For the past two decades, Marvel fans have had no shortage of content related to Marvel’s most famous wall-crawling crime fighter. With Spiderman films being released regularly every few years or so ever since 2002, it has become apparent that multiple generations of fans have chosen their favorite iteration of the Webhead. Also for the first time in history, we got to see the three of the most prominent live-action iterations share the big screen in Spider-Man No Way Home.
After watching all three Spider-Men on the big screen, you might have definitely had a thought as to Who is the best Spider-Man or Who is the Strongest Spider-Man. And in this article, I will be answering both of these questions. And Spider-Man is my favorite superhero character, I have watched all of the movies multiple times and will be talking about each aspect of Spider-Man in Detail. And you’ll get to know which Spider-Man is best in which aspect and Who is the best Spider-Man altogether.
Who Is The Strongest Spider-Man?
First, let’s compare all three Spider-Man based on their Strengths. So with the likes of Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland, we are left to wonder which of these three iterations is truly the strongest in terms of physical feats. And it was the most formidable in a fight. So stick with us as we delve into some of the most impressive physical feats of these three Spider-Men, in order to decide who is truly the strongest iteration of the character.
It is important to note, however, that we will not be ranking anything in relation to the actor’s performances. This round will be focusing on who is the most physically powerful and bears the most threat in a one-on-one fight. With that out of the way, let’s answer the question my friends, who is the strongest version of Spiderman?
How Strong Is Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man?
Let’s start back at the very beginning with the iteration of Spiderman that largely helped to usher in a brand new era of superhero films: Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy. This interpretation of Spider-Man has shown some rather impressive feats throughout his tenure, including holding up a lone cable car filled with passengers at the end of his first solo outing; with a cable car similar to this, weighing up to 15,000 pounds while empty.
And that doesn’t take into account the passengers inside. We must also remember that he is doing this one-handed while also holding himself in the air with the use of his webbing. If he is able to lift upwards of 15,000 pounds with one hand with minimal effort, then this could reasonably be considered to be one of his most impressive feats.
But perhaps his most telling feat of strength just happens to be also one of the most iconic scenes in his trilogy. We are of course talking about the legendary train fight in Spider-Man 2, where Doctor Octopus sabotages the train, breaks and sends it hurtling toward the end of an unfinished track.
After trying a few rudimentary solutions and failing Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man attaches his webs to the surrounding buildings and in the sequence over a minute long, we see the steady deceleration of the train in tandem with the immense physical strain that it is putting on his body, to the point of ultimately making Tobey Maguire Spider-Man pass out.
There was extensive effort put into calculating the speed and force of the train using a variety of factors. Including using the rate at which the buildings passed by in order to determine the speed. As well as the timing of how long it took the train to decelerate, which we won’t delve too deeply into right now. But the final result was this Spider-Man would have needed to exert a force of over 200,000 Newtons in order to stop the train. This roughly equates to 45,000 pounds of force.
Given that this directly results in Spider-Man passing. We can safely assume that this is the upper limit of his strength capabilities. Still, though, are you kidding me, 45,000 pounds… That’s absolutely insane, not to mention a feat that’s going to be very difficult to beat. I think it’s clear that these are the two most prominent feats of Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man in terms of raw strength. Now let’s go ahead and move on. How does this compare to other interpretations played by other actors across different franchises?
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How Strong Is Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man?
Next, let’s take a look at Andrew Garfield in the Amazing Spider-Man duology. Unfortunately for Andrew Garfield, or rather for us, Andrew doesn’t seem to have much in the way of physical feats in his tenure as Spider-Man. But this is in part due to the fact that we don’t appear to see the upper limits of his potential.
Perhaps the closest we see is in his first solo outing when he saved Jack from the Lizard’s rampage. He catches a mid-size car with one hand, though this seems to cause considerable strain over a prolonged period of time. This kind of car would typically weigh around 5000 pounds. Which would be impressive, but still pales in comparison to the 45,000 pounds of force exerted by Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man on the train.
Garfield Spider-Man has been shown to catch cars with minimal effort, as well as stopping a bus from falling during the opening action sequence of Amazing Spider-Man 2. Buses of this size typically weigh up to 35,000 pounds. But again, that bus is an empty calculation, and the bus that we see in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was full of bystanders and passengers.
When he finally drops the car off of the bridge in the original Amazing Spider-Man, it is because the bumper breaks, not because he was unable to hold it any longer. And though he seemed to show signs of strain and discomfort, there’s nothing to suggest that this was the peak of his power. Especially given how little experience he had with his newfound strength up until that point.
