 I didn't put Venom officially on this list, but if you want to know where that one stands, I'd put it at the end. That would be the last one. I own The Amazing Spider-Man 2 on Amazon Prime Video. Some may say, Adam, you have kids. You're doing parenting wrong. I would say to them, my son likes Spider-Man, so if he wants to watch Electro and some of the other stupid characters in that film go at it for two and a half hours, so be it. Of course, by that logic, people would say, well, what if he enjoys math? You're gonna let him do that. For the rest of his life? And I hear you. I hear, I hear and understand you. It was a bad purchase. It's a tough watch. But I do like some of the action. I like that slow-motion CG work going on. I also like the GoPro-style shots they did while he's web-swinging. It gives a very visceral feel to it all. It really does make you feel like you're swinging around the city as him for a little while, and it's something the MCU Spider-Man doesn't even bother attempting. Up next is The Amazing Spider-Man. Oh, well, you're putting this above Spider-Man 3, Adam, this is crazy. The show's called Hot Takes for a reason. The Amazing Spider-Man gives us a decent Andrew Garfield Spider-Man. It gives us a solid Emma Stone Gwen Stacy. It gives us a very nice Aunt May with a Sally Field. I wasn't feeling the Lizard Man. It felt like a retread of the Green Goblin, and I really wasn't into the tone, which was a lot more Batman-esque, mostly night fights, a slick city. It just felt really uninspired after the Raimi trilogy. The music isn't there at all. There's not a lot of standout scenes outside of him, like on a web in a sewer, which is cool. It's a cool shot. And there it is, Spider-Man 3, everybody's favorite to make fun of. It's a disaster. It's a glorious disaster. Chock full of some amazing moments, some fantastic cinematography, and then we have that 70s show, Eric Foreman, Topher Grace as Venom. For all of maybe eight minutes, it's miserable. It's just terrible. Sandman's cool. The effects are cool, but they forget about him halfway through the script, and then he comes back in, like, the final five minutes, too. It's just like, this movie just is all over the place. Emo Peter Parker, he's made fun of to death. The best thing that's come from Spider-Man 3 are the animated gifs. It's not all bad. You could see a good movie in this. There's probably a fan edit, probably by Topher Grace, that removes all of his own scenes and just focuses on the Sandman and the Green Goblin. Although that pipe scene is cool, where Spider-Man slam it down the pipes and ringing them all and messing with Venom's head. It's a glorious disaster. This is going to seem far down in the list for a lot of people. They might have it at number one, but Spider-Man Far From Home is pretty much in the middle for me. I enjoyed Far From Home. It's really funny. It's got a great cast. Tom Holland is just as lovable and likeable as he was in the first. There is some decent action, although it's not the most exciting thing to watch him fight drones for five minutes in the air. Fighting bad guys with guns is just cooler to me. Coincidentally enough, the scene from the trailer where he fights bad guys with guns is not in the film. Jake Gyllenhaal is always fantastic though and here is no exception. He's great as Mysterio. There's some cool twists and turns. You kind of see it coming pretty much right away. You can guess what's going to happen pretty early on. I do like how the MCU now is just this big layered cake they can pull chunks out of and reuse later and say, hey, you remember that from the earlier film? That's coming back here in a bigger way. My problem with this film and with Homecoming is it's a bit too light for me. It's a personal problem. I know that. You know, if you're looking for a Ferris Bueller's Day off type, this will fit the bill. It's a great comedy. It's a buddy road trip comedy type of affair. I just like Spider-Man a little bit more dramatic, a little bit more bombastic. And yeah, I didn't read the comic. This is just me as a movie goer who liked the Sam Raimi films. Who wasn't ever really a big Spider-Man guy prior to those. And it's almost trolling level in terms of how it goes out of its way to be very different than those Raimi films. Whether it's releasing the identity to an important character or just the way they handle smaller moments. In a Raimi film it would be done with a huge orchestral soundtrack in the background. The camera would be whipping all over the place. And in Homecoming and Far From Home it would just be a single shot. The person's like, yeah, yeah, I know that. I was trying to not spoil things, but it's in the trailer. So if you avoided all trailers and for some reason watching this before seeing the movie, that's on you. But in the trailer they reveal that MJ finds out that he's Spider-Man. It's right there. They care so little about such a dramatic moment that they just put it in the trailer. And it's a cliche, I know, but big reveals are big reveals for a reason. You want to build them up. You keep that identity secret for a movie or two, not just because the character is, you know, protecting those around him, but also so that the audience gets to revel in the astonishing looks on people's faces when they find out the truth. Spider-Man Homecoming isn't the first time we're introduced to Tomahawk and Spider-Man. That was in Civil War. Although this was the first attempt to really make us fall in love with this character, see why he puts on the suit and goes to school and does all the things he needs to. They do an admirable job here. For the most part this is a very fun, lofty affair where he's just attending school, going through boys being boys' situations. Things do get a bit more personal and intense when it comes to the villain of the picture, Michael Keaton as Vulture. I've said this before in multiple videos in the past because YouTube's not anything if not redundant. I also like the Raimi movies and even the amazing Spider-Man movies when it comes to his powers. I know he didn't normally have organic webbing. That was something Raimi brought to the table. I like that. I like the idea of him having more abilities outside of just having super strength and spidey sense, one of which wasn't even really used at all in Homecoming. It's assumed he has spidey sense, but he does a pretty poor job of using it properly, which was another bizarre hang-up I had when it came too far from home. They