amazes me watching them again just how much practical, physical effects are utilised in those first three movies, with some being so complex it’s difficult to tell if they’re computer generated or not (such as Doctor Octopus’s arms). There are also so many great digital effects moments, such as the “Birth of Sandman” scene in Spider-Man 3 or the entire train sequence from Spider-Man 2 (which is the best in the terms of VFX, overall).

But there are also some truly horrific moments of CGI that came for moments that didn’t really need it. Spider-Man 3 has some awful moments that come from the CGI camera just spinning and flipping around the place like a lunatic bird, robbing the audience of any sense of grounding or realism and therefore tension. Meanwhile, the first Spider-Man has moments of digital effects which are so bad that I almost burst out laughing while re-watching. It honestly at points looks like a YouTube fan film.

The Amazing Spider-Man films are a lot less imaginative with their CGI use. There’s a digital smear to a lot of the proceedings, with much less practicality in the effects work. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but when The Amazing Spider-Man is trying to be a much more realistic take than the Raimi films before it, it’s kind of the complete antithesis of your goal. There are some great CGI moments, such as the effects used for creating Electro in the second film, but there are also many issues with the use of green screen and compositing, looking a bit like Photoshop at points.

MCU Spider-Man has all of the might and money of Disney thrown at him, so it’s safe to say that the effects work throughout both movies is of a very high quality. Far from Home, in particular, has an amazing sequence where Peter experiences a holographic nightmare world filled with a constant flow of new locations and camera uses. However, I must again bring up my problems with the suit and how smooth it looks, because it can sometimes cause the scene around it to look far too computer-generated.

Finally, Into the Spider-Verse’s glitchy, erratic visual effects are so beautiful to look at in every fashion imaginable. I still prefer the practical effects of Spider-Man 2, but the constant shift, the colour, and the creativity of each and every effect in Into the Spider-Verse will remain close to my heart.

1. Spider-Man 2

2. Into the Spider-Verse

3. Spider-Man: Far from Home

4. Spider-Man: Homecoming

5. Spider-Man 3

6. Spider-Man

7. The Amazing Spider-Man

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Direction

How are these movies from a filmmaking standpoint? Are shots beautiful, does everything flow well, does it respect the audience? How do they go?

Sam Raimi did an excellent job directing the first two Spider-Man movies. He kept a tone which mixed drama and fantasy really well, mainly by using a heavily practical mindset to action combined with bright, eye-punching production design. His approach to action was always brutal and impactful, with dust flying off with every punch and an excellent approach to sound design. And when it came to genuine scenes of emotion, it was always shot so well and so brilliantly acted that it was awesome to watch.

Raimi also did the third Spider-Man movie, which is definitely not as good. Now some of it may come down to the studio interference that Spider-Man 3 is famous for, but still, there should have been some paring down of the exorbitant length of this movie. The practical mindset that infected the first wo movies has been replaced with Alex Proyas whirling CGI camera crap, meaning that many scenes now have some terrible compositing and bizarrely off models. There are still some really good scenes, like the birth of Sandman, but definitely not to the quality of the first two.

Now to Amazing. Marc Webb was plucked from his debut film 500 Days of Summer and was told “Here’s $200 million, a massive franchise and responsibility for getting all of these product placements in the movie”. And unfortunately, Webb wasn’t an indie director with significant visual flair or style like Taika Waititi, more dependent on the strong story and acting that are present in his other movies. As a result, both of the Amazing Spider-Man films are dominated by greys, blacks and blues, making them relatively uninteresting visually when combined with the heavily digital sheen applied to everything on screen. The first movie had better direction of actors and a little more restraint, but the second one…just no.

Jon Watts directed the two MCU Spider-Man movies, having built a former career on YouTube and low-budget thriller movies. His approach with cinematographers Salvatore Totino and Matthew J. Lloyd is not trying to replicate the visual design of the comics, but rather the underlying tone – that of Spider-Man being a normal kid with issues who just so happens to be a superhero. As a result, the movies are very visually ordinary, which enhances the low-scale comedic effect that they were going for really well. When it comes to action, Watts works really hard and tries to keep it as bright as possible compared to other MCU movies like Captain Marvel. The action’s not particularly inventive, but it’s simple and effective, which is the perfect tone for the movies.

Into the Spider-Verse easily boasts the best direction on this list. A combination of three directors – Bob Perschietti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman – seems daunting at first, as you’d think that all three would have conflicting visions over what to do. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen, with what I think is Perschietti taking storyboarding, Ramsey taking animation and Rothman taking the comedy and storytelling, and all coalescing wonderfully. Into the Spider-Verse is a beautiful, visceral film with so many subtle directorial decisions going on under the surface, alongside pitch-perfect comic timing and action which barely any movie has really replicated so well. I love the direction of Into the Spider-Verse so damn much.

