10. May Parker – “Spider-Man: Homecoming”
Despite all of the jokes about May Parker’s age in “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” Marisa Tomei doesn’t just look the part, she gives a soulful and delightful performance in just a handful of scenes. We understand her worry about Peter without needing to know any immediate backstory and it’s all because Tomei is just that good that she can convey so much in a facial tic. She’s believably harried, stern and playful when the script calls for it and as is the case with many of the new characters/versions of the characters. The only complaint is that there wasn’t more of her, but Tomei leaves you wanting more, but isn’t that what an audience wants from a supporting role?
9. Spider-Man / Peter Parker – “The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2”
At first glance, Andrew Garfield looked to be the perfect casting choice for the Spider-Man/Peter Parker character, especially following his immense popularity from David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” He was charming, looked the part of a hero and had dramatic depth so that when Uncle Ben died (again) we believed he would be able to bring the right amount of gravitas to the role in order to separate it from Tobey Maguire’s very good iteration of the character. And he did! Garfield, by all accounts, was an excellent Spider-Man bringing a sense of joy and wonder to the role as we watched him come into his own. He was an even better Peter when he got to dive head first into the romance with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacey, playing out a mini romantic comedy within the superhero genre. Garfield never stopped being a great choice for the series, the series just didn’t even align with the promise of what he could deliver.
8. Adrian Toomes / Vulture – “Spider-Man: Homecoming”
Most superhero movies have a villain problem; they’re just not very interesting and their motivations are mostly just wanting to destroy the world. Boring. Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) on the other hand has a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder. A blue-collar laborer, he’s a little guy who’s been f*cked over by the system. So, his narrative becomes a kind of fuck you revenge to the establishment and have and have nots story replete with bitterness about what happened to him eight years ago; Toomes wants a piece of what he deserves is his. More importantly, he’s doing it for what he sees as a noble cause: his family. Unfortunately, the Vulture/mech suit part of the villain is as generic as they come, but Toomes is at least well-conceived.
7. Gwen Stacy – “The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2”
Even if the scripts for both features let her down, Emma Stone radiates such easy charisma and natural chemistry with her co-star Andrew Garfield that she is able to charm her way through some very rough dialogue. Screen presence has always been one of Stone’s gifts, and she alone makes the climactic scene of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” feel devastating. In a film that gets way too big for its britches, Stone brings it back down to Earth in nearly every scene she’s in.
6. J. Jonah Jameson – “Spider-Man 1, 2 & 3”
J.K. Simmons’s performance as Peter’s boss J. Jonah Jameson with a hair trigger temper is synonymous with the Sam Raimi films. He’s so good, so embedded into the DNA of that franchise, that we’d be hard-pressed to think of any other supporting player that’s come in and out of the Spider-Man cinematic universe that’s left such a hilarious impression. More than nearly any other performances, Simmons felt as if he’d literally been taken directly out of the comic, all exaggerated grins and scowls, projecting his performance in a manner that was big and broad without being bad or cartoonish. He, like so many of the other more antagonistic roles of those early Raimi films, understood the tone the director sought and thrived in it.
