The streaming home for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and several of Fox’s X-Men movies) may be Disney+. Still, plenty of superhero flicks aren’t available to stream on the Mouse House’s signature platform. In fact, three of the most well-made and influential superhero movies ever are currently unavailable to stream on all the major platforms, including Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Hulu.
In case you couldn’t have guessed it, we’re talking about director Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. Despite being overwhelmingly adored by comic book fans, the three films have long been difficult for consumers to stream easily. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case, as all three installments in Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy are now officially available to stream for free on Crackle.
Coming off the recent release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, there’s no better time than now to revisit the films that paved the way for the creation of the MCU and Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. Of course, Raimi’s Spider-Man movies aren’t just worth checking out because of their lasting influence on the superhero genre. They also happen to be three of the most thrilling and lovingly crafted blockbusters of the 21st century so far.
When Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films were initially made, they were cutting-edge examples of what the modern-day superhero movie could be. Twenty years after the release of the trilogy’s first installment, it’s genuinely awe-inspiring to see just how well the films themselves hold up. Most of the visual effects in the trilogy look just as good today as they did back in the early 2000s, and the action sequences scattered throughout the three films are just as thrilling to watch.
That’s especially true of the trilogy’s two greatest setpieces: Spidey’s showdown with the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) at the end of 2002’s Spider-Man, and his train fight with Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) in 2004’s Spider-Man 2. Both sequences remain some of the most engaging action scenes that the superhero genre has ever seen. In particular, Spider-Man 2’s train sequence still stands tall as one of the most well-edited, paced, and staged fight scenes in comic book movie history.
But more than anything, what makes Raimi’s Spider-Man films so impressive is how they manage to feel massive and small at the same time. Their setpieces don’t take place on giant CGI monuments or across entire cities but in crumbling houses, broken down buildings, and unfinished high-rises. The plots of the three films are all firmly rooted in the emotions of the trilogy’s central characters, which is something that many superhero movies nowadays often fail to achieve.
The superhero genre has progressed quite a bit in the years since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy came to an unexpected end in 2007, but that doesn’t mean the films that came before the cinematic universe boom of the 2010s aren’t worth revisiting.
The opposite is true when it comes to the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man movies of the 2000s. The films themselves are just as good as they’ve always been. But it’s their ability to avoid many of the problems that so many modern superhero movies fall victim to that makes them seem even more impressive now than they did 20 years ago.
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy is available to stream now on Crackle.