1. Into the Spider-Verse

2. Spider-Man 2

3. Spider-Man

4. Spider-Man: Far from Home

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming

6. Spider-Man 3

7. The Amazing Spider-Man

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Villains

“A story is only as good as its villains”. I don’t know who said it, but it's a good starter

2002’s Spider-Man kicked off with an excellent portrayal of Green Goblin by none other than 4-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe. Dafoe was indeed creepy and animated enough for the part, but it was the voice and the emotional depth which saw the comic book character step from the page onto the film. The Goblin’s suit and glider look a bit cheap in comparison to the wealth of Dafoe’s performance, but they hardly detract when Goblin is flying around blowing stuff up with pumpkin bombs.

Then Spider-Man 2 topped even that with Alfred Molina’s legitimately fantastic portrayal of Doctor Octopus. Raimi and Molina made the excellent choice of highly focusing on the Doctor’s motives and emotions in the story, showing how a human’s pursuit of power and discovery can corrupt so deeply. The good Doctor’s arms, too, are some of the best practical effects ever put to film, stretching and squirming around so realistically especially in the film’s hospital sequence, where the arms turn the movie into straight-up horror territory. Molina’s mixture of degrading sanity and stately focus was also just so compelling to watch, even without the advantage of giant spider arms.

Enough people have discussed Spider-Man 3’s villain problems, so I won’t go too much into discussion about the studio inserting in Venom or that there are too many villains. The problem is that none of them are really intimidating. Venom’s usage in the story, along with Topher Grace’s heavily misguided portrayal, gives him little depth or reaction from the audience. James Franco as the new Green Goblin is also bizarrely guided, with his resolution at the end of the movie creating this huge plot-hole of why his character never learned the vital information that made him hate Spider-Man. Sandman should have been the main villain of the movie, as his story is legitimately interesting and Thomas Haden Church is actually trying pretty hard to make Sandman an interesting character.

Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2 both fell right off the deep end when it came to villains, mainly because there was so little motive attached to them. The first one had Rhys Ifans as a giant CGI Lizard trying to turn everybody else into giant CGI lizards, with the only motive ever given for his rampage being 1 line – “All of those souls, lost and alone, Peter! I can save them! I can cure them!”. Apparently, there were deleted scenes with Lizard’s son, which gave a bit more motivation, but those don’t count.

The second one probably had the worst movie villains in any movie in 2014. I’m not joking, I’m serious. Okay, there’s that king from The Legend of Hercules, but you get the idea.

First, you have Paul Giamatti, giving one of the worst performances by a great actor I have ever seen as this over-the-top Russian heavy who gets a Rhino suit in which he’s copy-and-pasted like a Photoshop model. Second, you have an awfully directed Dane DeHaan, who alternates between sleep…walking…speech and then his almost hilarious attempts at being scary as Green Goblin. And last and most, Jamie Foxx, in a simply inexplicable casting (he’s not even the same race as Electro in the comics, which I’m shocked no-one has ever talked about before). I’m fairly certain that when someone unironically writes the line “It’s my birthday, and it’s time to light up my candles!” as an intimidating line, you fire that guy and exhume the guy who wrote the Raimi films.

Michael Keaton in Spider-Man: Homecoming played right into the tone that director Watts was going for – extraordinary guy in an ordinary world. With well-set motivations, a pretty cool suit design and a range of sidekicks including TWO versions of the Shocker, it all fell on Michael Keaton’s performance, and he delivers in spades. His soft-spoken and soft-built dad look betrays Keaton’s furious intensity and his look of willingness to unleash horrific violence at a moment’s notice. What a great casting choice.

Spider-Man: Far from Home is not as good in the villain stakes as Homecoming, as it’s a bit more predictable if you’ve read a single comic involving Mysterio. Even so, Jake Gyllenhaal is clearly relishing every moment on screen, in a dual role as both a weary dimension hopper and a diva tech designer. Gyllenhaal’s clear enthusiasm, combined with Mysterio’s awesome visual design and some epic set-pieces involving Mysterio’s manipulation of the world, make him a pretty good, if not great, villain.

