The Definitive Superhero Power Ranking: Hollywood’s 67 Most Valuable Characters

For a brief period in the late 2010s and early 2020s, there were as many as nine TV shows about DC Comics characters, all executive-produced by Greg Berlanti, most interconnected within the “Arrowverse” (named after Berlanti’s first DC series). They offered a playful, optimistic, relatively low-cost alternative to the doom-and-gloom maximalism of Zack Snyder’s DC movies, and inspired a fiercely loyal fanbase in the process. But those fans never grew beyond the shows’ CW-sized ratings — and these four characters never made it to the big screen. One by one, their shows either overstayed their welcome or were snuffed out by the punishing economics of 21st-century network television.

These DC characters have a bit more box office to their names, but they’re products of the same irrational exuberance — deep cuts hauled into movies that barely justify their own existence. Blue Beetle ranks highest among them only because new DC Studios co-chief James Gunn — who quietly zapped Black Adam and Shazam! into the phantom zone when he took the reins in late 2023 — is putting Xolo Maridueña, as the first major Latino superhero, in his Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow.

By hiring Oscar-winning auteur Chloé Zhao to bring her understated naturalism to the superhero genre, Eternals was a noble effort on Kevin Feige’s part to expand what a Marvel Studios movie could look and feel like. The result was neither fish nor fowl, and resulted in the MCU’s first real box-office failure. The studio appears to have all but memory-holed the characters from the multiverse.

Marvel Studios’ mandate to supply content for Disney+ produced some excellent TV episodes, and dramatically expanded the scope of who gets to be a superhero. But the company’s decision to make TV like it’s made movies ultimately proved disastrous, causing costly reshoots and slapdash finales that sacrificed narrative coherence for cinematic spectacle. Because the shows were all interconnected in the MCU, watching them began to feel like homework, and that impression contributed to the studio’s first major financial failure, 2023’s The Marvels. The studio scaled back live-action TV production to a trickle, and pushed the premieres of Ironheart and Wonder Man back by years. Today, of this group, only Ms. Marvel has a definitive future in the MCU — on a new Avengers ride in Disneyland’s California Adventure.

The Disney+ series Secret Invasion — the first Marvel Studios project to put Samuel L. Jackson front and center as the MCU superspy — is universally regarded as the worst thing the company has ever made; when Fury appeared in The Marvels later that year, everyone seemed to pretend the show had never happened. The character’s essential role as the narrative fulcrum for so many of the MCU’s biggest movies is the only reason Fury ranks higher than the previous group, but it’s telling that since that misbegotten year, Jackson hasn’t returned to the role.

The Last Daughter of Krypton can’t seem to catch a break. Her 1984 feature debut, with Helen Slater alongside Faye Dunaway and Peter O’Toole, was a high-camp debacle. Melissa Benoist’s winning 2010s TV run launched on CBS, then got exiled to the CW after one season. Sasha Calle’s hardbitten turn in The Flash was overshadowed by Ezra Miller and Michael Keaton’s returning Batman — and then the movie flopped. Critics praised Milly Alcock’s fizzy performance in this year’s Supergirl as uniformly as they scorned the turgid film around her; Warner Bros. will reportedly lose $100 million. Alcock continues in Man of Tomorrow, but her dog Krypto has a better shot at a solo movie than Kara Zor-El does.

The Flash is this high in the ranking only thanks to Gustin’s charming stewardship of the role on TV rather than the totally avoidable slow-motion trainwreck that was Ezra Miller’s tenure as the fastest man alive. If and when the character gets rebooted in the new DCU, he could sprint much higher in the superhero ranks, but right now, the Scarlet Speedster is at a standstill.

It’s a sign of just how enduring Spider-Man is as a character in 2026 that the culture was able to sustain even one season of Spider-Noir, a streaming series fashioned as an homage to 1930s film noir starring 62-year-old Nicolas Cage as a private detective who moonlights as The Spider. Wide critical acclaim, 11 Emmy nominations, and robust premiere week viewership weren’t enough to save the show from cancellation. But as two more entries on this list will demonstrate, there has never been a better time to be a part of Spidey’s web.

