Ranking Every Sony Marvel Movie From Best To Worst

The Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Movies (or SPUMM) has been a laughing stock of Hollywood over the past few years, ever since the release of Venom in 2018.

Since then, every single movie has been performing worse and worse with lower and lower ratings on criticism sites such as IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and Letterboxed.

With the universe seemingly over following the back to back to back performances of Madame Web, Venom 3, and Kraven The Hunter, I thought it was a good time to throw in my two cents about this Universe of movies and give my own ranking list. But instead of counting down worst to best, I am going to be doing the opposite. Talking briefly about the best ones and what I enjoy about them, then down to the worst and worst elements of the Universe as a whole and the movies.

1. Venom (2018)

   
   

   

The movie that started off this entire Universe.

Personally, I have no real faults with this movie. Tom Hardy puts on a great performance as both Eddy Brock and Venom, with the fact that he recorded the Venom lines, reacted to them with some improvisation, and then rerecorded them to make it sound like a natural conversation went a long way into making their relationship fun and nice. If this were a stand alone movie or even put somewhat into the MCU, it would feel much better. But there were some very early signs of the meddling that Sony would become more well known for, with scenes in the trailers being completely changed in the final movie.

The comedy in this movie is probably the best out of the entire franchise, mostly because of how this was the first to do any of the stuff. It was the first, and could get away with the most.

The action was fun and unique, with Venom being a great contrast to most other superhero movies in that he is a bit of a anti-hero. He eats people and kills others with not a whole lot of remorse. Although the villain being another sym-be-ote/sym-bi-ote (because for some reason they couldn't agree on what to call them) does make this fall into the cliche of "main character but evil" that MANY other movies of the genre suffer from.

But as the start of a new franchise, I really don't have any problems with this movie. It's not great, but it's nowhere near bad. A movie that I enjoy and sort of wish was the template for how they continued on. This movie clearly seemed to have more care, time, and effort put into it than many others, even if the studio did try to come in anyways.

2. Kraven The Hunter (2024)

   
   

   

   
   

This might seem really high for some people, but I actually really enjoyed it.

Aaron Taylor Johnson is quite an amazing actor, and he does quite a lot in this movie despite the script not being the best. He is a rather talkative brooding badass who does do some comedic quips or one liners that do feel out of place most of the time, but he delivers them well.

The action scenes are quite good in my mind, except for the final fight that felt like it was rushed beyond belief to cram it in before the release date of the movie. The opening was honestly incredible and had my hopes very high, only for the pacing and script to drag it down.

I know many people clowned on the movie and gave it horrible reviews, which lead to an abysmal box office performance, but I actually think this was one of the better movies of the entire franchise (thus it being ranked number 2) and should have been treated better.

Is it great? Not really. It is a movie where you can obviously see that there was studio interference and clashing visions (which we talk a LOT about in other movies) but it is consistent enough to still be enjoyable to me.

Although the fact that Russel Crowe was dragged into this shocks me. He really seemed to be phoning it in, which comparing him to the likes of Christopher Abbott as The Foreigner (my MVP of the entire movie), Fred Hechinger as Kraven's brother, and especially Levi Miller as a younger Kraven all put on good performances made this feel very strange. Also Alessandro Nivola as the Rhino was...interesting. He did a good enough performance for a rather horribly written character, so I can't blame too much on him.

3. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

   
   

   

The second instalment of the Venom franchise was genuinely the movie I was the most excited about in the entire franchise. Carnage is one of my personal favourite comic characters in the entire medium. The post credit scene of the first movie hinting to Carnage had me ecstatic, and seeing it portrayed by the legendary actor Woody Harrelson was interesting, but I thought it would be good.

Then the movie came out.

It was announced that the movie would be just over 90 minutes, which to me was WAY too short. This lead to the movie being incredibly poorly paced as it tried to cram in so many different things as tightly as possible.

Naomie Harris as Shriek was fine, but wasted with very little to do. Same goes with Stephen Graham as Detective Mulligan, Reid Scott as Dan (legitamtely a favorite actor of mine and I feel bad he was pulled into this series), and Michelle Williams as Anne. Just a whole lot of talent given nothing to really do with a story that should have been given at least 2 hours to fully flesh everything out and give it time to breathe.

