All 10 Spider-Man actors ranked from worst to best

7. Drake Bell

Bell suffers from the same flaws that subdued Sean Marquette in that his iteration of Spider-Man and Peter Parker ends up sounding more annoying and whiny than anything else.

Maybe it’s the fact that Bell himself just has a higher-pitched voice – which, as a singer, he can’t help it – but it makes the title character of Ultimate Spider-Man (the show) feel far more like we’re hearing Drake Parker than Peter Parker.

6. Tobey Maguire

I understand that a lot of us want to use our rose-tinted glasses to act like Tobey Maguire was the best live-action Spider-Man because he was the first in our childhood (some of us may recall him as the first actor they saw play Spider-Man period), but go back and watch some of those Raimi films. He’s not as good as you remember.

He’s not bad, mind you. Both he and the trilogy’s version of Peter Parker/Spider-Man are just victims of the material. Which, mind you, isn’t bad material, but the story is crafted very much in the vein of a soap opera.

As such, Maguire comes off as a tad bit melodramatic. In some scenes, the usually bombastic Spider-Man is reduced to a dry personality because the script doesn’t allow Maguire to showcase a personality. That goes double for his performance as Peter Parker. He’s never allowed the range to show personality until he goes Emo in the third Spidey film and, well, we know how that turned out.