Spider-Man Movie Villains Ranked from Worst to Best

Riffing on the Ultimate Spider-Man comics’ version of the Rhino, wherein Aleksei Sytsevich is turned into a man entombed in a giant body of robotic armor, Giamatti’s Rhino feels like a leftover from the Joel Schumacher era of superhero movies where every scene was played 568 times too big, and there was no such thing as good dialogue. Truthfully, this interpretation of the Rhino character is awful, but I’m sure the paycheck was nice. – David Crow 

10. The Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan)

In the confusing, jumbled mess that is The Amazing Spider-Man 2, perhaps no character–well, with the exception of Paul Giamatti’s Rhino–is given shabbier treatment than Harry Osborn. Played by Dane DeHaan, a moody actor at best and a comatose one at his worst, Harry speeds through an arc in perhaps 15 minutes of screen time that previously took James Franco three movies to complete.

DeHaan’s Osborn begins his journey by coming home after a decade away at boarding school to be at the deathbed of his father Norman (Chris Cooper). He then ends the movie buzzing around on a glider as a grinning psychopath mutated by an injection of magic spider-blood. His “sort of Green Goblin” seems unnecessarily jammed into the movie thanks to Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach’s obsession with creating an instant Spider-verse, and as a result the character–this is supposed to be Peter Parker’s best friend!–makes no impression whatsoever. Plus his costume and makeup suck, and that’s in a movie featuring Jamie Foxx’s Electro get-up. Another reason we’re grateful this particular version of the franchise collapsed. – Don Kaye

9. Electro (Jamie Foxx)

Another winner from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Jamie Foxx’s twitchy and shallow interpretation of Max Dillon, aka Electro, also felt like it was out of a Schumacher Batman movie. More specifically, it’s a direct knockoff at the screenplay level of Jim Carrey’s Riddler in Batman Forever (1995). But whereas that Batman movie was intended to be camp, Foxx is playing a nebbish loser who relies on all the visual shorthand of an SNL sketch—he has a comb over and two-inch thick glasses while singing happy birthday to himself—in a movie where Andrew Garfield’s Spidey is supposed to be mopey and lovelorn, and whose girlfriend is then murdered in front of his eyes at the end of the picture.

The tonal dissonance between these elements verge on outright disaster, but even in more seasoned directorial hands, it’s hard to imagine Foxx’s Electro going much higher on the list. As originally conceived, he’s a walking set of clichés who is then turned into a neon-blue eyesore. Some of the digital effects of Spider-Man dodging manmade lightning are fun, but they’re little more than a diverting light show before Foxx comes back onscreen to mug beneath a pound of CG makeup.  – DC 

8. The Lizard (Rhys Ifans)

Spider-Man fans were thrilled to see Dylan Baker cast as Dr. Curt Connors in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, complete with missing arm but reimagined as a professor and semi-mentor for Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker. Alas, Baker never got his shot at transforming into his scaly alter-ego The Lizard. So it fell to Rhys Ifans to pick up the mantle for The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). The results were mixed.

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