How To Watch Every Spider-Man Movie In Order

These are exciting times for Spider-Man fans. "No Way Home" is opening up the MCU to the multiverse, heralding the arrival of characters from previous live-action "Spider-Man" movies, like Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus from the Sam Raimi films.

The excitement doesn't end there. After years of being kept apart, the recently released "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" finally confirmed that Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and Venom have entered the same reality as Tom Holland's Peter Parker, and the two mortal enemies from the comics are set on an epic collision course that will shake up superhero movies in a manner never seen before.

With so many exciting updates to Spidey's live-action mythology, now is a good time to look back on the webbed wall-crawler's history on the big screen, all of which is soon going to be tied up into one massive, universe-breaching reality. Here's the order in which you should watch all previous live-action "Spider-Man" movies (and one very important animated film) to prepare yourself for the multiverse-spanning madness of what comes after "Spider-Man: No Way Home."

Warning — there are spoilers ahead.

As good as the first "Spider-Man" was, you could tell the movie was still trying to find itself in terms of its overall tone and narrative aspirations. With its sequel, "Spider-Man 2," the makers of the franchise finally found that near-perfect combination of story, themes, and cast of characters to create one of the greatest superhero movies of all time.

After a few years of shouldering the responsibility of being Spider-Man, Peter Parker is starting to feel fed up with being the guy who must constantly sacrifice his personal time and his relationships with his loved ones in order to anonymously save the day. Following a bunch of problems hitting him all at once, including his powers fading away, Peter has finally had enough, and he vows he's done with being Spider-Man. 

Unfortunately, that's when the city chooses to welcome its newest supervillain, Alfred Molina's fan-favorite take on Doctor Otto Octavius, aka Doc Ock. When Mary Jane's life is threatened, Peter has no choice but to once again don the mask and swing into action. Thanks to some truly breath-taking action sequences involving a speeding train and the genuinely moving relationship between Peter and Octavius, "Spider-Man 2" set the bar against which all future "Spider-Man" movies would be measured.   

At this point, before we get into the reboots and the retellings and the false starts that the next few years of "Spider-Man" movies would become mired in, it's useful to look into an animated movie that came years later in 2018, "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," which turned out to be an important portent of things to come. 

"Into the Spider-Verse" tells the story of regular teen Miles Morales, who lives in the same city as Spider-Man. A series of events grants Miles powers similar to Spidey while also killing his city's webbed superhero and opening up a gateway to other dimensions, each with its own version of Spider-Man. This allows Miles to meet and train under an older Peter Parker who's hinted to be an aged version of the character seen in Sam Raimi's films.

The plot introduces viewers to the concept of the multiverse, where infinite versions of Spider-Man exist in separate realities that can interact under the right circumstances. After watching "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," viewers can be primed to dive into the other live-action "Spider-Man" movies starring new actors playing different versions of the most iconic Spider-Man of all, Peter Parker, from different realities within the overarching multiverse.    

You'd think Sony would've learned its lesson about the dangers of stuffing too many villains and plotlines into a single movie after the negative reception to "Spider-Man 3." But then came 2014's "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," and it was pretty much a retread of the same issues. 

The film sees most of the original cast from the first movie returning. Peter Parker is now in a relationship with Gwen Stacy. He also apparently has a best friend in Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), who needs Spider-Man's blood to cure his deadly illness. Why doesn't Peter just donate some blood to save his best friend? Because that would end the movie too quickly, and Harry would have no impetus to turn into the Green Goblin.

There's also another main villain in the movie in the form of Jamie Foxx's Electro. The actor does what he can with the role — one he'd reprise later on in the franchise — but its a thankless task when the writing for the character is so one-note. It's telling that the most memorable scene in the entire movie isn't one involving Spidey battling his villains but the death of Gwen Stacy.      

Now comes Spider-Man's first full-fledged adventure in the MCU. Set shortly after the events of "Captain America: Civil War," Peter Parker's life has forever been changed after his secret mission alongside Iron Man and his allies. Peter considers himself an honorary Avenger, and he's eager to go on more adventures with Iron Man's crew, finding it difficult to go back to being a local do-gooder. 