By the time the final act and fight is about to begin, it feels like the rising action is only just starting. It was so awkward to watch and jarring in every possible way, even if the fight scenes itself were pretty good. The prison breakout with Carnage was a personal favorite of the entire franchise, and the final fight with Venom had a whole lot of great imagery and action, even if it was way too short with almost no stakes at all.

4. Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

   
   

   

A very weak way too finish off the only multi movie character in the Sony franchise. A weird, if a bit creative idea of having Eddy and Venom go across the country to avoid enemies while also leading to the introduction of Knull, which SHOULD be interesting and exciting...but just feels really out of place in this movie.

A very strange and weird movie that tried to be unique and different, but just made it all feel jarring and unable to connect to the other movies as smoothly. It wanted to build up and lead to a future that I'm sure this movie and the teams behind it knew wasn't even going to come.

The comedy was the weakest, the action was the weakest, and the story was just...whatever. This movie somehow felt the lowest stakes of the trilogy, and really made it too difficult to invest or care about anything that was happening. Just a super strange way for the franchise to even try and continue.

Imagine if all of the first few movies in the MCU did poorly. Then at the end of Avengers, they hinted at Thanos with the "I'll do it myself" only for the franchise to just die and we never see any of them again. It would have been awkward and made it feel so unimportant. A franchise that just ends in a whimper. Limping to the finish line with nobody, not even the people involved in the race, cheering it on or even caring. Just wanting it to end so everyone can leave.

5. Morbius (2022)

   
   

   

This movie, much like Let There Be Carnage and Kraven, was a movie that I thought could be really interesting and fun. Unique and creative with fun, unique action and a darker story that couldn't be told in the mainline MCU. A movie that could get twisted and mature.

We...sort of get that I guess. It has elements of being dark and twisted, but never goes full enough for it to even matter. It doesn't take itself seriously enough to be interesting, but not comedic enough to laugh at.

The trailers especially didn't help, with it being blatantly obvious that they were adding elements from all of the Spider-Man franchises to try and build up intrigue and get people into the theaters. But then, the movie came out.

It was such a massive meme and did so poorly, that the studio rereleased it only for it to bomb TWICE. That's how bad it did.

But for the actual movie itself, it's...well it's bad. Jared Leto being...well Jared Leto aside, his performance was horrible. He was not a character worth getting invested in or rooting for. Matt Smith, who is seriously an incredible actor, just phones it in and is clearly trying to just have fun without even really trying or caring. The infamous dance scene itself is so bad that it'll be remembered forever.

The action is awful, and the effects (which are something I don't normally care or complain about) are abysmal, especially whenever they try to get slow mo to look cool and epic only for it to fail miserably.

This movie, at least for me, was the beginning of "oh this franchise is going to die."

6. Madame Web (2024)

   
   

   

I genuinely don't have words for this movie.

I really do not wish to be critical or overly harsh over something that people were...I actually don't know. Did they want to be in this movie? Did people care about this movie or even try?

Every single aspect of this movie shocked me.

This movie fails in so many aspects. The sheer lack of redeeming qualities of this movie is wild to me.

ADR dialogue that is blatantly obvious, with some scenes even showing characters "talking" but their lips not moving at all. Incredibly messy editing, strange cinematography, incredibly poor performances and line deliveries, and a super messy story. Honestly, everything about this movie is bad. Nothing about it is all that interesting or fun.

This is not a movie I can laugh at with how bad or messy it is. It just...yeah.

I guess the only thing I can say I like is Adam Scott as Uncle Ben, but that's just because Adam Scott is great in everything he is in. He seems to be the only person trying and actually allowed to do stuff.

Everything else is BEYOND studio interference and even the news coming out afterwards with the likes of Sydney Sweeney signing on solely to get a better movie out of Sony, or Dakota Johnson being told she was going to be in the MCU and tricked is wild.

An insane amount of incompetence or lack of care and effort just made this movie an absolute dumpster fire of a film. I will NEVER watched this movie again, and I don't think this movie should have ever even been released.

So yeah, this is how my rankings of the SPUMM universe is. Maybe 1, at most 2 good-ish movies and packed full of bad decisions and bad planning. A clear sign that executives have absolutely no idea of what they are doing and do not care about the art of filmmaking. Only making money and chasing trends.

If directors and writers were allowed to do what they wanted and not constantly interferred with, this franchise could have been very successful and fun. A darker and more mature comic movie series that could have built its own niche audience.

But we sadly didn't get that. All we got was...these movies that were more like content than art.