A hero is nothing without the villains they face, and few rogues’ galleries are more compelling than Spider-Man’s. The pantheon of baddies who’ve gone toe-to-toe with the friendly neighborhood webhead is so extensive and memorable that many of them have gone on to star in their own solo comic-book series. Thanks to Sony Pictures, some of those foes have even had enough juice to become leads in their own movies. Following the success of Venom, Sony’s pumped out solo flicks for Morbius and now Kraven the Hunter, which arrives on December 13 after being delayed.
As iconic as Kraven is, however, there are still a bunch of Spider-villains that are more well-suited to having their own solo movies. How did we end up with a full-length film about a hunter with daddy issues before Doctor Octopus, who has been terrorizing Spider-Man on film for 20 years, got a starring role? Why waste Donald Glover on a glorified Easter egg version of Prowler? Why are we acting like Kingpin doesn’t do more than fight the blind lawyer dressed up as a demon? We need answers, but we’ll take feature films instead.
To make our case, we’ve rounded up the nine best candidates for their own time in the spotlight, along with some ideas about what kind of genre movie they should star in. If you’re familiar with Spider-Man’s foes, you’ll know a lot of these—and likely agree with us. Our picks, below.