These two peripheral DC characters have punched way above their weight over the past few years. The fact that Bruce Wayne’s loyal butler got his own streaming series at all speaks to both the indelible nature of Alfred Pennyworth and the absurd heights of comic-book mania in the late 2010s. With Peacemaker, John Cena and Gunn have, through sheer force of will, elevated one of the most obscure DC Comics characters into a genuine TV star. Gunn has said he has no plans to continue Peacemaker past its second season, but the character is expected to show up in Man of Tomorrow. 

The first women to headline Marvel Studios productions ended the last decade riding high: In 2018, Ant-Man and the Wasp improved on its predecessor’s grosses by 20 percent, and in 2019, Captain Marvel earned an eye-popping $1.1 billion worldwide. But both characters sat out most of Avengers: Endgame. Then the box office failure of Quantumania ($476 million worldwide) and The Marvels ($206.1 million worldwide) put Marvel on the defensive for the first time. Both Evangeline Lilly and Brie Larson have distanced themselves from the studio; aside from Larson appearing in an upcoming theme park ride, Marvel appears to have put both characters on ice. 

Ant-Man is ranked higher than his super-shrinking counterpart for two rather blunt reasons: He will appear in Doomsday, and the actor playing him is a movie star. But, yeah, this dude’s days as a marquee superhero are well behind him.

Joker’s sociopathic moll has been a fan favorite ever since she debuted on Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. She was the centerpiece of both Suicide Squad movies, her exuberantly irreverent animated series Harley Quinn is beloved, and she’s been a go-to cosplay subject for decades. Alas, lately, Harley’s fallen on hard times. The character faceplanted in her lone solo outing, leading Margot Robbie to suggest that she’s ready to move on. Harley Quinn remains in an ominous limbo without a renewal since Season five ended way back in March 2025. And Lady Gaga’s take on the character in Joker: Folie à Deux was a shocking non-event.

In 2025, Marvel tried to rebuild the MCU’s centers of gravity around the two stars of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Brave New World was meant to install Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as frontman for the whole enterprise; instead, Sam got RED HULK SMASHED by Harrison Ford’s star power and a bewildering script that served as a sequel to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. Ten weeks later, Thunderbolts made Sebastian Stan’s Bucky a congressman corralling ne’er-do-wells into the so-called New Avengers. Critics and fans liked it, but its deep dive into depression and grief didn’t jibe with summer-popcorn positioning. Now both lead rival Avengers teams in Doomsday. Whether anyone cares is an open question.

The awkwardly titled The Fantastic Four: First Steps dropped Marvel’s First Family into a retro-futuristic 1960s alternate Earth with no connection to the wider MCU. The hope was that moviegoers would see a fresh entry point, free of the burden of the 53 — that’s fifty-three — preceding MCU titles. But the film leaned too hard into nostalgia for the quartet’s comic-book origins, presuming an abiding affection for characters who’ve never quite taken hold in the wider culture. That made the movie a double when the studio needed a home run, with the next Avengers movie built around the Fantastic Four’s greatest enemy, Doctor Victor von Doom (Robert Downey Jr.).

Just a few years ago, these darker Marvel characters wouldn’t have even made this list. Daredevil and The Punisher, as played by Charlie Cox and Jon Bernthal, went into deep freeze at the conclusion of Netflix’s pact with Disney for a suite of Marvel shows (which Netflix’s Ted Sarandos called “the biggest deal in the history of television”). Ghost Rider bounced from Cage’s coterie of eccentric weirdos (see above) to a multi-episode arc on the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and then seemed to wander the IP hinterlands — until Ryan Gosling made it known in 2022 that he wanted to play the character. Today, Cox has his own Disney+ series (concluding next year, and the only live-action Marvel Studios show to get three seasons); Bernthal got a one-hour TV special, One Last Kill, and a supporting role in one of the biggest superhero movies of all time; and Ghost Rider is getting a full reboot, with Gosling set to play Johnny Blaze in 2028, in a film helmed by his Star Wars: Starfighter director Shawn Levy.

These heroes in a half shell may not be close to the cultural ubiquity they enjoyed in the 1980s and ’90s, but they’ve still endured across film, TV, toys and video games, instantly recognizable to multiple generations for over 40 years. A sequel to the most recent iteration, an animated film series co-written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, will debut next year, and Paramount has dated a live-action film from producer Neal H. Moritz for Thanksgiving 2028. Not bad for an underground comic book that sold 3,000 copies in its first run.