kind of do the Spider-Man 2 route there also where he's having a hard time using his tingle ability. The problem is they never really showcased it in the other films. I mean, not to the level where it was a cool power. You know, people online and what in passing are like, oh, he had it. Yeah, yeah, it's just not in your face. Well, I want it in my face. It's a cool power. You also have the Tony mentor relationship. You got some great behind-the-scenes footage where he's filming some of the stuff. The jokes are, you know, obviously more modern than that of a Raimi film. So yeah, it's got plenty of good on its side, and I do really genuinely like most of the cast, if not everybody. Still the number one spot on a lot of people's lists for good reason, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2. And I think a big reason for that and one I was just talking about was the reveal at the end of that film to Mary Jane that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Kirsten Dunst no doubt doesn't get a ton of opportunity to show her acting range in these three films. But when she gets that opportunity, whew, she shines. The expression on her face in the final moments of the film when she looks over and sees her boy Toby McGuire holding up that steel is nothing short of brilliant. You heard me. It is an amazing scene, one of the best moments in a Spider-Man film to date. Not only that, but we got Dr Octavius, who steals the spotlight as one of the best villains in the franchise. Insane action sequences, a musical score that is out of this world, and some genuine conflict that for some reason people on the internet I noticed have failed to understand fully. Time can be a fickle, cruel mistress. It's odd how now we look at Spider-Man 2, not we some people, look at Spider-Man 2 and say, How did he lose his powers again? Because he was mopey and depressed? Yeah, that's a dumb way to summarize it. Let's play back the tape, shall we? He previously had just murdered his best friend's dad. He's working a dead-end job while trying to pay his bills and go to college. He's at the most challenging and critical times of a young person's life. He's got girl problems, which all of us can relate to in some way or the other, either by an actual girlfriend or your mother whose basement you're living in. And I feel like I'm forgetting one thing. Oh yeah, his uncle died in his arms. So yeah, he's a bit bummed out and his powers maybe aren't working the best. In short, Spider-Man 2's awesome. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man is the movie that sold me on Spider-Man. As I've stated earlier, I wasn't into the character. I didn't really know much about him at all. So when I saw the movie, I went in pretty low expectations. I'd already got my X-Men film, you know, just a few months before that. So I was set. I was set for life. If I had to go, now would be the time. It was clear that Sony had invested a lot of money into this, a much bigger budget than X-Men and it was on display. The camera work was unreal, watching him zip through the city with ease. The characters were cartoonishly fun like J. Jonah Jameson or Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin. Has it aged? Of course. The actors in this film look like that of Saved by the Bell, meaning 30 year olds playing what is supposed to be 16 or 17 year olds. One thing that is timeless though is story. It has a feel to it, a tone that you just don't see in other movies still. Much like a Ghostbusters or an Indiana Jones or the Matrix or Kill Bill, there's a stylistic vision to it. And those Raimi films have that. Homecoming on the other hand or the amazing Spider-Man, they don't. They feel very manufactured. Although there is one scene that I forgot to mention in Far From Home where Mysterio gives Spider-Man a whole bunch of weird visions, that is cool. That's some Doctor Strange level stuff and I wanted to see like an hour of that alone. To be a broken record, I'm all about that spectacle. I'm all about that big blockbuster. And same Raimi Spider-Man, that provides it. I'm not like sold on this pic for number one. Into the Spider-Verse is an amazing movie. I really like it. I also really like the first two Spider-Man's. So like the top three is kind of a three way interchangeable tie for me. This one like caught me off guard. I did not think it was going to be near as good as it was. Especially when the trailer is, you know, we're so herky jerky because of the animation style being so different. I just didn't think this was going to be that good. And I was completely blown away by it. Miles is a great lead. Plus you have all the callbacks to the other Spider-Man movies, which once again, it kind of makes sense that I put this in like a three way tie. Because without the Raimi films especially, you wouldn't have some of these tips of the hat that make this film so fun. They wouldn't be able to play off of it. Of course, they go further. They go back to early issues of the comics. They even bring in, you know, Spider-Ham and all that stuff. I think they said they're making it into the Spider-Verse too, even though the first one didn't do like as big of numbers as they would have liked. So I am very optimistic about that. So far, Sony, I mean, oddly enough, is doing well for the most part with Spider-Man. Into the Spider-Verse almost kind of makes me mad at Disney too, where Disney has basically abandoned traditional hand-drawn animation. Into the Spider-Verse is like, look, you can do some really cool stuff now way better than you could have 30 years ago, or even 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. And we're doing it. So Disney should be looking at this and going, you know what, maybe we don't need to just keep remaking all of our classics. Instead, we can make new classics with the tried and true formula, but up for the modern times. This is a stunning film full of top-tier animation, a great cast, a heartwarming story, incredible music, fantastic action. You know what I sold myself on it. It is the number one Spider-Man for me. Well, that's my list. Thanks for watching. Hopefully you agreed with it. If not, it is what it is. Feel free to subscribe if you like the content. I do have other things on this channel, including my flagship show, Movie Feuds, where I pit movies head-to-head. The one I have upcoming is Spider-Man 2 versus the amazing Spider-Man 2 versus, you guessed it, Far From Home. It's a sequel feud. Alright, take care.