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Film Star Wars vs Spider-Man: Which is the Better Film Franchise?

Which film franchise is better?

  • Total voters
    28
Gartooth

Gartooth

Universal Madness
Founder
Pronouns
He/him
Star Wars and Spider-Man are two of the most successful film franchises of all time. They feature characters that are pop culture icons and when you think of some of the most popular movies of the last couple decades these two will come to mind. Which of these two juggernaut franchises do you think is better?

For Star Wars there is the original trilogy, prequel trilogy, sequel trilogy, and Rogue One and Solo.

For Spider-Man there's the original trilogy, Amazing duology, Home trilogy, and 2 Spiderverse movies so far.

For the sake of the comparison and keeping it close between the number of movies I'm excluding crossover movies for Spidey like Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame. Spider-Man is still 1 movie shorter than Star Wars even with this stipulation, altough I imagine Beyond the Spiderverse will be out at some point in the next 2 years to even things out.
 
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Star Wars couldn't ever hope to match the greatness that is Tokusatsu Spider-Man (or Into the Spider-Verse fwiw). Overall, I like more Spidey movies than I like Star Wars ones.

 
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I'm biased as a massive Star Wars hater, but (trying my best to break my bias) I don't think anything in Star Wars matches the highs of Raimi's first movie or the Spider-Verse movies.
 
This is tough. The 1977 original Star Wars is better than any of the Spiderman movies, but this is about more than just that. Empire and Return of the Jedi, while not as good as the original, are still great fun. The rest can be disregarded.

For Spiderman, there's the fantastic 2002 original with an incredibly entertaining performance from Willem DaFoe as the Green Goblin, and Spiderman 2 has plenty of great Doc Ock moments despite being a weaker film overall. While we can disregard Spiderman 3, both Amazing Spiderman films, and all MCU Spiderman films, the first SpiderVerse still remains unbeaten as the best superhero film ever made, and the second was simply fantastic!

The odds are already very stacked in Spiderman's favor, but what really cements Spiderman as the better film franchise is the 35 minute film by Toei, released in theaters during the run of their incredible tokusatsu TV series. Toei's Spiderman remains the best Marvel media even decades later, so I'm going to have to give this one to the Spiderman franchise.
 
Phosphorescent Skeleton said:
Hmmm, Star Wars has higher highs, I think. Hard to say which has lower lows. Rise of Skywalker is probably a more interesting bad movie than Amazing Spider-Man.
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ROS has educational value in that it showed the larger public the danger of JJ Abrams. So happy that WB threw money at him to keep him from working on new movies.
 
Spidey probably.

The prequels and Rise of Skywalker are uniformly awful, though like with most Star Wars I hold a degree of fondness for them. The Amazing Spidey duology isn't good but I don't think it reaches those depths.

Spidey probably has more good films than SW at this stage.
 
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I'd give it to Spider-man.

Even if you loop in the likes of the Venom duo (which are dumb fun, and I love 'em) and Morbius, you still don't get anything that drags down the entire thing as much the sequels and prequels (barring perhaps Revenge of the Sith) do to Star Wars as a whole.
 
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At first this was closer than I thought but then I read the Spider-Verse movies count. Easy win for the webhead on this one imo.
 
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At least walking into this thread, this is a pretty interesting and close battle for me in that I think the film series are in pretty similar spots for me where most of these films I've only watched once and there is range of awesome, fine/whatever, and stuff I just despise. I'm going to write my way through this and figure it out as I go. At least at the start, I like Star Wars more, but we'll see!

Let's do Star Wars first:

Awesome - Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Phantom Menace (mentally exorcising Jar Jar Binks from the film), Rogue One, Last Jedi. I haven't seen those first three in two decades probably. Do they actually hold up from my childhood? No idea! Rogue One and Last Jedi were awesome though! Probably my favorites in the series.

Fine / Whatever - The Clone Wars Film, The Force Awakens, Solo - I'm breaking Gartooth's rules with the Clone Wars, but I saw it in theaters so I'm counting it! All of these films were fine. I guess the Force Awakens was the best of these? I walked out of the theater a smidge disappointed it was only ok.

