The worldwide gross for one Spider-Man movie was so large that it surpᴀssed the total box office of all other MCU movies released in the same year combined. This isn’t too surprising, given Spider-Man’s incredible popularity both within and outside comic book fandom, but the scale is pretty mind-boggling.

The echelons of the MCU’s highest-grossing movies are dominated by the Avengers, with Avengers: Endgame being the franchise’s highest-grossing movie to date. The $2.7 billion global box office was, at the time, the highest of all time before James Cameron’s Avatar reacquired the crown after a second theatrical release.

Such movies are often helped by the fact that they are ensemble productions featuring a litany of popular characters buoyed by their solo franchises. Seeing such characters as Iron Man and Captain America starring alongside one another is traditionally a consistent money-spinning strategy that the MCU has since struggled to replicate with the absence of Avengers movies in the Multiverse Saga.

Spider-Man’s success, therefore, speaks to the singular popularity of that character. Nevertheless, his most successful movie to date was itself an ensemble piece that MCU fans continue to hold in high regard. Much higher, in fact, than the solo ventures of both new and veteran MCU stars, as 2021 illustrated.

Spider-Man: No Way Home Is One Of The Most Successful Superhero Movies Of All Time

It Grossed Nearly $2 Billion Worldwide

Spider-Man: No Way Home rocked the MCU to its core when it capitalized on the implications of the Multiverse Saga. After trailers revealed it would feature Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, suspicions that he would be joined by Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker were ultimately vindicated when it was released on December 15, 2021.

With Spider-Man: No Way Home starring beloved Peter Parker actors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, it is no real surprise that it ultimately grossed $1.9 billion worldwide according to The Numbers. This makes it the MCU’s third-highest-grossing movie behind Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War, with The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron rounding out the top five.

In addition to surpᴀssing the box office of two Avengers movies, the nearly $2 billion gross makes Spider-Man: No Way Home one of the highest-grossing superhero movies of all time. To help illustrate this, only a handful of superhero movies outside the MCU have even surpᴀssed the $1 billion mark.

This includes Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, which each grossed just over $1 billion apiece, and the DCEU’s Aquaman, which grossed $1.1 billion when it was released in 2018. While other MCU movies dominate the highest-grossing superhero movies list, however, others that were released in 2021 don’t come close to this success.

Spider-Man: No Way Home Beats Every Other 2021 MCU Movie’s Box Office Combined By A Staggering Amount

The MCU Released 4 Movies In 2021

2021 was an interesting year for the MCU following a fallow 2020 as it ostensibly launched into the Multiverse Saga. While Spider-Man: Far From Home was technically the final movie of the Infinity Saga, the Multiverse Saga opened with WandaVision in January 2021.

Ascertaining the financial success of MCU shows is difficult, but 2021 also played host to three more movies. These included Black Widow in July, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in September, and Eternals in November. This makes 2021 the MCU’s most populated year for theatrical releases.

Nevertheless, none of these movies grossed even half as much as Spider-Man: No Way Home. Despite being critically acclaimed and generally loved by audiences, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings grossed just $430 million worldwide, which was the second-highest box office result of that year.

Eternals, meanwhile, did not fare so well critically and ultimately grossed just $400 million worldwide. Black Widow, however, was the lowest-grossing MCU movie of 2021 with a $380 million worldwide gross, making it the MCU’s fourth-lowest-grossing movie overall.

While Spider-Man: No Way Home was always going to be the most successful MCU movie of that year, it ultimately surpᴀssed the total box office of all other MCU movies in 2021 combined by around $700 million. This, on its own, is around the same ballpark as the global box office for Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Doctor Strange​​​​​​.

Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Box Office Is Higher Than Every 2021 Marvel Movie Added Together

Another Marvel Movie Was Also Released In 2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home was the highest-grossing movie of 2021 by some margin, according to Box Office Mojo, beating the next-highest-grossing movie, The Battle at Lake Changjin, by more than $1 billion. The year wasn’t exactly devoid of high-profile Hollywood blockbusters either, with No Time To Die grossing $774 million worldwide.

2021 also played host to a non-MCU Marvel movie that fared respectably at the box office: Venom: Let There Be Carnage. This second installment in the now-defunct Sony Spider-Man Universe grossed $506 million worldwide, making it that year’s seventh-highest-grossing movie.

Nevertheless, even when adding Venom: Let There Be Carnage‘s global box office to the sum total of every other MCU movie that year, it still only amounts to around $1.7 billion, which is $200 million short of Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s result. This incredible success goes to show just how popular the Spider-Man IP is, in addition to other revelations.

Why Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Box Office Is So Much Higher Than Every Other 2021 Marvel Movie

Other 2021 Characters Weren’t As Popular

Spider-Man: No Way Home expertly capitalized on the newly introduced multiverse in the MCU as well as the money-spinning nostalgia of legendary Spider-Man actors. This includes the collection of villains that starred in Spider-Man: No Way Home, with Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin being two of the most fondly remembered.

Spider-Man’s bankable IP isn’t exclusively responsible for the gulf in box office results, however. The remaining MCU movies in 2021 boast relatively modest box offices that sit on the lower end of the scale with regard to overall MCU box office results. In fact, all three sit among the ten lowest-grossing movies in the MCU’s history.

This is partly thanks to the fact that both Shang-Chi and the Eternals were brand-new MCU characters, whereas Spider-Man is among the most illustrious MCU characters. Thor’s debut movie, for instance, only grossed just over $10 million more than Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings due to his comparative lack of star power at the time.

Black Widow, meanwhile, was only given a short theatrical run before landing on the newly minted Disney+. All of this helped to make Spider-Man’s biggest cinematic success even more stark by comparison, which any future MCU installment is also going to struggle to beat.

Source: The Numbers, Box Office Mojo