Every Spider-Man Movie Ranked Worst To Best

4. Spider-Man (2002)

Without Bryan Singer's X-Men and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, there probably wouldn't be a current bubble for comic book movies to live in. Sure, there had been great comic book movies before they arrived at the turn of the millennium, but Joel Schumacher's Batman sequels had done a lot more damage to the genre than seems possible on reflection.

In that respect, what Raimi did with Spider-Man is nothing short of incredible - especially as he'd only had limited success outside of supernatural film-making to that date. Luckily, Sony saw enough in his genre film-making to give him a chance, and the results speak for themselves.

Tobey Maguire might not have been everyone's first choice to play Peter Parker, but he is excellent and beuatifully relatable and his balance with Willem Dafoe's horror-inspired Green Goblin is genius.

X-Men may have set the course for summer blockbuster comic book movies, but Spider-Man refined that approach with a more mature approach to action for the post-9/11 America: more brutal, sure, but balanced with a sense of New York pride that now feel synonymous with the series.