Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossed a threshold no superhero film had managed before, crossing $360 million in its opening weekend to dethrone Avengers: Endgame as the biggest domestic debut in cinema history. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, it is Tom Holland’s fourth solo outing as Peter Parker and the start of what producers have confirmed will be a new trilogy. Few characters in cinema history have earned that kind of longevity — and fewer still have done it by reinventing themselves with every passing decade.Tom HollandThe story starts in 1967, with Canadian voice actor Paul Soles giving Peter Parker his very first voice in a modestly animated American network cartoon that ran for three seasons. The show was rough around the edges — its awkward little pauses have since become internet folklore, but it planted something that would prove impossible to uproot. Nicholas Hammond then became the first actor to wear the mask in live action, starring in an American network series from 1977 to 1979.Animation carried the character through the 1980s, with Ted Schwartz and then Dan Gilvezan voicing Peter Parker across two separate series in 1981. Christopher Daniel Barnes then delivered what many consider the defining animated version, voicing the character from 1994 to 1998 in a series an entire generation grew up quoting. In between all of it, devoted fan Dan Poole was quietly making his own micro-budget Spider-Man films, once performing a four-storey rope swing himself purely for the love of it.Then came 2002, and everything changed scale. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire, turned the friendly neighbourhood hero into a global blockbuster phenomenon, followed by two sequels in 2004 and 2007.Tobey MaguireAndrew Garfield picked up the role next, bringing a sharper wit and fresh energy to The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 and its 2014 sequel. Holland arrived after that, debuting as a wide-eyed teenager in Captain America: Civil War in 2016 before leading Homecoming in 2017, Far From Home in 2019 and appearing in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame along the way. No Way Home in 2021 then brought all three film-era Spider-Men together on screen — a moment that felt less like fan service and more like a reunion nobody knew they needed.Andrew GarfieldAnimation, meanwhile, carved out a universe entirely its own. Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 opened with Chris Pine as Miles Morales’ ill-fated Peter Parker before handing the film to Jake Johnson’s older, out-of-shape, deeply human Peter B. Parker — a performance warm enough to anchor the 2023 sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Hudson Thames voiced a variant in Marvel’s What If…? in 2021, while Benjamin Valic and, since 2024, Alkaio Thiele have taken the role into preschool territory with Spidey and His Amazing Friends.Six decades. Over a dozen performers. One character that somehow never gets old.