Every Sony Spider-Man Villain Movie Ranked From Worst to Best

Marvel’s 1999 decision to sell the “Spider-Man” film rights to Sony Pictures for just $7 million remains one of the most consequential bargains in modern Hollywood. The deal gave Sony extraordinary leverage: the studio could collaborate with Marvel Studios on the Tom Holland-led films while also building its own separate slate of Spider-Man-adjacent projects. But as the old lesson goes, great power does not always lead to responsible choices. For every dazzling triumph like “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” there has been a “Morbius” lurking nearby, often born from Sony’s attempts to turn Spider-Man villains and side characters into franchise leads.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, or SSU, was facing a steep climb from the beginning — especially since its films largely centered on Spider-Man characters without Spider-Man himself. The franchise’s original mouthful of a name, Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, was mocked so widely that even its acronym, SPUMC, became part of the joke. After plans to expand Andrew Garfield’s “Amazing Spider-Man” continuity collapsed, Sony pushed ahead anyway with a string of villain-focused movies that often felt stranded between eras: too late for the pre-MCU superhero boom, and too disconnected to thrive in the modern one.

The SSU has not disappeared entirely, with the “Spider-Noir” television series still keeping the banner technically alive. Even so, the critical and commercial disappointment of 2024’s “Kraven the Hunter” appears to have been the breaking point for Sony’s big-screen spin-off strategy. With six Spider-Man spin-off movies now released under the SSU umbrella, it is worth looking back at the lineup and ranking which of these uneven experiments managed to leave the strongest impression.

Many SSU entries at least stumble into some degree of entertainment, but “Kraven the Hunter” feels dead on arrival. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, returning to Marvel territory after playing Quicksilver in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” stars as Sergei “Kraven” Kravinoff, reimagined here as an animal-loving vigilante who targets international criminals. After a lion attack in his youth leaves him near death, Kraven is treated with a mysterious healing serum that grants him superhuman, animal-like abilities. His discovery that his crime lord father Nikolai, played by Russell Crowe, killed the lion helps shape his violent antihero mission. From there, the movie drags him through a lifeless plot involving his former friend Calypso (Ariana DeBose), his younger brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), and mercenary Aleksei Sytsevich, also known as the Rhino (Alessandro Nivola).

The problem is that this version of Kraven has been stripped of the most distinctive element of his comic book identity: a man who takes pleasure in hunting people for sport. Without that edge, he becomes a generic action-movie figure with little personality to hold the film together. Taylor-Johnson is asked to carry several emotional threads at once, but they are trapped inside a sluggish movie that rarely seems invested in any of them. Nivola’s Rhino, meanwhile, is so awkwardly conceived as a human-animal hybrid that it makes Paul Giamatti’s much-mocked turn in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” seem oddly inspired by comparison.

Between the glaring ADR, muddy digital environments, and a cast that often appears visibly checked out, J.C. Chandor’s “Kraven the Hunter” stands as one of the weakest Marvel-branded films ever released.

The success of the first two “Venom” movies suggested Sony might be able to mine Marvel’s stranger monsters for viable spin-offs, but “Morbius” quickly drained that momentum. The film already faced the challenge of selling casual audiences on a relatively obscure comic book character, and the casting of Jared Leto — who has faced allegations of sexual misconduct — made the project even more controversial. Leto plays Dr. Michael Morbius, a brilliant biochemist suffering from a rare blood disease and devoting his life to finding a cure. His work on an artificial blood substitute pushes him toward a risky experiment involving the genes of Costa Rican vampire bats, which, predictably, transforms him into a super-powered, bloodthirsty vampire.

“Morbius” became a meme almost as soon as its first trailer arrived, and the finished film did little to fight back against the ridicule. It is a sluggish, oddly joyless comic book movie, weighed down by poor pacing and a strangely flat lead performance. For all the inherent theatricality of playing a superpowered vampire, Leto rarely appears to be enjoying himself. Jared Harris, Adria Arjona, and Tyrese Gibson are left adrift in a story that gives them little to do. The one performer who briefly injects life into the movie is Matt Smith as Michael’s adoptive brother Milo, also known as Lucien, whose bitterness over being denied the cure for their shared disease leads him to take it for himself. His gleefully unhinged vampire moments are nearly enough to make the ordeal worthwhile.

Almost is the key word here.