Don't like - Return of the Jedi - Walked out of the theater when I was super young, never watched it since lol.
- Revenge of the Sith - Enough bad stuff in here that I don't think I'd care to watch it again. I liked General Grievous I guess...he was much cooler in the cartoon.
- Rise of Skywalker - Should probably be its own category. This movie is competently enough shot / scripted, but it stinks! I once read it described as one of the most cowardly films of all time and yeah that sums it up well.

One of the worst movies ever made - Attack of the Clones - This movie sucks! There are certainly worse / more incompetent movies out there, but this movie stinks and was a colossal disappointment growing up.

Ok let's see how Spider-Man fares:

Awesome - Into the Spider Verse, Across the Spider Verse - These two are far and away my favorites. I'd say Into the Spiderverse is my favorite of all of the films including Star Wars here easily. A perfect film. The sequel not so much, but easily lands in the awesome group.

Good - The Holland films - these are all pretty solid! I'd generally be down to watch all of these if they were on. The first one is my favorite.

Fine / Whatever - Spider-Man 2, Garfield Spider-Man 1 - I think I largely liked both of these, but there were a few elements in them where I'm not really interested in rewatching them either.

Don't Like - Spider-Man - I don't like the Green Goblin. Sorry!

Awful - Spider-Man 3, Garfield Spider-Man 2 - These films stink! Neither hit Attack of the Clones level, but these are both generally bad times.

...

Alright this ultimately was a pretty even match up, I basically have five films I really or like enough in both franchises and the rest are fine to awful. I think I'm going to give Spider-Man the slight win here for now since three of the Star Wars films I haven't seen in decades which makes it too hard to judge. I'll need to watch some Star Wars movies again. If we went purely for how much I care about them, I'd otherwise give Star Wars the win.
 
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Strictly counting the movies, then Spider-Man takes it pretty easily for me. No Way Home and Spider-Verse are better than any Star Wars movie.

The Clone Wars singlehandedly flips things in Star Wars's favor though. Really need to get around to watching the other TV stuff too, like Rebels and Bad Batch.
 
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Phosphorescent Skeleton said:
People saying Spider-Man clearly haven't heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise and it shows.
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The original Spider-Man actually knows how to portray a conflicted villain with both light and dark personas in such a way that the culmination of their story feels both satisfying, tragic, and doesn't undermine itself. And it does it with a really fun interplay between both personas, showcasing amazing acting from Dafoe and some really fun staging.

Star Wars struggles as soon as it tries to actually explain why the child murdering, planet exploding, torture loving Fascist leader was deep down really good all along.
 
If you put a gun to my head (please don't)

Empire Strikes Back > Spiderman 2 = Star Wars > Spiderman > Last Jedi = Into Spider-verse > Return of the Jedi > Spiderman 3 >>> Across the Spiderverse >>>>>>>>>>> the rest

But I waffle on Empire vs Star Wars (purity of vision vs that Brackett + Kasdan screenplay with the Fischer punch ups) and I'm so tired of talking about the Last Jedi that I don't even know where to put it anymore. Lower than when I first saw it, but still pretty damn high.

The prequels are fun to think about but boring to watch. Haven't seen any Tom Hollands but I kind of assume they're neutral. I give it to Spiderman, no hyphen.
 
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Whatever baggage it may have, Star Wars is basically THE film franchise, and the legacy of the original trilogy cannot be overstated. The Spider-man films are good, but they don’t define the medium the way Star Wars does.

As an aside, I don’t really believe in averages when it comes to critique. High highs are not canceled out by low lows, because I will continue to think of those high highs rather than something that was merely good.
 
Metroid said:
I'm biased as a massive Star Wars hater, but (trying my best to break my bias) I don't think anything in Star Wars matches the highs of Raimi's first movie or the Spider-Verse movies.
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Nothing in any Spider-Man movie comes close to the original trilogy of Star Wars. This might be the most insane take I've read on this site lol (no offense, if you really think this I respect your opinion but this is just wild to me).
 
TheMindOfThomas said:
Nothing in any Spider-Man movie comes close to the original trilogy of Star Wars. This might be the most insane take I've read on this site lol (no offense, if you really think this I respect your opinion but this is just wild to me).
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Maybe so... maybe so... but I'll die on this hill. I've seen the original movies. I've seen the prequels. And I've seen the sequels. None of them are as good as Willem Dafoe deadfacing to the camera and saying "godspeed Spider-Man"
 
Raimi's first two Spidey movies are fantastic, Spiderverse is wonderful, and the rest of the series just doesn't quite click with me. I like the casts they put together but the Garfield Spideys are a mess and the Holland Spideys seem too interested in removing him from New York (except for the final one, which was the one I finally liked despite the multiverse wonkiness). But with Star Wars the whole original trilogy is iconic, there are great moments in the prequel trilogy (even if it's fucky overall), Rogue One is fantastic, and The Last Jedi I loved so much that I'm afraid to even talk about it with anyone.