With it being clear that Andrew Garfield’s feats are not quite as strong or on the level of Toby Maguire’s. But he also shows less effort than Toby Maguire does, with the bus and the car being his two most impressive.
How Strong Is Tom Holland’s Spider-Man?
Now let’s move on to Tom Holland‘s iteration of the iconic character, who not only has his own solo films to draw feats from but has the entirety of the MCU around him to gauge his capabilities. Tom Holland not only is able to catch a multi-ton bridge in Captain America Civil War but is also able to effortlessly catch Bucky’s metal arm mid-punch. As well as temporarily restrained Captain America, indicating that they have similar levels of strength.
It’s also important to note that Spider-Man Peter Parker is very, very young here, and will likely grow in strength as time goes on. In the MCU, the capabilities of a Super Soldier vary from that of the comics, but in the MCU the Super Soldiers have shown incredible strength. From Cap holding a helicopter back from taking off to single-handedly taking down a Quinjet and damaging the suit of Ironman armor, which is made primarily of specialized gold titanium alloy.
Though we do not have any direct confirmation that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is comparable to an MCU Super Soldier, the fact that he is capable of going toe to toe with two of them during the airport fight, and matching their strength is a strong indication. But this may not be his greatest feat of strength in the MCU today. It is important to note though that the limits of Spider-Man’s strength could actually go beyond the Super soldier, and likely will, especially because of how easily he caught Bucky’s punch in Civil War.
Tom’s Spider-Man Holds 220,000 Pounds Of Weight
In Spiderman Homecoming, upon tracking down Adrian Tooms to a fairy and engaging in a brief battle, the ferry is cut in half. A large ferry of roughly the same size as a dead weight of over 220,000 pounds. And that again is not to mention the weight of the crew, passengers, and any other people that may be on board. Not to mention, the cargo on board, just the ferry itself weighs over a quarter of a million pounds, with the ferry containing trucks, vans, and each weighing multiple tons of pieces.
Tom Holland much like Toby Maguire before him, spins an array of webs and in a scene reminiscent of the iconic train sequence, tries his best to hold the ferry together. It’s important to note that his web starts to tear and break, and by the end of the sequence the only thing holding the very together is Spider-Man himself, lifting well over 100,000 tons with just one hand. And while this seems to show a considerable amount of strain and stress, he still succeeds in doing so, at least for a period of time until his webs begin to break.
This very scene appears to outclass anything that either of his predecessors has accomplished in their tenure. And with this iteration of Peter Parker having ample time to grow and evolve as the MCU moves forward, it stands to reason that as he matures and learns better to control his powers, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man may very well outlast this feat of his own accord at some point down the line.
So well as of now, it appears that Tom Holland likely holds the title of the Physically Strongest Live Action Spider-Man. That does not necessarily mean that he is the most formidable in a fight for a few reasons. The main limitation that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man seems to have as of now is his relative inexperience and lack of growth in his short tenure as a hero.
Though he was able to match the pound-for-pound strength of Captain America, the First Avenger’s experience and tactical expertise that he’d developed over years as a hero allowed him to easily overpower and outsmart the young wall crawler. But this was the case before Spider-Man Now Way Home. Now he has a lot of experience after going though so much and now be definitely stronger than Captain America.
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Speed: Who Is The Fastest Spider-Man?
Now that we talked about the strengths of these three Spider-Men thoroughly, we can get into speed a little bit. And I’ll just say right off the bat, it’s another situation where two of the Spider-Men are in the conversation (Tom Holland & Andrew Garfield), and the other ones (Tobey Maguire) sort of left out.
Andrew Garfield
So if you take a look at the MCU, I’m sure if you’ve seen my other Marvel Cinematic Universe scaling articles, I scale all of them off of Captain Marvel and Thanos. Pretty much every single character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has any significance to the power scale at all, which of course Spiderman does scales to Captain Marvel and Thanos.
Captain Marvel is massively hypersonic, moving at speeds over 750,000 mph and then The Amazing Spider-Man just blatantly dodges electricity throughout his entire second film. And at one point he’s moving at regular speed while the electricity is seen moving in slow motion. So you can argue that he’s even faster than that. But electricity typically moves from 50% to the speed of light. So it’s pretty impressive for The Amazing Spiderman two move that quickly.
Tobey Maguire
Unfortunately the reality of at least the main line of Raimi movies, he just wasn’t lucky enough to get Electro in his series. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man just deals with, you know, people who are firing bullets at him, and maybe people who scale to rockets and things like that. You know, if you look at the events in Spider-Man 2, you get Tobey around high hypersonic reaction (Mach 25 – 50) based on Doc Ock reacting to them.
