Sony’s Spider-Man Villain Universe Ranked, Worst To Best

Sony’s Universe of Spider-Man Characters is officially ending with the release of Kraven The Hunter, and it is decidedly one of the most peculiar and random franchises among superhero cinematic universes. Sony’s Spider-Man Villain universe first began with 2018’s Venom, but outside of the Venom Trilogy, the franchise never really established any crossovers or felt like a real connected universe, at all. The fact that Spider-Man himself never appeared also did nothing but magnify that issue.

Indeed, the absence of Spider-Man from a universe populated by his villains (and one of his allies) only felt more confounding after the monumental box office hits Spider-Man: No Way Home and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. Both films set up a multitude of wall-crawlers who could have swung into Sony’s Spider-Man Villain Universe at any point – including returning Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield – but that regrettably never came to pass. With the book finally being closed on the franchise, here are the films of Sony’s Spider-Man Villain Universe ranked worst to best.

6. Madame Web (2024)

The penultimate chapter of Sony’s Spider-Man Villain Universe, Madame Web swiftly became 2024’s biggest punchline as one of the most incomprehensible superhero trainwrecks ever made. Set in the year 2003, Dakota Johnson stars as paramedic Cassandra Webb, who gains clairvoyant powers after an accident and soon finds herself protecting a trio of young women destined to become Spider-Women from the pursuing assassin Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim).

Madame Web is the kind of movie that reeks of indecisive studio decision-making and too many cooks in the kitchen, setting up a connection with the future web-head through a young Ben Parker and Mary Parker without committing to which big-screen version of Spidey – if any – the prophesied infant will grow up into. The entire origin story of Madame Web is also one of the most unnecessarily elongated of any superhero movie, with Cassandra’s transformation into Madame Web held off until the very end, and the trio of future web-slingers only shown as Spider-Women in glimpses into the future (95% of which were already seen in Madame Web’s trailers.)

The cast of Madame Web seemingly took the movie’s failure in stride, with Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, in particular, having some self-effacing fun with it. In the end, with lackluster action scenes, a painfully unfocused, meandering script, and clear indicators of being cut down within an inch of its life at the last minute, Madame Web will be remembered as a case study of everything that can go wrong on a superhero movie, for years to come.

5. Morbius (2022)

The worst sin a comic book movie can make is to be dull and forgettable, and Morbius sadly is as flat as they come. Jared Leto portrays renowned biologist Dr. Michael Morbius, who discovers a cure for his blood cancer that transforms him into a vampire, with Morbius soon battling both the pursuing FBI and a Nosferatu rival in his brother Milo (Matt Smith). Leto’s notorious method of acting is completely unnecessary for a movie as casual as Morbius; the film figures out a way to rework its title character as an antihero by having him consume a lab-brewed substitute for human blood, but the film’s unstructured story largely runs in place until the movie’s climactic vampire showdown, after which Morbius concludes on just about the most abrupt ending in superhero movie history.

That is at least somewhat remedied in the movie’s end credits scene, which ties into Spider-Man: No Way Home, in which Michael Keaton’s Vulture is zapped into Sony’s Spider-Man Universe and forms a villain alliance with Morbius. Keaton’s cameo in Morbius is further evidence of Sony constantly second-guessing their own franchise, as the trailer features Keaton in completely different scenes, not to mention an image of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man. The whole end-credits scene was a shoehorned attempt by Sony to finally get their white whale of a Sinister Six movie rolling. Not having Spider-Man (or Blade) hurts an otherwise generic and uninspired Morbius – but taken on its own terms, it’s at least the rare flop to become a genuine internet sensation, with the #ItsMorbinTime phenomenon.

4. Kraven The Hunter (2024)

One of the wall-crawler’s most cunning foes gets his own origin story in Kraven the Hunter, in which Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) gains the power of fierce jungle animals and becomes a merciless manhunter. Of all of Sony’s non-Venom movies in the SSU, Kraven the Hunter showed the most potential, with Johnson’s performance as Kraven and some impressive action sequences, with the movie’s R-rating taken for all the mileage it has in the tank. Kraven the Hunter also includes some splendid parkour highlighting its title character’s agility and running style – a wise choice that adds some real flashiness to the action scenes.

Unfortunately, Kraven’s story is as lacking in direction as the overall SSU franchise. Alessandro Nivola’s Rhino only properly transforms in the third act, for one of the movie’s lesser action scenes; Freddy Hechinger’s Chameleon is mostly kept on the sidelines until a last-minute comic-accurate transformation, which could have been more exciting had Sony not preemptively pulled the plug on the Spider-Man villain franchise (ditto for the movie’s final scene). When all’s said and done, Kraven the Hunter has its moments and is certainly worth checking out for its feral action sequences. But alas, it too can’t overcome a generic story and a Spider-Man-shaped hole in its mythos.

