Every live-action Spider-Man movie outfit ranked from worst to best

Alas, the acclaimed Frank Reynolds Spider-Man costume has yet to appear in any Spider-Man movie

Spider-Man's got one of the best superhero costumes around. Naturally, the various motion pictures that have brought Spidey to life, including this past weekend's box office juggernaut Spider-Man: Brand New Day.  But what makes a great live-action Spider-Man suit? What separates the best from the rest when it comes to these garbs? Well folks, that's what I'm here to explore. Below, I've ranked the 13 different live-action Spider-Man outfits littering nearly 50 years of this character's cinematic exploits. Not all of them are superb, goodness knows, but each does reflect distinctive creative trajectories and the larger cultural trends of the movies and eras (respectively) they inhabited. Plus, the best of these make it clear why Spider-Man's superhero outfit is hard to beat. 

Behold, the ranking of every live-action Spider-Man costume from worst to best, starting with the nadir of this bunch...

13. The Amazing Spider-Man Outfit

Reflecting the initial ambitions to make this the Batman Begins of Spider-Man movies, Andrew Garfield wore a grimmer Spidey costume for The Amazing Spider-Man. The red and blue colors were deeper while a darker golden hue filled up his eyes. Another fun fact about this outfit: it looks terrible. The balance between the red and blue (the latter hue dominates the attire) is repellently off. The chest Spider emblem looks too big. The textures all over the suit seem like they’d be unpleasant to touch. Then there’s the eyes, which now look like grim voids rather than bright pupils. Even the ways the eyes are more oval shaped and slanting downward makes it look like Spidey’s permanently glaring at people. Just a really bad costume all around, a shocking outcome given how well the second Amazing Spider-Man did with these garbs.

12. Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man Suit

Weirdest thing about the Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man suit (which he wore in the 70s CBS show The Amazing Spider-Man, which had certain episodes smushed together into theatrical films for the international markets) is that its so baggy. It looks so excessively roomy, especially around the face. I keep thinking he's going to trip in that thing when he starts running. Those eyes also don't look right, they're took darkly colored. The webbing and textures on this one don't look bad, but generally, this is about as shoddy of a superhero costume as you'd expect from a late 70s CBS show.

11. Spider-Man: Far From Home Climactic Suit

Peter Parker can look like and do nearly anything. He can be a person of color. He can be queer. He could be working as a DJ. The one thing I’m a stickler for, though, is that, unless he’s coated in the Symbiote, Peter Parker shouldn’t wear black. The classic Spidey suit is vibrant. Parker’s cinema-based superhero garbs should lean into that. Frustratingly, Spider-Man: Far From Home’s finale gives Parker a new super-suit replacing the blue parts of his red costume with dark black hues. The red and black don’t look good together and looking so much like the traditional Spider-Man outfit just makes one yearn for more blues. Don’t skimp on the colors!

10. The Night Monkey Outfit

Weirdly, out of Far From Home’s two black Spider-suits, the “Night Monkey” one Peter Parker dons is my favorite. That’s probably because it’s at least trying to do its own thing (since it’s a “stealth” outfit) rather than being a less vibrant standard Spider-Man costume. The traditional Spider-Man eyes functioning like high-tech removable specs and the use of fingerless gloves are especially welcome distinctive touches. Still, I like my Spidey costumes vibrant, so this one, while competently realized, doesn’t really scratch any fun itches for me. 

9. No Way Home's Black/Golden Magic Suit

Another black-colored Spider-Man outfit!! Why are the MCU movies (particularly the two sequels helmed by Jon Watts) so obsessed with draining all the color away from my boy? This Spider-Man: No Way Home outfit is a black suit with golden webbing and an ability to control the magic superpowers of Doctor Strange. The contrast between black and gold is at least cooler looking than black and red from Far from Home’s outfit. Those magical doo-dads on Parker's left wrist are nifty-looking. Still, again, I like vibrancy and no amount of golden lines can disguise that this is yet another darkly-colored Spider-Man costume utilized in a nighttime fight scene.

8. Berlin Airport Spider-Man costume

The outfit Spidey wears to the Berlin airport skirmish in Captain America: Civil War is largely the same one seen in Spider-Man: Homecoming, so I won’t linger too long on it. However, Civil War’s Spidey costume was added via CG in post-production (Holland wore a different Spider-Man costume on-set). It looks fine in execution, but it doesn’t have the immediacy or tactility of his Homecoming garbs. On one wistful note, remember how good Tom Holland was right from the start in Civil War? Man, the moment he walked on-screen or the first shot of Spidey crawling around on walls while chasing Falcon and Winter Soldier, I knew we were in good hands with this kid.