They are not solar flares or solar prominences that are being fired from his star. We see his arms containing them and that’s the whole plot point, how Rosie gets killed, and he fails to keep up with all of the emerging prominences. So obviously we can compare Doc Ock’s speed of using his mechanical hand in a fight, with Tobey’s Spider-man. But normally we have, high hypersonic and massively hypersonic.
And obviously, for the high hypersonic speed, there are no other feats within the main Raimi movies that are anywhere near that. And even if that’s the case, even if you wanna get him to high hypersonic, if you wanna use that, there’s still a whole tier higher hypersonic and massively hypersonic. There’s at least a 10 times difference. So either of the other two Spider-Man (Tom and Andrew) would be able to hit him ten times before he’d be able to react essentially at a low end.
Tom Holland
And then there is Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. If you’re taking a look at, speed, durability, attack potency, put all of it together, what’s gonna happen? I think 10 out of 10 times, you’re gonna end up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man finding a way to win. Even if you do use the higher tier power scaling for Toby Maguire’s character and use like the building level for the Marvel Cinematic Universe character, Tom Holland’s Spider-Mam has such a speed advantage that he would eventually figure out a way to win.
It would be like in The Flash series where he’s so fast that he can just sort of stop time and figure out how to diffuse a bomb before it goes off. It would be like that, it would be like Tom is super smart, he’d eventually realize, “ok, maybe I can use my electric webbing” or something and he just wouldn’t be able to get attached. There’d be no pressure on Tom’s Spider-Man from Tobey’s Spider-Man in terms of a speed perspective.
And then consider Tom Holland’s Spider-Man’s speed while having the Iron Spider suit or even the normal Stark suit from Spider-Man Homecoming. We saw how quickly he was punching and kicking Thanos in Infinity War wearing an Iron Spider suit. And imagine him using that speed with all the gadgets he has in his suit.
There’s like hundreds of different web combinations and then there’s also instant kill in his Homecoming suit as well as in his Far From Home suit and Iron Spider suits. It would just be a standard function. And we have no freaking clue what that Instant kill does. That could do any number of things to kill someone. He could have poisons in that suit.
I mean, we don’t wanna get into speculation, but he’d eventually figure out a way to win even if he did have to break his code and end up killing the other Spider-Man. Between him and his life as far as we’ve seen, he will kill at least the outriders, which arguably are Sentient. But he will definitely draw that line if he if he’s pressured enough. He did eventually figure out a way to win. So all together Tom’s Spider-Man is faster, then comes Andrew’s Spider-Man, and then at the last position there is Tobey’s Spider-Man.
And then Andrew Spiderman of course is much faster than Toby Maguire Spiderman. So he’d be slinging around, maybe dodging some attacks. Eventually, he would go to hit somebody, or somebody would hit him and he would just fold. He’d get twisted up like a pretzel. If he pulled up to Tobey, Tobey might not know what happened. Andrew might have been too fast, Tobey would blank and see Andrew on the ground. Like, think of this scene from The Boys where Hughie’s first girlfriend gets killed. That’s what would happen.
Also, even though I might be exaggerating Tom and Andrew’s speed in comparison to Tobey’s Spider-Man speed, Tobey is quite fast in comparison to any other Marvel Superhero. So don’t underestimate Tobey’s Spider-Man speed.
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Which Spider-Man Has The Most Experience?
How do these characters stack up against each other in terms of experience? Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, who’s been far more active for far longer than the other two. We have Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man, who has gone through two adventures and one dead girlfriend.
And then we have the Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man who started out by himself, making his own web shooters, making his own web fluid, getting recruited by Ironman, receiving a suit that is way beyond anything he could ever imagine, and then receiving another suit that’s even crazier than that one. Fighting a literal God Thanos with reality-warping powers and then going back to fighting a guy with some VR.
So I think Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man and Tom Holland Spiderman are probably the closest to each other in terms of experience. That’s obviously because they’ve had more films to work within. And honestly, I would say Andrew might be the more emotionally experienced. And taking a look at these three, I think Tobey has a lot of advantages going into this just based on the versatility of opponents that he’s gone up against.
Because Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man has gone up against Goblin who has all this advanced tech. He’s gone up against a Doc Ock with these arms that are able to move autonomously and he has to figure out how to fight against it. He’s gone up against an alien Symbiote plus Sandman simultaneously and another Goblin in his third movie. Which now I think about it, Tobey has a distinct advantage in terms of experience.