Of the Marvel movies Disney squeezed into the second half of 2021, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was the most welcome surprise, with an almost 3x multiplier and better grosses than Eternals or Black Widow in the fragile, immediately post-pandemic marketplace. But the character’s biggest asset isn’t his mysteriously powerful rings or his ability to pull off a perfectly executed jumping split kick. It’s that Shang-Chi was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, who is now, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one of only six filmmakers to helm a movie that’s grossed over $2 billion worldwide. A Shang-Chi sequel is likely a matter of when, not if.

As founding Avengers, Natasha and Clint are permanently high-value characters — but it’s uncertain when, or if, they’ll next appear. Natasha died in Endgame, and Scarlett Johansson has made it abundantly clear she’s done. So she’s back only if Marvel recasts or Disney convinces ScarJo — who famously sued over lost Black Widow earnings — it’s worth her while. They’ve struggled to make that case to Jeremy Renner, who revealed in 2025 that after his near-fatal 2023 snowplow accident, he turned down a second season of Hawkeye over an offer of half his Season 1 salary: “Did you think I’m only half the Jeremy because I got ran over?” Fences were mended enough for Renner to reprise the role for a theme park ride, but still, yikes.

Tertiary as movie characters, the MCU’s most outré lovebirds — she’s an all-powerful witch, he’s a synthetic being forged from vibranium — became overnight sensations with WandaVision, which earned 23 Emmy nominations, including for Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany. Bettany returns this fall for the sequel series VisionQuest, a likely swan song for the Disney+ era of the MCU. Olsen made a sharp heel turn as the villain of 2022’s Multiverse of Madness before appearing to pulverize herself under Mount Wundagore — though, in the multiverse, is anyone ever really dead? And with Wanda and Vision’s twin sons resurrected as superpowered teenagers (Joe Locke in Agatha All Along, Ruaridh Mollica in VisionQuest), this freaky family’s future feels fortuitously favorable.

If there’s a single culprit for superhero over-saturation in the early 2020s, it’s the runaway success of this ink-black, flesh-eating alien symbiote and his crazed human host, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy). When 2018’s Venom grossed an eye-popping $856.1 million without Spidey anywhere in it, studio execs seemed to think, Well heck, what other comic-book anti-heroes can we put front and center? Unlike Kraven, Morbius, Black Adam, Moon Knight, Agatha Harkness or Peacemaker, however, Venom has been a star in his own right since the 1990s. The franchise has diminished along with superhero cinema overall — 2024’s The Last Dance, billed as a conclusion to the Eddie Brock trilogy, grossed $474.5 million, but there’s plenty of juice left in the character.

Florence Pugh’s playfully formidable performance as Natasha Romanoff’s adopted sister Yelena has been an absolute delight, to the point that Marvel made her the co-lead of Thunderbolts alongside Bucky. Audience enthusiasm, however, has been comparatively tepid. Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk has been a stalwart presence in the MCU, and the big green rage monster has been a pop-culture icon since his 1962 debut. But Universal’s hold on distribution rights has kept Ruffalo from headlining his own solo film — and the character’s previous solo efforts (2003’s Hulk and 2008’s The Incredible Hulk) both underperformed. So if this list had come out in June, these two would’ve ranked lower. But in July, both had memorable encounters with Spider-Man in Brand New Day, instantly boosting their profiles.

Each of these members of Batman’s rogues gallery has established a well-appointed pop-culture fiefdom so firmly that it becomes international news when new actors take on the roles. It barely matters that Zoë Kravitz isn’t returning for The Batman Part II or that Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux is one of the great box-office bombs of the 2020s — both legacies are firmly, perhaps permanently, secure. As for the Penguin, while the chances of Colin Farrell donning over 30 pounds of makeup for a second season of The Penguin are, uh, slim, he is returning for Part II, and his award-winning performance has restored the character to the top echelons of Gotham City villainy.

There was a time when a movie about a superhero who talks to fish was a multi-season joke on Entourage, but at $1.15 billion globally, 2018’s Aquaman is still the highest-grossing DC superhero film ever (unadjusted for inflation). Credit to Jason Momoa’s jacked surfer-dude performance, director James Wan’s go-for-broke visual insanity, and a 2018 debut in what, in hindsight, was the apex year for superhero cinema — all since evaporated in the new DC Universe. But while Wan’s 2023 sequel ended DC’s Snyder-verse era with a whimper, it still earned $124 million domestically from a $27.7 million opening weekend — a 4.5x multiplier, one of the highest here. A lot of people just love this character, which bodes well for whoever next slips on his green tights.