Still, he has no choice but to stay grounded for now and get used to the new suit Tony Stark has set Peter up with. There are also high school problems to deal with, as well as the arrival of new supervillain Adrian Toomes, aka the Vulture (Michael Keaton). Toomes was an ordinary blue-collar worker when he found his work being overtaken by a superhero-run agency. He then decided that the only way to survive in this new world was by getting super abilities himself. 

"Spider-Man: Homecoming" is one of the better entries in the hero's live-action filmography while never quite managing to reach the heights of the best of the best. There is also some criticism from fans regarding Peter's overreliance on Tony Stark's advice and technological gifts. Still, the movie is a solid entry in Spidey's journey within the larger MCU.

We now move to a distant, seemingly unrelated part of the multiverse where one of Spider-Man's most popular villains is preparing to make his own debut as a troubled anti-hero. Since Sony had the rights to a bunch of Spider-Man-related characters from the comics, they decided to take a shot at creating their own cinematic universe, and the first installment in the planned series was 2018's "Venom." 

Starring Tom Hardy in the lead as journalist Eddie Brock, the movie takes several liberties from the source material to divorce Venom's origins from "Spider-Man" mythology. In the movie, an exploratory space vessel returns to Earth harboring a number of alien creatures called "symbiotes." While investigating the shady dealings of the company that's studying the symbiotes, Eddie unwittingly bonds with one that calls itself "Venom."

Thanks to its new connection to the symbiote, Eddie comes to possess monstrous superpowers and a new alien voice in his head that begs him to let it eat people. The movie works as a strange "buddy cop" action comedy thanks mostly to Hardy's central performance, even if the overall story and the rest of the cast leave much to be desired. 

We're jumping one final time from one unconnected part of the multiverse to another, from the MCU to Sony's Spider-Man Universe. After the breakout success of 2018's "Venom," a sequel was pretty much guaranteed. In "Venom: Let There Be Carnage," Eddie Brock has been living with the alien symbiote in his head for some time now, and the two have come to some sort of an understanding.

That's when sociopathic serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) gets thrown into the mix, after coming into contact with an offspring of the "Venom" symbiote. Imbued with his very own symbiote, Kasady transforms into the supervillain Carnage, a creature that even Venom fears. Eddie and Venom must now work together to grapple with a host of new symbiote-related issues while still trying to find their own common ground.

Even though the film is mostly self-contained, the post-credits scene changes everything for its own franchise, as well as the MCU. Some sort of magic trickery occurs that transports Venom into the same reality as Tom Holland's Spider-Man, and it's strongly implied that the two iconic enemies from the comics are now set for an epic showdown that will shake up the entire multiverse.

We finally arrive at the "wild card" of the live-action "Spider-Man"-related movies that have been churned out with such regularity for the last two decades. On the surface, "Morbius" is like 2018's "Venom," in that it's being billed as a stand-alone movie that will attempt to take a popular villain from "Spider-Man" comics — Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), the Living Vampire — and turn him into an anti-hero capable of headlining his own franchise. 

But the trailer for "Morbius" has hinted at many significant connections to the larger world of the live-action "Spider-Man" movies. In one shot, we see graffiti of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man in the background. We also see Morbius interacting with Michael Keaton's MCU character, Adrian Toomes. It seems clear that "Morbius" is set firmly within the larger Marvel multiverse instead of being its own thing.

Recently, while talking about the extent of his involvement in the post-credits scene for "Venom: Let There Be Carnage," MCU showrunner Kevin Feige told The Hollywood Reporter, "There was a lot of coordination [between Marvel Studios and Sony] — and if you don't know all the coordination yet, I'm not going to be the one to tell you." It seems likely that we'll be seeing the results of that coordination in "Morbius" next as the new Spider-Man cinematic multiverse continues to gather steam.