Who Is The Most Intelligent Spider-Man?
Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man actually fought Venom with his exact same powers, but stronger. You know, he fought against Venom who had all of his memories, had all of his abilities and he was still able to, combat him and eventually, get the win, which is pretty relevant to the fight in hand and something that neither Tom nor Andrews. And because of this, he had to think of a unique way to defeat an opponent that was much stronger than him. So the ability to think on his feet.
I think Tobey is great at that, but I also think the other two Spider-Man are not so bad. I mean Andrew does get a little bit of help with Captain Stacy, kind of nudging him toward the solution in the first movie, with getting the nitrogen to freeze Lizzard and then taking him down. And then in the second movie, he didn’t realize that maybe he should insulate his suit until he was told to do so and then had to Google how batteries worked, which isn’t that great.
The Amazing Spider-Man makers tried to make him more relatable. Even in the creative process of the movie, they tried to remove him from the nerd archetype that arguably the other two kinds fall into. They decided to make him less of like a geek, and more so just an outsider. And so within that, you sacrifice his that level of Uber brilliance. He’s like hearing in on like the actual nerds on how he would go about designing web shooters, as opposed to Tom.
Tom just developed the technology seemingly just out of thin air. He built it himself from scratch, made it out of materials, and who knows where the hell he got it. And he’s making his own web fluid in chemistry class, using like spare chemicals that you can get in the high school chemistry labs.
And turn him in terms of like an intelligence feat, you know, he’s able to escape that high-security facility using like a calculator. And then of course he does a lot of very intelligent things as far as adapting to his opponents, especially in Far From Home where he’s able to build a bomb on the fly and he’s able to use his spider-sense finally out with Mysterio.
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Which Spider-Man Has The Best Spider-Sense?
If we wanna talk about Spider-Sense, I think all three of the characters are pretty relative in terms of that. Although I think the MCU Spiderman has the best showcase of Spider-Sense.
Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man has an advantage in the Spider-Sense area, like we see when Flash pulls up on him with the punch, just the first time having expired since activated, he takes in the whole room on such a micro and macro level. He sees a spitball flying, he sees a fly; like so detailed you can see the wings of it, and it’s all in this like, small fragment of time. He’s able to get a snapshot of his environment in 3D almost completely.
So if Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is getting jumped by the other two, he probably has an advantage in the sense that he, his Spider-Sense has dealt with more things coming at him and given time. But I think Tobey more so holistically, his battlefield awareness would generally be much higher via his Spider-Sense and much more detailed in my opinion.
As for Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man, they don’t really showcase his Spider-Sense that well in comparison to the other two Spider-Man. Maybe the stair scene with Electro in the middle of Time Square in New York is probably his best sort of showcase of his spider-sense. He’s able to take in the environment, sort of slow things down in his own head, like eternally, and figure out a solution or figure out who needs to be saved, what are the priorities, and then going about doing those things in the proper order.
But I think all three of these characters are pretty relative in terms of how their Spider-Sense functions and how they’re able to use it pretty effectively. All three characters, of course, they’re not gods, they do get hit, and they do get attacked eventually, but I think they’re all pretty high tier in sort of these Spider Sense realms.
Which Spider-Man Has The Best Equipment?
Now if we take a look at the equipment, it’s not really close to Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men. Of course, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man got a far superior suit filled with all the gadgets. So obviously there’s gonna be a disadvantage for the other two Spider-Men. Tom has all these various web combinations from bombs to like high-impact web grenades. Of course, Tobey can just make out of his own natural web fluid.
We’ve never seen Andrew do anything like that, but he has been able to like split his webs into like a wide arc by putting his thumb over his web shooter, which is pretty cool. But of course, Tom just got everything you could ever want, he’s got the taser webs, and he’s got instant kill mode. Not to mention he’s got his own AI that can help him figure out situations on the fly.
And it is an Ironman-created AI, so I would imagine that it would have the ability to scan and dissect fighting styles. So maybe he could use that to his advantage to sort of figure out Tobey or Andrew if he’s having trouble kind of reading them. Because it’s Spider-Man sort of thing to be a fluid, unpredictable, acrobatic combatant. So being like that, moving so inconsistently and all over the place, I think would be hard for any of the others to read. So maybe that could give Tom an advantage and equals that scenario.
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Defeating The Villains
You have Vulture, who Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in Homecoming is able to m ultimately defeat. Although, he doesn’t really beat Vulture head-on. Vulture beats himself, his wings are just, destroyed from the battle. And now I think of it, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is ultimately defeated in that fight.