Benched after Ryan Reynolds’ dismal 2011 movie, DC’s corps of emerald-clad superheroes has been revived, rather miraculously, in the new DCU. Nathan Fillion’s truculent Guy Gardner in Superman was the appetizer for Lanterns, which focuses on Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan (the cynical veteran) and Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart (the by-the-book rookie). The premiere conjured one of HBO’s strongest debuts in years and, more crucially, reframed the Green Lanterns as fallible detectives rather than cosmic space cops. The first season is ongoing, so ranking them this high may be premature. But with Gardner and Stewart set to appear in Man of Tomorrow, the show’s critical acclaim and robust ratings have brought the Green Lanterns firmly back into the light.

Even many comics fans weren’t familiar with the Guardians when Marvel handed James Gunn a blockbuster budget to make them household names. Against all odds, he did, three times over, carving out an uncommonly distinctive pocket of the MCU and making Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan and Pom Klementieff into movie stars in the bargain. Kids now wear Gamora, Groot and Rocket costumes for Halloween; the Guardians have their own ride at Disneyland’s California Adventure. Vol. 3 ended with Peter Quill leaving the team, returning to Earth, and an end-credits teaser promising that “the Legendary Star-Lord will return.” So what is Marvel willing to do with the rest of the Guardians without the author of their success?

The superhero satire’s vast ensemble — Butcher, Homelander, Hughie, Starlight, Mother’s Milk, Frenchie, Kimiko, A-Train, The Deep, Soldier Boy, Stormfront, et al. — have all served a singular portrait of what the show sees as America’s headlong spiral into kleptocratic fascism. Beyond the brash spectacle of exploding whales, blood-soaked congressional hearings and the orgiastic Herogasm, each character has provided a gleefully jaundiced counterpoint to the rah-rah superhero culture of the last 25 years. The vulgarity and ultra-violence may not be for everyone, but it sure has been for a crap-ton of people. So with The Boys ending this year — (spoiler alert) killing off its two leads — and collegiate spinoff Gen V canceled after two seasons, it’s up to Vought Rising, the 2027 prequel with Jensen Ackles and Aya Cash, to carry the franchise’s caustic banner.

Before Endgame, these guys — the alpha and omega of Marvel’s Infinity Saga — would have been at the very top of this ranking. But Downey’s Tony Stark, you know, died in that movie; Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers entered his Joe Biden era and handed the shield to his good buddy Sam Wilson. Both actors are returning for Doomsday, Downey as the supervillain of the title, Evans as Rogers without the suit. The Avengers they embodied so well and to such blinding success, however, appear retired for good as leaders of the MCU. Feige has indicated that he’s open to recasting eventually, but to the world, Evans and Downey are Cap and Stark. Good luck to whoever steps into their shoes.

Financially, the X-Men movies are stubbornly B-tier. None of them have ever grossed more than $300 million domestically, or $750 million globally. Yet the gifted mutants at the franchise’s center — Charles Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Storm, Mystique, etc. — have maintained a vigorous cultural presence beyond comic books since the 1990s, starting with the beloved animated series and arcade video games. They boast the most visually dynamic suite of superpowers here. Their fight as a persecuted minority remains as resonant as ever. Had 2000’s X-Men, widely regarded as the beginning of modern superhero cinema, flopped, this would be a much, much shorter list. Their immediate future — a much-lauded presence in Doomsday, a new 2028 cast, Brand New Day as a backdoor prequel — lands them at the bottom of the top of this list.

In 2017, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman shattered the pernicious myth that a woman couldn’t lead a superhero movie, making $823 million worldwide and out-earning 2016’s Batman v Superman domestically. But it shouldn’t have been a shock that a Wonder Woman movie would do so well. She’s stood shoulder to shoulder with Superman and Batman at the peak of DC’s superhero mountain for over 50 years, instantly recognizable around the world. She would rank even higher but for Wonder Woman 1984, best remembered today as a pandemic-release curio that did its star no favors. When someone new takes up Diana Prince’s lasso of truth? The sky’s the limit.

