Spider-Man movies in order: from Tobey Maguire to Tom Holland (2023)

is it a bird is it a plane Is this the wrong slogan? Yes it is, it's a spider, and like catching eight-legged arachnids, it becomes difficult to know how to watch the Spider-Man movies in order if you're looking for a full rundown of his cinematic legacy.

Arguably the most popular superhero in the world.Wonderfulcanon and MCU comics, Spider-Man has had numerous big-screen outings over the past two decades. Starting with director Sam Raimi's seminal Spider-Man movies starring Tobey Maguire, they were once pretty easy to follow: Spider-Man has a series of solo adventures, then the franchise reboots with a different actor in the suit, and so on. Firing order was all that mattered.

But just as it has become difficult to keep up with the way of lookingMarvel movies in order, Spider-Man's on-screen appearances also begin to spiral out of control.

Thanks to crossovers, reboots, spin-offs and character offerings from various studios, it's actually quite difficult to follow the adventures of our favorite wall crawler these days. As such, depending on how you enjoy your viewing sessions and what you want to get out of your time with your friendly neighborhood superhero, you have a few different options for how to approach a marathon session with Spidey.

So if you're looking for all the different ways to watch the Spider-Man movies in order, with some sanity, these are your options.

It would give you a great view of Spider-Man as he evolves on screen. But focusing solely on the Spider-Man movies wouldn't give you the full story of Tom Holland's Peter Parker, as his movies are also heavily intertwined with The Avengers. So to the next opportunity!

Spider-Man and The Avengers in order

The modern Marvel movies, aka Marvel Cinematic Universe aka MCU, are so successful and popular in part because they weave multiple characters together to create a much larger overall story. Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies are being poured into this mix, and thanks to the events of No Way Home, they've finally drawn the Maguire and Garfield Spider-Men into this overarching MCU story as well.

So to get the full picture of how Tom Holland's Spider-Man became the hero we now know and love, you'll also need to watch at least a few more MCU movies. You can argue that you should lookatThe MCU Marvel movies for the full experience, but we'll save that for another day. At least these are the essential MCU movies to include if you want the full Tom-Holland-as-Peter-Parker story and how they tie in with early Spider-people as well.

• 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

Okay, now we're getting into the nitty gritty of things and how a little bit of the comic book nerd comes into the picture. Just as Spider-Man has existed in several forms on screen, so has he in the Marvel comics from which he comes. There is Spider-Man from the 'Ultimate' universe, several different versions of Earth (Earth-9500, Earth-982, etc. etc.) and the Earth-616 universe where he first emerged from the minds of the creators. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

So Earth-616 is seen as the "core" Spider-Man experience that many of the films ultimately draw inspiration from. This is where the classic arc was born: bitten by the radioactive spider, he watches his beloved Uncle Ben die, falls in love with Mary Jane, etc. Different movies take different elements from these early stories and adapt them as they go, but you can…just... charting a course through each variation of Spider-Man that more or less follows the steps laid out by this original comic incarnation.

For example, Peter Parker was in love with Gwen Stacey before he fell for MJ, so the Andrew Garfield movies, by that metric, come first. Both Tobey Maguire's and Tom Holland's Spider-Man romances jump straight to Mary Jane, but the Tom Holland films skip the origin story of the spider bite and the uncle's death, so the Tobey Maguire films would predate them. It's not a perfect science, but it's an interesting alternative way to watch the movies if you want to more closely mirror the arcs of the comics. Probably not the best suited for a first viewing though, but here we are!

• 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 the film is confused, largely because of all the deals in place surrounding the character's screen appearances. Although Disney owns Marvel, it actually issonywhich owns the rights to the Spider-Man character, thanks to an ongoing deal with the Marvel corporation in its previous iteration as an independent publisher. That's why it took Spider-Man so long to join the MCU, as it took years for a deal to be struck before the character appeared in 2016's Civil War and ongoing adventures thereafter.

What this has also allowed, however, is for Sony to spin the character off in other directions that aren't connected (at least not immediately) to the MCU. And then you have the excellent animated film Into The Spider-Verse (100% not to be missed) and its upcoming sequel, and a ton of related villain films on the way, like the Venom franchise. While the details are still unclear, it is believed that with Spider-Man's MCU commitments seemingly over, Sony is now looking to build its own interconnected Spider-Man universe that ties all of these threads together.

Will it come to anything? Who knows. But if you absolutely must spend every last drop of net fluid watching Spider-Man related movies... 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)
• Poison (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 1) (October 2022)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (segunda parte) (2023)
• Kraven the Hunter (2023)
• En el Spider-Verse: Spider-Woman (TBC)

• The best Marvel movies: Every MCU fi... RANKED!