7. Iron Spider

I don’t mind the Iron Spider outfit necessarily on its own merits, especially as a visual signifier of Peter Parker working alongside The Avengers. Great threats require a more formidable outfit. Why’d he have to keep wearing it after Infinity War and Endgame though? When he’s swinging around New York and dealing with purse snatchers or The Scorpion, the high-tech Iron Suit feels comically excessive. Not only that, but the more time it’s on screen, the more obvious its visual faults, like its subdued colors or its obviously digital nature, become. It was also a bad idea to utilize this costume during No Way Home nighttime finale. In these confines, the Iron Spider costume just looked too much like the night sky. The Iron Spider costume is decent on first glance, but its problems grew increasingly apparent the more the MCU milked it.

6. Symbiote Suit from Spider-Man 3

There’s not much to say about this one, since it’s just Tobey Maguire’s standard Spider-Man outfit but colored black. However, the virtues of that classic costume (which we’ll get to shortly) endure here. The black coloring looks good for this specific comic book storyline Sam Raimi and company were telling. I like how the white Spider-Man eyes pop against the black suit coloring (unfortunately it emphasizes the frustrating lack of color contrast in Tom Holland’s darker Spidey suits).

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Spider-Suit

For his first solo MCU adventure in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Tom Holland's Spider-Man got a proper supersuit (courtesy of Tony Stark in-universe) harkening back to his earliest comic book appearances. The excessive lines on his hips and legs, though (which weren't in those Amazing Fantasy issues Spidey debuted in), make this suit a bit too busy for its own good. On the other hand, the colors pop, the textures look strong, and the black lines around his goggles especially look excellent.

4. The homemade MCU Spider-Suit

If there’s a costume on this list that could be considered reasonably underrated, it’s the homemade Spider-Suit Peter Parker rocks in Civil War and Homecoming. It’s a cute outfit littered with amusing and endearing details related to Parker using ramshackle items to simulate what will eventually become the famous Spider-Man outfit. Those goggles are especially quite charming-looking. This suit feels truly homemade, a feat underscoring the characters underdog and humble origins. This one deserves a little more love, especially since it gives cash-strapped Spider-Man cosplayers an easy outfit to put together.

3. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man outfit

My earliest memories of Spider-Man as a character was seeing this Spider-Man teaser poster at my local Cinemark. This close-up of the Spider-suit Tobey Maguire would wear across these three movies was seared forever into my brain and instilled in me just how cool Spidey could look in art. Even beyond that nostalgia, though, this costume rocks. The bright red and blue colors look perfect, especially as extensions of the vibrancy of Sam Raimi's stylized vision of New York City. I love how the webbing looks (it has these sharp edges that make it look like an actual spider web), while the blue on the hips and legs isn't afraid to just be blue with none of the distracting lines in Parker’s Homecoming outfit. Its awesomeness should be inherently obvious, but let it be said again: Tobey Maguire’s Spider-suit is a masterwork.

2. That Amazing Spider-Man 2 costume

Sometimes, bad movies with a capital B can feature one absolutely inspired creative element. The Brothers Grimsby is a dismal comedy, but it does have that one amusing joke involving Sacha Baron Cohen’s character actsing like his bald son is named Luke after his Leukemia. Nobody likes Cocktail but how could anyone dislike the Beach Boys ditty "Kokomo?" Motherless Brooklyn is a total snooze of a period piece movie, except for Gugu Mbatha-Raw's soaring performance that totally could’ve inhabited an excellent 40s movie.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 continued this tradition. Make no mistake, this is an abysmal movie in every respect, from the creepy Spider-stalking to an excessively crowded screenplay to even Hans Zimmer’s overwhelmingly busy score. In the middle of so much incompetency, though, this feature did deliver the best pre-2026 Spider-Man movie outfit ever. This installment had Andrew Garfield strutting around and saving the day in a costume whose colors were just luscious to look at, especially that its bright red hue. In contrast the golden goggles on the first Amazing Spider-Man outfit, this sequel gave Spidey bright white pupils that popped off the screen. Director Marc Webb shooting this installment in 35mm film made the terrific textures and colors on this costume really soar. Amazing Spider-Man 2 got so much wrong (why would you hire Emma Stone as a character whose only purpose is to die?) but when it came to its Spider-Man costume, it gets an A+.

1. Spider-Man Brand New Day’s Spidey-suit

I swear to God, this isn’t recency bias talking. The Spider-Man: Brand New Day Spidey-suit is a terrific feat combining all the best. Finally, Tom Holland walks around in a Spider-Man costume confident enough to not lather lines and extraneous busy-ness on the blue portions of his costume. The dark black coloring plaguing his Far From Home attire is also absent. Instead, the red and blue colors are fantastically vibrant, the web lines look like actual Spider-webs just like the Tobey Maguire outfit, while the black lenses (always the best part of the MCU Spidey costumes) look better and more expressive than ever.

Plus, this outfit really allows for breathable and flexible movement. Even just its textures and surfaces are as pleasing to the eye. Everything about Brand New Day’s Spider-Man suit is just right. Tom Holland didn’t need an Iron Spider or magic-enhanced suit to look perfect as Spider-Man. Something classical yet so well made did the trick divinely.