If there’s a success story to be found in the SSU, it’s Venom earning his own trilogy. “Venom: The Last Dance” is by far the weakest of the three Tom Hardy Venom movies, stuck in a tug-of-war between three movies fighting for relevancy. In the wake of their blink-and-you-miss-it multiversal vacation in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Eddie Brock (Hardy) and symbiote Venom (also Hardy) return to resume their lives as fugitives. Among those trying to capture the pair is Imperium, a top secret government program tasked with seizing other symbiotes that have fallen to Earth. There’s also the matter of extraterrestrial hunters called Xenophages that have been tasked by symbiote creator Knull (Andy Serkis) to retrieve the host-reviving codex within Venom, which possess the capabilities to set him free. 

It all becomes way too much for one movie. “The Last Dance” is at its best when Eddie and his alien boyfriend are left alone to partake in their road-trip comedy, with one of the highlights being a shared dance with beloved shopkeeper Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu). Unfortunately, any burst of energy comes to a grinding halt whenever Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, and their dull crew of government scientists crash the party. To make matters worse, the film’s overstuffed screenplay has to serve the whims of a boring space antagonist in a chair who leaves no impact. At least “The Last Dance” ends on a touching note of finality that honors Hardy’s commitment to the role.

Making with a Venom movie without Spider-Man felt like a miscalculation from just about every angle. But while the Ruben Fleischer-directed supervillain spin-off has its share of flaws, the concept is ultimately saved by Tom Hardy’s insane dual performance. Here, Eddie Brock is a San Francisco-based investigative journalist looking into the shady practices of a bio-engineering company. His prying, however, leads to both him losing his job and engagement to Anne (Michelle Williams). Months later, Eddie receives a tip that leads him to discover that the company is using people as human lab rats to experiment with alien symbiotes. One going by the name Venom forcibly latches itself onto Eddie with the intent of sowing chaos, but is convinced to use their shared tether against bad people.

“Venom” suffers from a lot of generic superhero movie tropes, namely with Riz Ahmed’s Carlton Drake transforming into a boring grey reflection of the central antihero. But the film soars whenever Hardy take the wheel. There’s such an immediately lovable chaos to his deep-throated Venom making Eddie perform these death-defying feats, and then poking fun of him for not being able to handle them. Even the symbiote’s physical appearance, with its inky black tendrils, razor sharp teeth, and protracted tongue, straddles the line of intimidating and goofy that works in its favor. It’s no wonder the Eddie-Venom coupling sustained the SSU for as long as it did.

The thing with movies is that you’ll often come across some that can’t be easily deemed good or bad and belong in a weird middle ground, as is the case with “Madame Web.” After New York paramedic Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) nearly drowns, she experiences psychic premonitions of future events. One day on the subway, she envisions a man killing three teenage girls, Anya (Isabela Merced), Julia (Sydney Sweeney), and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor). That man turns out to be wealthy explorer  Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who believes the teens will kill him after becoming super-powered Spider Women. Through her abilities to see into the future and never open the Pepsi cans she has in her hands, Cassy attempts to keep them alive.

“Madame Web” is a uniquely memorable disaster that doesn’t make a lick of sense, features some of the worst ADR in any 21st century tentpole, and teases you with a superhero team that never gets their powers by the end. In spite of everything, it’s a consistently baffling cult classic that ends up being a campy good time.  A large part of that is due to Johnson’s incredible performance that doubles as professional disassociation. She knows exactly what she’s in, and every choice she makes, such as watching “A Christmas Carol” in the middle of the summer, is worthy of academic study. It’s hard to predict the future, but there’s no doubt this serves as one of the crown jewels of the SSU.

All the lulls in the first “Venom” are nowhere to be found in the deeply entertaining sequel “Let There Be Carnage.” It fulfills the promise of an MCU alternative that’s unconcerned with ties to a broader universe, but rather, indulging in its own infectious manic energy. In it, Eddie Brock has been granted access to a rare interview with Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), an imprisoned redheaded serial killer. After Eddie and Venom deduce where he buried his victims, Cletus is sentenced to death by lethal injection, but not before getting a nibble in. This results in Cletus inadvertently bonding with a meaner red symbiote named Carnage who helps him and his institutionalized girlfriend Frances aka Shriek (Naomie Harris) escape.

The Carnage mayhem is incredibly fun on account of Harrelson’s over-the-top performance. But what makes “Let There Be Carnage” great is the evolution of Eddie and Venom. The film acts as a stealth relationship comedy between a sad journalist and his lonely alien boyfriend who just wants to be seen. Venom even has a “coming out” declaration at a neon-drenched rave surrounded by a bunch of queer folks — something you’ll never see in a Marvel Studios production. 

“Let There Be Carnage” isn’t without well-earned drama though, putting Eddie and Venom in a place where their ultimate reconciliation comes with consequences. Director Andy Serkis’ refreshingly earnest take in emulating those late ’90s comic book offshoots unquestionably puts it at the top of the SSU.