Green Goblin, I think is more of a varied opponent in the air or on the ground, in comparison to the Vulture. Tobey’s Spider-Man is able to beat him. He got multiple points against Goblin, he’s able to attack his glider, he beats him in the burning building, essentially kicks him aside, and then he ultimately defeats him in that derelict building.
And then, I keep stressing it, he defeated Venom with the same memories as Spider-Man. But again, the fact of the matter is Tom has a nearly inexhaustible arsenal in any of his armors outside of his literal pajamas. He’s going to pick something or find something to pretty securely grant him the win.
And Tom does pretty well against his foes for the most part. Vulture is the one example where maybe he didn’t do as well, but he did end up coming up with a plan to beat or eventually kill Ebony Maw. He did go up against Mysterio and beat him one-on-one using very limited amounts of Stark tech. It wasn’t like he was in his Iron Spider suit or anything like that.
And I do have to hand it to Andrew. I’ve been a little tough on him, but he does come up with interesting ways to possibly beat his villains. He sets a spider web trap for Lizard down in the sewer. He does end up losing that fight and pretty stupidly leaves his camera there with his full name, Peter Parker on it for the Lizard to find later. But he tries, he does try.
Who Would Win In A Fight Between Tobey, Andrew, And Tom Holland’s Spider-Man?
So taking a look at this comparison/battle holistically, I think I would be rooting for Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man to win. I’m not gonna act like I’m not a little bit biased, those are my favorite Spider-Man movies. Nut being realistic about everything, I think most of the time, even if you just wanna say 6 out of 10 times, I think the MCU Spider-Man is gonna end up on top. Just because he has an overwhelming advantage with his suit.
He is relative to Tobey’s Spiderman in terms of experience, but probably not on the same level. But his overwhelming advantages with the suit just make it so unfair. If you wanna take him out of the suit and put him in his Homecoming suit everyone’s in their own homemade suit, then I think Tobey probably gets the Win
And Andrew in this case gets a lot more shine. He does do a lot more, but I think being less experienced and receiving so much help from other people outside of himself in almost every single fight, makes it a little hard for me to say, “yeah, this character is gonna come up with a way to win”. Especially with him being not as savvy in a combat sense, being able to figure out how to beat his opponents on his own, or just being as intelligent. I think the other two are just way smarter in terms of like book smarts and way smarter on the battlefield.
Going from least effective fighter to most effective, it’s honestly Andrew at the bottom. He gets help in nearly every single one of his fights against his supervillains. He uses his abilities in less creative ways than the other two, and less effective ways in a combat scenario. Whereas Tobey does have, various ways of using his webs. Like he fires web bullets in Spider-Man 3, he makes a trip wire.
And Tobey does explore creative ways to defeat his villains and uses the environment against many of his adversaries. In Doc Ock’s situation, he takes advantage of the cables in the ground and gets him to stab through him. Then in Venom’s situation, he obviously is able to use sound waves. Against Sandman, he used the water in the sewer. So. He definitely has more of that extra combat intelligence.
And then for any bit of raw combat skill, combat intelligence that Tom might have, he can literally just say something and it’ll happen because of his high-tech suit. He can just say, “Hey, I wanna shock this guy” or “hey, I wanna throw a bomb at this guy” or any number of things. He just has such a raw advantage in terms of the variety of attacks you can use. It’s Stark tech we’re talking about he has nearly inexhaustible options here. And it’s just a matter of time before one of those catches Tobey lacking.
Who Is The Best Live-Action Spider-Man?
Now, after going through so many fights, questions, responsibilities, and sacrifices, I think Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is on the track to becoming the best live-action or any adaptation version of Spider-Man. Also, spending some time with Tobey and Andrew’s Spider-Man, he has learned quite a lot about what it means to be a Spider-Man.
I feel like after the events of Homecoming Tom learned that just because he has powers, it doesn’t mean that he knows everything and that he is not useless without the suit, became a Spider-Boy. After the events of Far From Home, he learned that he can’t trust everyone and that he needs to believe in himself, and became a Spider-Teen. And after the events of No Way Home, he learned about sacrifices and finally Became The Spider-Man
So there you have it, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man according to me. All right, so that’s all I’ve got to say about these three Spider-Men. I’ve been talking about them a decent amount of time and I think I’ve gotten out everything that I could possibly mention about all three of these Spider-Men who would win a fight, who’s the most effective Spider-Man, and I think we came up with a pretty solid answer to both of those questions and a pretty good consensus.
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