With the friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man swinging back into cinemas, there’s no better time to revisit his big-screen history, which is older than you might realize. The current Peter Parker, Tom Holland, is the third actor to embody the character in 20 years, and that’s just in live action. However, the ‘70s and ‘80s saw four theatrical features spinning out of TV shows in the U.S. and Japan. This makes any list of Spidey movies incomplete without the low-budget ambitions of yesteryear.
Between those small-screen offshoots, the big studio features, and some eye-popping animation, Spider-Man’s filmic history has run the gamut, from landmark superhero sagas, to outright disasters that demanded major reboots. Like Web-head’s comic history, it’s all over the place, though you’ll likely find fans and apologists for pretty much every entry. There’s a reason Spider-Man (Peter Parker, or otherwise) has been such an enduring presence since his debut on the page, back in 1962. So if nothing else, this list is a nice reminder how many attempts there have been to capitalize on his pop culture iconography.