With Tony Stark and Steve Rogers drawing their pensions, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Stephen Strange has emerged as one of the leading figures of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. In the Multiverse of Madness, directed by Sam Raimi, is the highest-grossing Marvel film this decade that doesn’t have “Deadpool” or “Spider-Man” in the title — and Strange played critical roles in No Way Home and Avengers: Infinity War. The master of the mystical arts doesn’t have quite as wide a cultural reach as the characters in the top 10, but he’s on his way, and expected (if as yet unconfirmed) appearances in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars should only broaden his profile.

The sons of Odin, the princes of Asgard, the Noel and Liam Gallagher of the MCU — 14 years after The Avengers, who’d have guessed these gods from Norse mythology would outrank every other character from that epoch-defining superhero blockbuster? To some extent that is simply due to attrition, sure, but Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth have imbued their characters with a depth and humor that have endeared them to global audiences. That said, this is about as high as the duo could hope to reach — Loki’s fantastic Disney+ series has run its course, and Thor’s most recent feature was a haphazard disappointment after the psychedelic heights of Thor: Ragnarok. 

Miles Morales debuted in Marvel comics just 15 years ago, and quickly became one of the company’s most beloved characters. Per Nielsen, from January 2023 through June 2026, Miles’ films accrued more streaming minutes (12.3 billion) than the Spider-Man films starring Andrew Garfield (6.7 billion), Tobey Maguire (8.6 billion), or Tom Holland (10.6 billion). In 2018, Into the Spider-Verse made $190.2 million domestically from a $35.4 million debut — an astonishing 5.4x multiplier, the century’s best for a superhero film by a considerable margin. Across the Spider-Verse doubled the domestic gross, with $381.6 million. With the animated trilogy concluding in 2027, Holland has said “there’s a whole plan” for him to pass the baton and he has “a desire to bring Miles Morales to the screen.” My Spidey sense says Miles’ live-action debut is tantalizingly close.

David Corenswet’s earnest and impassioned take on the Man of Steel last year won over fans and placed the new DCU on solid footing, but even without adjusting for inflation, it made roughly $7 million less worldwide than Henry Cavill’s pugnacious 2013 debut in the blue tights and cape. None of the Superman adaptations of the past 40 years have reached the highest highs of the characters higher on this list. For nearly a century, Superman has been what most people think of when they hear “superhero,” an impression only intensified by Christopher Reeve’s note-perfect performance in 1978’s Superman — the first modern superhero movie. Against the competition, though, the Man of Steel has struggled to keep pace, a bit more mild-mannered and a bit less indestructible. It’s weird to think of Superman as an underdog, so let’s just say the big lug’s still got room to grow.

Seven years after 2017’s Logan, his purported swan song, Hugh Jackman unsheathed his adamantium claws again for Deadpool & Wolverine, and the movie grossed $1.34 billion — at least $500 million more than any other X-Men-related project. No other character on this list has spent more time more closely identified with a single actor than this ageless Canadian with rage issues; while there have been some X-Men Origins-sized bumps in the road, Wolverine has never been more popular. So what happens when someone else plays the part? The 2028 X-Men reboot is cast mostly with actors in their 20s; the new Charles Xavier, Christopher Abbott, is 40. Jackman may be one of the fittest 57-year-olds on the planet, and he keeps hinting that he’s returning for Avengers: Doomsday. Nonetheless, at some point soon he’s going to have to bequeath his mutton chops to someone new.

By drawing inspiration as much from mid-20th century comic books as from modern movies, writer-director Brad Bird’s The Incredibles created an effervescent pastiche of superhero storytelling in 2004 that managed to out-fantastic the Fantastic Four and super-speed past Superman. Fourteen years later, Incredibles 2 brought Bob, Helen, Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack back in one of eight superhero movies premiering that year. It out-grossed all but two of them, with $1.24 billion — making the Pixar release, briefly, the highest-grossing animated film of all time. Incredibles 3 is scheduled to debut in 2028 — the same year as the return of the X-Men, Batman and Black Panther — in a marketplace that has cooled on costumed derring-do. But it would be as foolish as wearing a cape to a turbine factory to bet against the Parr family. 

