It has been twenty years since Tobey Maguire first caught that tray of cafeteria food, and in that time, Hollywood has done what Hollywood does best: milked the radioactive spider for every last drop of web-fluid. We are now somehow living in a timeline where there are ten mainline Spider-Man movies. Not ten good ones. Ten of them.
The Fan Service Nuke The multiverse opens. Tobey is back. Andrew is back. They hug. They point at each other. Doc Ock says "Hello, Peter." Willem Dafoe punches a wall. This movie has no plot, only nostalgia. And it works. You will weep when the three Spider-Men swing together. You will cheer when Matt Murdock catches a brick. This is theme park cinema, and it’s glorious.
Here’s to Spider-Man 11 —may the web never break. Spiderman 1-10
From cheesy 2000s montages to multiversal collapses, Peter Parker has aged from a nerd to a skater to a child soldier to a cartoon. The lesson? With great power comes great responsibility... and great box office returns.
The Funeral Electro is a dubstep villain. Jamie Foxx is blue. The Green Goblin looks like a rejected Harry Potter house elf. And then… that ending . The death of Gwen Stacy is so devastating that the studio literally had to cancel the franchise out of sheer guilt. Andrew Garfield cries, and so do we. It has been twenty years since Tobey Maguire
The European Vacation Peter goes to Europe. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Mysterio, a man who uses drone illusions to fake being a hero. It’s a massive step down from Homecoming , featuring a love triangle so awkward it hurts. But the hallucination sequence where zombie Iron Man punches Peter? Genuine nightmare fuel.
As we prepare for the soft-reboot Spider-Man 11: Home Before Dark , let’s look back at the beautiful, baffling journey of Peter Parker 1 through 10. Ten of them
The Perfect One Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock. The train sequence. Peter literally stopping a runaway train with his bare hands and teenage angst. This is the Godfather Part II of superhero movies. If you don’t cry when Peter reveals his mask to Aunt May, you are legally dead inside.