Even the most avid of Spider-Man fans (aka myself) will admit that there are parts of the franchise that don’t hold up, including the majority of two of the films. However, even the good ones have some bad moments, or even just painfully stupid ones. Since I did a list of the best moments, I figured why not do a list of the worst ones?
Honorable Mentions: There were a few dumb moments that didn’t quite make the list, including the Lizard leaving a recorded message of a scientific experiment that tells Spider-Man exactly what his master plan is and where he’ll be executing it, and Electro being tortured by a scientist playing opera music. Another low point is the constant news commentary that interrupts the battle at the end of Spider-Man 3. Everything that Spider-Man 3 did with Venom deserves to be on this list, but there’s no one single moment to pin it down to, so he’ll be absent from this list.
10. Green Goblin’s defeat (Spider-Man)
The Green Goblin was one of Spider-Man’s best opponents, in the movies and in the comics. Throughout the first film, the Goblin seemed to be an even match for Spider-Man. At the end of the movie, Spider-Man was exhausted from holding a cable car filled with screaming children for a solid five minutes and the Goblin was able to beat him easily… until he said he was going to kill Mary Jane. Then, Spider-Man gets an extra boost of strength and takes him out in a couple of punches. It was a cliched and anti-climactic way to finish off such a great villain. The reason it doesn’t score lower is because his actual death (being impaled by his own glider) was actually good.
9. Peter’s Doctor Appointment (Spider-Man 2)
While most of the second film’s Spider-Man No More arc was really good, this scene wasn’t. In every iteration of the character that I’m aware of, Peter was obsessively careful with protecting his secret identity. The fact that he would risk his secret by telling a doctor about his experiences as Spider-Man by trying to pass if off as a dream (and then as a dream that his friend is having) is not only out of character but also painfully awkward. It also boils down to a doctor just saying, “maybe you shouldn’t be Spider-Man” so I’m not really sure that much was gained by this scene being included at all.
8. New Yorker Bridge Scene (Spider-Man)
The bridge scene from the first film was one of the movie’s high points… until this happened. With Spider-Man hanging from the bridge by a single web-line while he holds up the afore-mentioned cable car, and already injured, Green Goblin has him dead to rights. But then, a random pedestrian watching from the bridge hurls a broken piece of pipe at him from over a hundred feet away while the Goblin wasn’t even visible to him. Not only that, but a crowd of other pedestrians begin pelting him with other projectiles so that Spider-Man can save the kids, all while they utter painfully forced dialogue such as ‘You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.’ Also, for some reason, the Goblin decides not to fire a missile or throw a grenade to kill them or at least disperse them but just stands there and watches.
7. All the kids left behind in burning buildings (Spider-Man 1, 2 and Amazing Spider-Man)
The first time we saw a woman leave a literal baby behind in a burning building (about halfway through Spider-Man 1), it was bad enough. And then Peter Parker stumbles across a burning building in the second film, and hears that a kid got left behind on the second story. Even without his powers, he rushes in to save her. And then, to continue the trope into a new series, Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man finds a child trapped in a car that the Lizard threw over the side of a bridge (at least in this scene the father was probably just didn’t have enough time to get his son to safety before the Lizard struck but still). The nonsensically neglectful parents that had to have existed to put their children in these situations are completely unbelievable.
6. Peter Parker vs Harry Osborn round 2 (Spider-Man 3)
The first fight between Peter and Harry had some good things (but spoiled by the painfully obvious CGI body doubles utilized throughout the battle), but there’s nothing to like about their second fight. It’s got basically everything: bad choreography, bad dialogue and a terrible score that makes an otherwise serious scene feel like it’s being played for laughs. It was yet another moment in the movie’s second half that tried to ruin any of the few things the first half did right.
5. Airplane opening (The Amazing Spider-Man 2)
As dumb as the scenes above are, there are much worse. The painfully long opening sequence of the fifth installment ranks up there as one of the all-time worst. I personally didn’t have a problem with waiting about ten minutes to see Spider-Man (as I was okay with building anticipation to that) but the leaps of logic in this scene are too many to mention here (but include a dead airplane pilot keeping the plane flying straight for a solid five minutes, an ultra-modern laptop in a scene that takes place in the early 2000’s and Richard Parker turning into an action hero). Also, seeing a ten-minute sequence of his parents being killed in a plane crash caused by Oscorp added literally nothing new to the story.
4. The Rhino (Amazing Spider-Man 2)
Having Peter turn back into Spider-Man at the end of the fifth film wasn’t an inherently bad idea, especially since it was the last installment in that series. I didn’t want to leave the theatre on the scene of Peter standing over Gwen’s grave. This serves as an unusual ending, but not necessarily a bad one, with it basically saying that Peter is still going to be Spider-Man no matter how bad things get for him… Unfortunately, it’s spoiled by Paul Giamatti’s Rhino, who is somehow both horrifically underused but so terrible that the thirty seconds we have to hear him talk feels like too much. The Rhino isn’t one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, but he still deserved better. Much better.
3. Sandman is Uncle Ben’s Killer (Spider-Man 3)
The amount of nonsense that had to happen to create this plot twist is completely unbelievable. First of all, how was Dennis Caradine ever considered a suspect in this crime? Flint Marko accidentally shot Ben in the middle of the street and stood there while Caradine escaped. Anyone who saw Caradine drive off would’ve seen Marko standing there. Secondly, why did the police wait all this time to tell the Parkers about it? Thirdly, if Caradine’s escape wasn’t directly responsible for Ben’s death, should Peter even feel guilty about not stopping him anymore? Finally, even though Peter didn’t directly kill Caradine, doesn’t that still make him morally culpable for his death since he wasn’t actually a killer? The only reason this isn’t number 2 is because it does at least lead into the excellent Subway scene where Spider-Man has a chance to get his revenge against the Sandman.
2. Trainyard scene (Amazing Spider-Man 2)
This scene is probably the best example of why the fifth film failed: filled with so many side plots that made no sense. First of all, did we really need to go on such an epic quest just to learn that the spiders were coded to Richard Parker’s DNA and so could only give Peter the spider powers? Couldn’t we have just gotten that information in one or two scenes? Secondly, why would Richard Parker leave all the train tokens behind in his calculator? Thirdly, why would he ever set up the station so that the only way to raise the train was to insert a token and then punch the wall behind it? It’s a waste of time in a film that was already too long and it doesn’t even make sense.
1. Nightclub Scene (Spider-Man 3)
The only reason I didn’t include the street dance scene earlier in this film is because I didn’t want to waste two spots on Spider-Man dancing. That scene, however, was at least mildly amusing in at least an ironic sense (depending on how high your tolerance for something so stupid is). This scene, where Peter takes Gwen on a date to a nightclub where MJ works, only to bust out some painfully awkward dance moves that, for some reason, enrapture everyone else at the club, is one of the cringiest moments in any superhero film. There was so much potential to the idea of the Black Suit, and the third film wasted virtually all of it. No scene demonstrates that better than this one.
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