A disappointing possible end to what started out as a good series

Rating: 3/10 (15 March 2008)

Spider-Man is probably my favorite superhero. The first two movies did a good job bringing elements of the comic books and the cartoon I watched as a kid in the 90s to the big screen. This installment though lacked a lot of the things that made the first two really good movies.
At first I thought the whole idea of Sandman and Harry Osborne(aka the new Green Goblin) with Venom thrown in as a surprise out to ruin our hero's life was a good idea for ending this series. However this idea suffers from the lack of character development and goes over the top. The change that Peter's goes through having the symbiote blend with him worked well in the comics but in this movie it feels forced. The change that Peter goes through in the second one deciding not to be Spider-Man and then deciding to go back when he was needed most worked much better. The whole emo Spider-Man thing didn't work well at all and came off as incredibly campy.
I felt like director Sam Raimi tried way too hard to do what he wanted to do and what the fans wanted to see with this one. He should have just left Sandman out because everyone and their mom wanted to see Venom in this one and could care less for Sandman. Peter's personality change could have still worked without the whole Sandman is the alleged killer of his uncle subplot.
Overall Spider-Man 3 despite all of these problems still has a few good qualities to it. The fight scenes are probably among the best in the series and Tobey Maguire still does a decent job playing Spider-Man. Even though this was a disappointing end to the series I hope they don't make anymore of these because it doesn't look like everyone involved in the first three want to do it anymore and I felt like the ending tied up all of the loose ends of the series.