Every Marvel Comic Book Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

10. Spider-Man

Considering how his trilogy ended, Sam Raimi's start to the Spider-Man franchise was a stunning achievement, particularly since his only real forays outside of supernatural film-making had been something of a mixed bag. But Raimi had proven in his horror film-making that he knew genre-film-making as much as he knew characterisation.

The decision to give him the opportunity to stretch his film-making vocabulary reaped hugely entertaining results, and his horror background actually helped with his character build for Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin.

While X-Men opened the floodgates for summer blockbuster comic book movies, Spider-Man refined the model with a new, more mature approach to action for the post-9/11 world. It was more brutal, but balanced with a New York parochial pride that added a cathartic string.

Tobey Maguire is excellent as the relatable geek hero, setting a superhero archetype in the process and forming a likeable foundation for Raimi's traditionalist approach to the material that focused smartly on the core of the character. And while Dafoe's Goblin looks silly, the performance is still one of the best in the entire genre.