10. Marc Webb
Sam Raimi played an interesting game with his Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007), putting in his own unique elements of film making that made him a virtuoso director. His wonderful talent of creating films that pop in your face with its visual style, like the first Spider Man film, really displayed Raimi's talent as a director and a great choice for bringing Spider-Man to life. That trend continued into Spider-Man 2, where his storytelling skills were put to the test and his visual style was accordingly well showcased yet again. But it was at Spider Man 3 where he dropped the ball, relying more on an egregious amount of special effects over story, character development, and clever visual antics. For a capper of the trilogy, it didn't quite settle real well for the fans or for Raimi's promising track record of continuing the web slinger's story in a fourth film. Enter 2011 and no sign of a fourth Spider-Man film, so Sony decides to reboot the whole series with a new story, new Spider-Man, and a new director; and they chose Marc Webb, first time director with his feature film 500 Days of Summer. Sony chose a guy who only had one film under his belt to handle a Spider Man reboot, and they couldn't have made a smarter decision. With The Amazing Spider-Man released in 2012, it recognized Marc Webb as not only a great predecessor to Sam Raimi, but a director who has his own twist with unique visual storytelling. While Raimi stuck with a traditional comic book feel, Webb stripped it bare to show a more direct and darker side of Spider Man's story, or shall we say Peter Parker's story. He took away a bit of the goofiness of Raimi's trilogy and went for a more proper Spider Man story, with not so much of an untold story as it was a re-imagined look at Peter Parker's journey towards becoming Spider Man. With The Amazing Spider-Man 2 due next May, fans are widely anticipating a bigger and better sequel from Webb, even if he's still quite new to the film making world. There's a lot riding on his shoulders this time around and from all the footage, production stills, and big news drops pertaining to certain aspects of the film, he does indeed have quite the film to tell. But what makes me incredibly confident in its release is Marc Webb's vision for Spider Man; in The Amazing Spider-Man, he told one hell of a great Spider-Man story that was an honest-to-God origin story. It's more Peter Parker's story than anything else, with Andrew Garfield delivering quite possibly the best iteration of Peter Parker/Spider-Man to date. His unique blend of witty humor, litheness, fragility, and humanity really sold the film to a lot of fans, and I was personally blown away at Garfield's representation. Because Marc Webb realized he needed a more sophisticated Peter Parker, reworking the origin was a great choice for him as a predecessor to Sam Raimi. His vision for having Spider-Man relying more on technology rather than organic web shooters is an instant plus in my book, and I'll leave it there.