Wade Wilson would be as gobsmacked as anyone to find himself ranked above some of the most storied superheroes of all time. Yet here we are, living in a world in which a relentlessly self-aware, extravagantly profane, prodigiously trigger-happy, borderline-sociopathic narcissist has become one of the biggest movie phenomena of the past 10 years. There’s no denying that the Merc with a Mouth has delivered at the box office, nor that the character has escaped containment into pop culture at large, including within the Disney parks. It’s telling, though, that Ryan Reynolds — the primary architect of Deadpool’s ascension as well as the franchise’s star — was wary of making a third Deadpool movie, and nearly walked away from one until Jackman pitched a team-up. Reynolds seems to understand that Deadpool’s whole thing could easily keel over into worn-out schtick without some kind of counterweight to keep him in balance. When the character does return, he almost certainly won’t be doing it alone.

When Batman turned 75 in 2014, he was everywhere and seemed invincible. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy had just reigned supreme. Fox’s Gotham was diving into Bruce Wayne’s origins and the city that shaped him. The Batman: Arkham games were breaking sales records. And the news that Ben Affleck, fresh from directing best picture winner Argo, would don the cape and cowl broke the internet like a new James Bond. Because, really, Batman is the James Bond of superheroes, refashioned as much by the times as by the man playing him, from the groovy Pow! Zing! camp of the 1960s, to the grim capitalist maximalism of the 1980s, to the anxious post-9/11 sobriety of the 2000s. That malleability lets Batman be the superhero we need and deserve, but the Affleck era tarnished the luster a bit. In 2016’s Batman v Superman and 2017’s Justice League, the world’s greatest detective struggled to assert his primacy on the big screen alongside his DC compatriots for the first time. His circumstances now are weirdly fraught: The sequel to Matt Reeves’ The Batman — which pulled Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader back into his own universe — will take at least six years to arrive, and the delay has kept DC’s most valuable character from being able to join the still-nascent DCU. Still, there’s a reason Marvel stars Scarlett Johansson and Sebastian Stan are moonlighting in Part II as Gotham power couple Gilda and Harvey Dent. When the Bat-phone rings, you answer.

The first superhero film nominated for a best picture Oscar was a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, a transformative act of commerce and of culture. It is impossible, however, to separate the lasting impact of Black Panther from the death of Chadwick Boseman. The shocking twin losses of the actor and the superhero he played compelled Wakanda Forever to become as much of a big screen tribute to Boseman’s T’Challa (at which it succeeded) as a work of comic book spectacle (at which it was less successful). The sequel thrust a character, T’Challa’s brilliant sister Shuri, and an actor, Letitia Wright, into a spotlight they were never meant to occupy. But Boseman himself understood that the real power of Black Panther is in presenting an expansive vision of Black excellence “that exemplified a world that we wanted to see” (to quote Boseman’s SAG Awards acceptance speech for best ensemble). When Ryan Coogler — at this point easily the most powerful filmmaker of his generation — returns to that world for Black Panther III, he’ll have a new actor, David Jonsson (The Long Walk), playing T’Challa’s grown son, and a global audience anxious to discover what new corners of Wakanda he’s yet to uncover.

Of course, of course, it’s Spider-Man. Ever since that radioactive arachnid bit him in 1962, Peter Parker has been popular (with comic book readers, never in his own life). When Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man shattered the domestic opening weekend record with $114.8 million, though, the web-slinger became one of the most valuable characters in Hollywood. Since then, our friendly neighborhood superhero has seen some high highs (Spider-Man 2, the Insomniac video games) and low lows (the dance scene in Spider-Man 3, the overstuffed Amazing Spider-Man 2). Then he joined the MCU, and in contrast to the difficulty Superman and Batman have found with sharing the stage, the character has only grown in stature. Pitting Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s Peter Parkers against a coterie of past Spidey villains vaulted No Way Home over $1.9 billion as a sort of Endgame-style finale for the Sony Spider-Man films. For his next act, rather than somehow go even bigger, Peter swung back down to Earth, shedding much of the fancy MCU webbing for a back-to-basics story that’s grossed $2.45 billion and counting. At a time when Marvel and DC are spending the next 18 months focused on movies engineered to go as big as superhumanly possible (Avengers: Doomsday, Man of Tomorrow, Avengers: Secret Wars), here’s Peter Parker, shooting past everyone with a poignant story about a lovelorn young man desperately trying to do the right thing.