[RELATED: Kraven the Hunter Debuts With Devastating Rotten Tomatoes Score]

3. Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

Sony wraps up the Venom Trilogy on a relatively high note with 2024’s Venom: The Last Dance, with Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and his symbiote partner-in-crime determined to prevent the symbiote overlord Knull (Andy Serkis) from conquering Earth. Venom himself carries a MacGuffin dubbed “the Codex,” which can grant Knull the power to unleash an army of symbiotes on Earth. Intentionally or not, Venom: The Last Dance earns some surprising chuckles with a plotline that reads as an unexpected remake of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, but the real fun, as ever, lies in Hardy’s zany banter with his alien compatriot. Eddie and Venom’s detour to Las Vegas adds some whimsy to the script, with the Venom franchise’s human anchor Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) on hand for a literal ‘last dance’ with Venom.

Venom 3 also concludes with a surprisingly emotional showdown that highlights Eddie and Venom’s relationship as a true friendship of two losers from across the stars, who realized they could be more. Even still, The Last Dance’s end credits scene, like Tom Hardy himself, teases this isn’t the last the world has seen of Venom – but as a finale, Venom: The Last Dance brings plenty of wild symbiote action and alien buddy comedy to make it a worthy ending.

2. Venom (2018)

Sony began their Spider-Man villain universe with the right villain and the right amount of wacky fun in 2018’s Venom. Tom Hardy stars as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, who loses his job after a story about the sinister laboratory experiments of Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) is erroneously discredited. When Eddie bonds with the alien symbiote Venom (also voiced by Hardy), he is forced to co-exist with his new extraterrestrial friend to stop an impending invasion from the symbiotes of Venom’s homeworld. Venom runs into the Achilles’ heel that often plagues the Marvel Cinematic Universe: a generic mirrored villain in Carlton Drake after his transformation into the symbiote Riot. However, the real appeal of Venom lies in Eddie and Venom’s relationship as two complete opposites from other worlds brought together by accident.

Hardy likened Eddie and Venom’s relationship to that of Ren and Stimpy (a spot-on analogy), with Eddie as the straight man trying to rein in the completely untamed Venom, while freaking out everyone around him as he seemingly talks to himself, trying to keep Venom’s appetite for human flesh at bay. Venom also holds the distinction of having Stan Lee’s final on-screen cameo before his passing just over a month after the movie’s release, which adds a touch of emotional heart-pulling to the movie’s legacy. In all, Venom is a wild and wacky adventure, and the movie’s end credits tease with Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady (dime-store wig aside) is exactly how an arch-villain’s debut in an upcoming sequel should be set up.

[Related: Who Dies in Venom: The Last Dance?]

1. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage improves on its predecessor in virtually every respect, with Eddie and Venom developing an increasing amount of friction in their relationship, right as Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady bonds with a fragment of Venom to become the monstrous Carnage. While a bit more compartmentalized than its predecessor (with a brisk 97-minute runtime), Let There Be Carnage jumps right into the fun. Eddie and Venom have become San Francisco’s Lethal Protector, and Venom simply can’t satiate his taste for human brains on Eddie’s alternative of chickens.

In every respect, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is confident and assured in a way that Sony’s Spider-Man Villain Universe has always failed to be, and brings in a sizeable roster of Spider-Man characters to the screen, including Shriek (Naomi Campbell) as Carnage’s villainous fiancé. Though the actual Venom vs. Carnage showdown is saved until the very end, it fully delivers as the best superhuman smackdown of Sony’s villain-populated franchise. And Woody Harrelson is an unhinged delight as the campy, psychotic Carnage.

Additionally, Let There Be Carnage is keenly aware of the character Venom is most closely associated with. Brief though it may be, Venom’s quick trip into the MCU and interest in paying a visit to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is the first time the franchise has actually felt committed to delivering upon the crossover potential of a cinematic universe, or in this case, the multiverse. True, Venom’s venture into the MCU basically sends Eddie and Venom right back home – but it nonetheless exemplifies a commitment to world-building and a Marvel-Sony symbiosis with great potential. Hopefully, Tom Hardy gets his wish to finally meet a big-screen web-slinger in the future, but when it comes to Sony’s Spider-Man Villain Universe, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is the far and away the franchise’s best romp.

You can see Kraven the Hunter in theaters.