All 6 Spider-Man movies, ranked from worst to best

1. Spider-Man 2

After a two-year hiatus, Spider-Man 2, opened in the summer of 2004 and became the third highest-grossing film of that year. It went on to win an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing. It also won and was nominated for numerous Saturn Awards among others including Best Fantasy Film, Best Actor and Best Director.

Apart from the awards and nominations, this is what Raimi managed to do, which the likes of Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 failed to do, which was not only succeed in scale, but also build on the unique tone of its predecessor and expand on those elements to new avenues and horizons.

The second chapter in the Raimi trilogy has Parker (Maguire) struggle to balance his double life while courting the heart of Mary Jane (Dunst), who is about to be engaged to the son of J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons), John (David Gillies), while Harry Osborn (Franco) is now the head of his father’s company, Oscorp, and has grown a vendetta against Spider-Man.

After a fusion reactor accident fused Dr. Otto Octavius’ (Alfred Molina) mechanical arms to his body, he descends to criminal acts to complete his research project.

Next: Marvel Cinematic Universe: Ranking the 20 greatest superheroes

Spider-Man 2 had a really strong performance from Maguire, Dunst and Molina. Raimi used a lot of his signature visual language; such as fast moving objects in point of view, extreme close-ups among other cues. The arc, though at times daunting at first, had a great pay off from start to finish.