I think they tried to do too much.

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2007)

This was a very good film. Spider-Man 3 stays true to the comic with it's depiction of the villains. But I think it tries to cram too much into one film. At two and a half hours, it seems very rushed. And this one film seemed to cover over a decades work of the comic book story arc into one film.
First problem. There are too many villains. You have the second Green Goblin, whose story is pretty much set up for us by the first two films, so we have room for one more. They decided on The Sandman, who is probably the best part of this film, both in it's impressive cgi use, and the great acting of Church. Lastly is Venom, who, in my opinion, deserves a film all to himself. He's pretty quintessential. While the set up for him as accurate, I still feel like they didn't have enough time to really develop how he goes from seemingly normal guy to crazed psychotic supervillan.
I have a distinct feeling that a lot of necessary scenes wound up on the cutting room floor, and probably would have benefited from having more scenes with Eddie Brock, and less with the Mary Jane story arc, which is nice, but at this point it's treading a lot of the same ground from the previous movies.
Nevertheless, it seems to come together pretty well. This is also probably the funniest of the three Spider movies, with some really laugh at loud funny scenes. It also has some pretty strong heartfelt moments, particularly towards the end. Raimi is great at shifting emotions on a whim with this film, which is a sign of a truly good director. I just wish he included more witty banter during the fights. I know he wants the audience to be on the edge of their seat during the action scenes, but come on, it's Spider-Man. He needs more one liners, especially when he's fighting Venom, who usually had the best comebacks.