Finally, Into the Spider-Verse goes for an ensemble of villains, led by Liev Schreiber’s Kingpin and Kathryn Hahn’s Doctor Octopus, with Tombstone and Scorpion also showing up. Just from a visual standpoint, all of these villains are excellent, both comic-accurate and suitably intimidating. But it’s the strong voice performances, especially from Schreiber as an unstable, violent Kingpin, that really puts these villains on the map. The only problem is that, aside from Kingpin, the only motivation the other three have is “money”. Otherwise, they’re tearing dimensional holes for nothing.

1. Spider-Man 2

2. Spider-Man

3. Spider-Man: Homecoming

4. Into the Spider-Verse

5. Spider-Man: Far from Home

6. Spider-Man 3

7. The Amazing Spider-Man

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Character of Spider-Man

The character of Spider-Man is the most integral part of the movie – is he likeable and does he reflect the comics?

If you haven’t read Stan Lee’s autobiography Amazing Fantastic Incredible (which I highly recommend, by the way, if you’re a Marvel fan), when you get to the bit on Spider-Man, you find that Lee rejected early designs of Spider-Man because he looked too much like a superhero. He intended Spider-Man to be a bit nervous, a bit more human and connected than the Homo Superior found wandering in his other stories. That is something which, to at least a mild an extent, all of these movies have nailed.

The Raimi trilogy found an excellent first Spider-Man in the form of Tobey Maguire, who perfectly endowed Peter as a nervous, awkward teenager who was suddenly thrust upon with this great responsibility and power. His development flows so well throughout the first two films, and you really feel for him considering how grounded and relatable he is as a character. The second one also has this great section where Peter just loses all of his powers, and through his adjustment to his normal life, you see how all of the sacrifices that saving these people’s lives have caused are weighing down on Peter. It’s an amazing bit of character development.

However, there is one thing I hate about the first Spider-Man specifically. It’s one line, said as an insult by Peter to a big male wrestler he fights, but holy shit, it does not hold up 18 years later;

“Nice costume. Did your husband give that to you?”

My skin, it literally crawled.

Then there was Spider-Man 3. There are many defences for the scenes where “emo” Peter Parker comes out, and I understand them. But there’s still the fact that in execution – in actual presentation and styling – it’s more likely to come off as stupid and turn the audience off. It’s the curse of writing that you cannot always communicate your message, but you have to work around that with the director and actor.

With The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2, Andrew Garfield took a really bizarre turn for Peter Parker, playing every scene as though he had a massive hangover and utterly confusing the hell out of the audience. Add to that Peter’s generally unsympathetic behaviour throughout – being an asshole at a convenience store, taking creeper photos and acting like a stoned moron – and I find his portrayal so bizarre, and a bit unlikeable as Peter.

But as Spider-Man specifically, Garfield shines. He’s quippy and a bit awkwardly lame, and he provides a lot of physicality to the role as required. There’s also this one great moment in the second Amazing where he goes into an alley to find a crying bullied kid, fixes his broken science project, and walks off with him as though it’s a scene lifted straight from the comics. If he were given a more assured direction as Peter, or some of the more assholish scenes were cut or edited, Garfield could be a great Spider-Man.

For the MCU movies, Tom Holland was perfect. He was the exact combination of awkward, hormonal and courageous as his comic-book counterpart, and he’s so clearly loving every moment of the movie. His reactions with his sidekick Ned as well as MJ are the perfect encapsulation of what a modern Spider-Man film should be, and although he comes off better in Homecoming, I love the storyline he progresses along in Far from Home, one of acceptance of grief and coming to terms with yourself. I am confident that Stan Lee passed knowing that for now, his beloved creation was in safe hands.

But Into the Spider-Verse beats all of them by having SIX SPIDER-PEOPLE – Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn and Nicolas Cage – all fighting for the right to swing free or die hard. They smash every single scene they are in, with Moore perfectly capturing that tone of awkwardness and courage that makes Spider-Man so compelling. Combine that with Johnson’s bleary cynicism, Steinfeld’s enthusiastic grace, Mulaney’s hammy and boisterious delivery, Glenn’s beloved anime tribute and Nicolas Cage in a role so perfect it’s amazing, and you have the best lead ensemble in any Spider-Man movie ever.

1. Into the Spider-Verse

2. Spider-Man 2

3. Spider-Man: Homecoming

4. Spider-Man: Far from Home

5. Spider-Man

6. The Amazing Spider-Man

7. Spider-Man 3

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Overall ranking of movies

1. Into the Spider-Verse

2. Spider-Man 2

3. Spider-Man

4. Spider-Man: Far from Home

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming

6. Spider-Man 3

7. The Amazing Spider-Man

8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

What would your rankings be, guys? Leave your answers in the comments below.