So I'd say Star Wars is more of a rollercoaster with big highs and big lows, but Spiderman starts off with two fantastic entries and then mostly settles into "okay" territory (with the Spiderverse films being an exception). So I'd say Star Wars has the edge for the big swings that connect (despite the misses) because at some point it felt like Spiderman stopped swinging hard after Raimi's 2.
 
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TheMindOfThomas said:
Nothing in any Spider-Man movie comes close to the original trilogy of Star Wars. This might be the most insane take I've read on this site lol (no offense, if you really think this I respect your opinion but this is just wild to me).
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Spider-Man has the upside down kiss that became one of THE most iconic scenes of the last few decades. This was everywhere in the early 2000s. It's probably still the most iconic romance scene from any blockbuster that isn't Titanic or something like Doctor Zhivago.

th


Star Wars has Leia making out with her brother. There's just no comparison
 
JazzPotatoes said:
Spider-Man has the upside down kiss that became one of THE most iconic scenes of the last few decades. This was everywhere in the early 2000s. It's probably still the most iconic romance scene from any blockbuster that isn't Titanic or something like Doctor Zhivago.

th


Star Wars has Leia making out with her brother. There's just no comparison
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The Raimi trilogy is a fun ironic watch, the Spider-Man movies with Andrew Garfield are a mess, and the movies with Tom Holland I find pretty boring and I hate most of the actors. Spiderverse 1 is pretty good, but the new one that came out last year left a bad taste in my mouth. It really felt like 2 hours of exposition that went nowhere. Now Star Wars films are also pretty muddy at some points too. (I'm gonna refer to them chronologically instead of release times) Episodes 1-3 are like the Raimi trilogy to me except they actually matter to 4-6 so I like them a bit more. They're REAL goofy. The dialogue is pretty bad, the acting isn't always the greatest, but it's got really cool moments and does a good job explaining the stuff that happened before 4-6. 4-6 are just really good. 7 is alright, it's perfectly acceptable... until you get to 8-9. Those movies got some real problems, I can't defend those. They're worse than anything Spider-Man has made. Rogue One is amazing and is up there with 4-6, but I haven't seen solo so I can't comment there.

To me, this is ironic fun superhero movies + 2 mediocre reboots + 1 good superhero movie + 1 unfinished superhero movies vs 4 legitimately really good movies + 3 really silly and really fun movies which play into the series well still + 1 mediocre movie + 2 bad movies + 1 I haven't seen. I'd rather take 4 good movies and 3 silly movies over 1 good movie and 3 silly movies, even if there are some legitimately bad ones in the Star Wars franchise.
 
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Metroid said:
Maybe so... maybe so... but I'll die on this hill. I've seen the original movies. I've seen the prequels. And I've seen the sequels. None of them are as good as Willem Dafoe deadfacing to the camera and saying "godspeed Spider-Man"
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"Oh."
 
Ok, I fell asleep watching SW ep IV and I thought it was a pretty average film, meanwhile I really like Spider-Man 3 and I had a lot of fun with TASM 2.
Every day Spider-Man without a doubt.
 
I thought the Into the Spiderverse films on their own were more fun than all the live action Spider-man and Star Wars films
 
Metroid said:
Maybe so... maybe so... but I'll die on this hill. I've seen the original movies. I've seen the prequels. And I've seen the sequels. None of them are as good as Willem Dafoe deadfacing to the camera and saying "godspeed Spider-Man"
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No piece of acting is Star Wars is as good as Defoe's delivery of "I'll get you next time, Spider-Man!"
 
Hm. I think Star Wars has the greater creative and cultural impact, but Spider-Man is probably the more consistent meta-franchise. It’s never backfired as catastrophically as Rise of Skywalker.
 
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Star Wars has higher highs and lower lows. But the entire OT is near top to bottom perfect so I'm voting for it.

Note: I have not seen the Spider-Verse movies yet.
 
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