Who is Spider-man?

Peter Parker, a character created by Stan Lee in 1962, is a teenager who gets bitten by a radioactive spider. After being the indirect cause of his uncle’s death, he becomes the hero Spider-man. Ever since his first appearance in Marvel Comics’ Amazing Fantasy, he has gained popularity and many comics revolving around him have been made. He has even gotten animated TV shows about him along with multiple video games which explore his life as a hero.

Due to his popularity, it was only natural that he would have multiple movies made about him. The three most popular of these is the Sam Rami Spider-man trilogy starring Tobey Maguire, “The Amazing Spider-Man” movies starring Andrew Garfield , and the current MCU Spider-man movies starring Tom Holland. Each of them have many differences that differentiates each Spider-man as their own and not the exact same as the previous. However, who is the best Spider-man between the three?

The candidates 

The first one that comes to mind to many as the best Spider-man is Tom Holland’s version of the character shown in the MCU movies. Tom Holland’s portrayal of the character shows the strain of having to deal with his teenage life and his life as Spider-man.

The second that comes to mind as often as Tom’s is Tobey Maguire’s version of the character, who many people grew up with. His portrayal of the character showed the struggles in his personal life  due to his powers. This almost led to his Spider-man giving up the mantle of Spidey in order to fix his relationship with his friends.

Then the third one who gets brought up the most is Andrew Garfield’s version of the character, who before the release of the newest Spider-man movie “Spider-man: No Way Home” got the most hate. His portrayal of the character showed the relationship between Peter and his friends.

Their strengths and weaknesses

Each portrayal of Spider-mam has their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Andrew Garfield’s Spider-man had some of the best chemistry with his friends, which made Gwen’s death, caused by one of his best friends, hurt so badly. However if you were to compare his character’s tone from the first movie and second movie you would see a huge difference. In the first movie he knew when to crack jokes and how to get serious if the situation called for it. However in the second movie he almost led people to die because of him joking around. An example of this is in his first fight with Rhino: he let him crash and most likely kill a couple of people, which could have easily been prevented if he just tried to stop him. Which leaves Tobey and Tom.

Something that makes Holland a good Spider-man is how believable he is as a teenager being a superhero. Unlike the other two, he actually acts how a teenager acts which makes him relatable, while Maguire felt more like an adult than a teenager and Garfield tried too hard to be a cool teenager. However Maguire’s Spider-man, unlike Holland, was his own hero. He didn’t have the help of Stark Tech or the help of Doctor Strange to help him stop crime.

However something that makes Maguire better than Holland is the origin story or lack thereof. We see the tragedy that made Maguire’s Peter become Spider-man, his motivation, and how he got his power. However for Holland’s Peter we don’t see why, we are only told why. The most likely reason for this is because it would have been the third time Spider-man’s origin story would have been told. So they replaced his storyline with a Tony Stark storyline so that we had something new to see. However, I don’t think it is as strong as the Uncle Ben storyline, since he was his Uncle and Stark was kind of an outsider in his life.

There’s a reason why when we hear of Spider-man’s motivation we think about, “With great power, there must also come great responsibilities.”