Venom may be the wall-crawler with a movie in theaters right now, but the character would have never even come to be without Spider-Man. Despite not appearing in Venom, Spidey has a pretty long history in film, which we cover in the video above.
1977's Spider-Man was fairly popular and acted as a pilot for The Amazing Spider-Man television series that premiered the same year. Several multi-episode arcs were re-edited into two movies, 1978's Spider-Man Strikes Back and 1981's Spider-Man The Dragon's Challenge. Although Spider-Man would return in popular animated series after that--most notably 1981's Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, 1994's Spider-Man, and 1999's Spider-Man Unlimited--Spidey wouldn't show up in a movie again until 2002.
Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man is what truly propelled the wall-crawler into the spotlight. Although the movie changed several details about Spidey's origin story, such as giving him the power to organically create webs from his wrists instead of relying on mechanical web-shooters, the movie is appreciated as one of the best Spider-Man origin stories. 2004's Spider-Man 2 is regarded by many as the best Spidey movie ever made for its phenomenal portrayal of the internal conflict that plagues Peter Parker's life. 2007's Spider-Man 3 was not as positively perceived, and disagreements between Sony and Raimi made sure there would be no Spider-Man 4.
In 2012, Marc Webb would reboot the Spider-Man live-action movie franchise with new versions of Spidey, his friends, and his villains in The Amazing Spider-Man. Despite heavily drawing from the modern day comic's reimagining of the character, which was very popular at the time, The Amazing Spider-Man is not as highly regarded as Raimi's Spider-Man. Webb's follow-up, 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, suffered from the same problem as Raimi's Spider-Man 3--too many underdeveloped villains. Webb would never get the chance to do The Amazing Spider-Man 3, which was set to pit Spidey against The Sinister Six.
Spider-Man wouldn't be gone for very long, though. The character was rebooted in the live-action movies again, this time to fit into Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe. After briefly appearing in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, this new Peter Parker would get his own standalone movie in 2017 called Spider-Man: Homecoming. This version of Spidey will return in 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home. In 2018, a different, older version of Peter Parker will show up in the animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a mentor figure for Miles Morales, the Spider-Man from a different universe.
Although we were hopeful Venom would be able to stand on his own without Spider-Man, we were not impressed by Venom. In our Venom review, Michael Rougeau writes, "Venom has all the ingredients of a decent superhero movie--10 or 15 years ago. With spotty CGI, poorly drawn characters, tonal inconsistency including forced 'edginess' and awkward humor, sidelined female characters, and even cringeworthy licensed musical cues, it feels like a relic from the distant, pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe past."