Is he a bird? Is he a plane? Is this the wrong catchphrase? Yes it is – he’s a spider, and just like catching the eight-legged arachnids, it’s become tricky to know how to watch the Spider-Man movies in order if you’re looking for a complete run through his cinematic legacy.
Arguably the most popular superhero in the Marvel comics canon and MCU, Spider-Man has had several big screen outings over the past couple of decades. Starting off with director Sam Raimi’s seminal Spider-Man film starring Tobey Maguire, they were once pretty easy to follow – Spider-Man has a string of solo adventures, then the franchise gets rebooted with another actor in the suit, and so on. Release order was all that mattered.
But, just as it’s become difficult to keep up with how to watch the Marvel movies in order, so too are Spider-Man’s onscreen appearances beginning to webswing out of control.
Thanks to crossovers, reboots, spin-offs and multi-studio character deals, it’s actually pretty complicated when it comes to following the adventures of our favorite wallcrawler these days. As such, depending on how you enjoy your viewing sessions, and what you want to get from your time with your friendly neighbourhood super hero, you’ve got a few different options on how to approach a marathon session with Spidey.
So, if you’re looking for all the different ways to watch Spider-Man movies in order – with some semblance of sense to them, these are your options.
How to watch the Spider-Man movies in release order
So, first up, you’ve got the individual Spider-Man outings, in release order. That’s the Sam Raimi / Tobey Maguire trilogy that kicked off in 2002, then the two ‘Amazing’ films starring Andrew Garfield from 2012, and then the current man-Spider, Tom Holland and his solo MCU outings – Avengers films notwithstanding…
• Spider-Man (2002)
• Spider-Man 2 (2004)
• Spider-Man 3 (2007)
• The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
• Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
• Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
• Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
That would give you a great view of Spider-Man as he’s evolved on screen. But focussing on solely Spider-Man films wouldn’t give you the full story of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, as his films are so entwined with those of The Avengers too. So onto the next option!
Spider-Man and The Avengers in order
Modern Marvel movies, aka the Marvel Cinematic Universe, aka the MCU, are in part so successful and popular because they weave multiple characters together to create a much larger overall story. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films pour into this mixture and, thanks to the events of No Way Home, have ultimately drawn the Maguire and Garfield Spider-Men into this overarching MCU storyline, too.
So to get the full picture of how Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has grown into the hero we now know and love, you’ve got to watch at least a few more MCU films, too. You could argue you should watch all the MCU Marvel movies in order for the full experience, but we’ll leave that for another day. At the very least, these are the essential MCU films to include if you want the full Tom-Holland-as-Peter-Parker story, and how they also relate to the early Spider-folk.
- Spider-Man (2002)
- Spider-Man 2 (2004)
- Spider-Man 3 (2007)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Spider-Man movies in chronological order
OK, now we’re really getting into the nitty gritty of things, and where some comic book nerdery comes into play. Just as Spider-Man has existed in multiple forms on screen, so too has he in the Marvel comics he came from. There’s the ‘Ultimate’ universe Spider-Man, multiple different Earth versions (Earth-9500, Earth-982, etc etc), and the Earth-616 universe where he first appeared from the minds of creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
Earth-616 then is kind of seen as the ‘core’ Spider-Man experience that many of the films ultimately draw their inspiration from. It’s here where the classic arc was born – bitten by the radioactive spider, sees his beloved uncle Ben die, falls for Mary Jane, and so on. Different films take different elements of these early stories, tweaking them as they go along, but you can…roughly… chart a course through each variation of Spider-Man that more or less walks the steps laid out by this original comic incarnation.
For instance, Peter Parker was in love with Gwen Stacey before he fell for MJ, and so Andrew Garfield’s films, by that metric, come first. Both Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man crushes jump straight to Mary Jane – but Tom Holland’s films skip the origin story of spider-bite and uncle death, so Tobey Maguire’s films would come before them. It’s not a perfect science, but it’s an interesting alternative way to watch the films if you want to more closely mirror the comic book arcs. Probably not best suited to a first viewing though, but here we go!
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
- Spider-Man (2002)
- Spider-Man 2 (2004)
- Spider-Man 3 (2007)
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Spider-Man movies in order: the complete experience
And now, the ultimate combination of everything Spider-Man! Some background first – Spider-Man’s place in cinema is a confusing one, largely because of all the deals in place surrounding the character’s appearances on screen. Despite Disney owning Marvel, it’s actually Sony that holds the rights to the Spider-Man character, thanks to an ongoing deal with the Marvel company in its earlier iteration as an independent publisher. It’s why it took so long for Spider-Man to join the MCU, as it took years before an agreement was made to have the character appear in 2016’s Civil War and ongoing adventures thereafter.
What this has also allowed, however, is Sony to spin the character off in other directions not (at least immediately) connected to the MCU. And so you have the superb Into The Spider-Verse animated film (which you should 100% absolutely not miss) and its upcoming sequel, and a whole slew of related villain movies in the works, such as the Venom franchise. Though details aren’t yet clear, there’s a belief that, with Spider-Man’s MCU obligations apparently wrapped up, Sony is now looking to build out its own interconnected Spider-Man universe, pulling all these strands together.
Will it come to fruition? Who knows. But if you absolutely must spend every last drop of web fluid watching Spider-Man related films… this is it.
- Spider-Man (2002)
- Spider-Man 2 (2004)
- Spider-Man 3 (2007)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Venom (2018)
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
- Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
- Morbius (April 2022)
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One) (October 2022)
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part Two) (2023)
- Kraven The Hunter (2023)
- Into The Spider-Verse: Spider-Woman (TBC)
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