The thing that's often said about Spider-Man 3 is that it's too overloaded with villians, but to me that's absolutely the least of its problems, and its number of villains isn't really an issue... oh, no... that issue pales in to comparison with...
Gwen Stacey; she is massively misused in this film. She only appears, really, as an avatar Peter uses to make Mary-Jane jealous when they've split. It, frankly, could have been anyone, but that they use Gwen for this just sticks in the craw, when you look at her and Peter's history in the comics. It's just laziness. I guess if you were going to use a character for this purpose, why not the landlord's daughter, Ursula; Peter would still have been being a jerk, but at least it's not Gwen...
Uncle Ben; the whole retconning of who "really" killed Uncle Ben is another thing that sits wrong. It's one of the key parts of the Spidey origin story that the robber who Peter lets run past him, rather than stopping him, is the one who kills Ben. Making him just an accomplice, rather than the killer just feels wrong. What would have happened in a fourth film? It turned out that a resurrected Norman Osborne time traveled in to the past and secretly killed Uncle Ben...?
The Symbiote; for a while it seems that Peter can take off the black costume at will. Certainly there's no build up to him being unable to take it off. That is, until the point at the church where he decides to take it off, and he can't. It's just so sudden, and makes you think there's sections of the film scythed out of it to get the length down.
Sandman; he's out to kill Peter/Spidey, then suddenly, again without any foreshadowing, nor any reason shown on screen, he's all contrite and remorseful, and tells the "true" story about what happened to Uncle Ben. Just made me groan... and then he flies off looking like a sandy version of the smoke monster from Lost.
I can't help but think the script needed another draft or two to iron out some of these issues...
This is clearly the weakest of the Raimi films, but it's not entirely without its good points. We get a satisfying end to Harry Osborne's storyline, which ran through the whole trilogy; it's a fairly standard redemption arc here, but it's handled rather well, and that's probably largely down to the performances.
JK Simmons is again great, but here there seems to be less of him than in previous films. Still, better than nowt. And again we see Dr Curt Connors, which is more clear foreshadowing as to where the series would have gone had we got a fourth Sam Raimi movie. I wonder if The Lizard not being in this film was because it would have meant three "scientist's experiment goes wrong turning him in to a super villain" movies in a row?
Whatever, it seems obvious that Raimi would have had The Lizard in a Spidey movie sooner or later had this series continued (I'm sure I read they were planning up to six of them!). And... let's not forget the little bit of the symbiote that Dr Connors had in his laboratory...
Overall, it was a pretty decent trilogy, just let down by its final part; still, the first of the reboots looms large... and Dr Connors - albeit a different actor - will get his chance to shine!
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