Spider-Man 3 is a great movie despite heavy criticism

Rating: 10/10 (8 May 2007)

In my opinion Spider-Man 3 is a fantastic movie even though it falls short of the greatness that was Spider-Man 2. If Spider-Man 3 was released ahead of its predecessors as the first Spider-Man it would not have had to deal with such heavy criticism and would have gotten better reviews from the critics. However since this movie is the third installment of the Spider-Man trilogy it had to live up to the greatness that was Spider-Man 2. Therefore the main reason I have decided to even post a comment about this movie is to 1.) Help those who haven't seen the movie get an idea of how great the movie is despite its flaws, and 2.) Rebut other people's views about what was wrong with the movie. A movie is never going to satisfy everyone, and because of that people are going to have complaints.
I would first like to address the complaints about this movie being too crammed with plots, characters, and so on. This is true, to a degree. One of the things that helped make the first two Spider-Man movies so great was the fact that they could end the movie with some unanswered questions, there was no need to tie up all the loose ends because the next movie would do that. However Spider-Man 3, which is suppose to be the final Spider-Man, movie had the weight of all the unanswered questions from the first two movies which needed to be answered in this final installment. Not only does Spider-Man 3 have to tie up all the loose ends from the previous movies but it also introduces 2 new villains, a new pretty girl, Peter Parker personal demons, plus competition at the Daily Bugle. With all that said it sounds like too much right??? Wrong!!! It's almost too much. Although this movie does have a lot going on, director Sam Raimi does a fantastic job of juggling all the plots, characters, and action sequences to allow for everything to tie together beautifully in the end. I personally would rather have a movie that had a lot going on in it than not enough. I have been to movies where I felt that there wasn't enough going on and wished that they had error on the side of putting too much into the movie than not enough. Regardless Spider-Man 3 sets the bar for how much you can stuff into a movie and still have it be a great movie.
On another note some even feel that some of the characters in the movie (like Venom) needed more time to develop. Ironically those who I have heard complain about there not being enough character development are those who are die hard Spider-Man fans and already know everything there is to know about the characters. These people are being picky and unreasonable. If you wanted more in depth character development you are looking at splitting Spider-Man 3 (which remember is "suppose" to be the last one) into two movies rather than just the one, and I'm willing to bet that if they did split Spider-Man 3 into two different movies someone would be complaining that they could have combined the two movies into one. For those who are unaware of the characters prior to watching the movie or those who have never read a Spider-Man comic book, there is plenty of character development for every character in the movie. Now could there have been more character development, Yes, but there doesn't need to be more character development not only because of time constraints of how long a movie is expected to be but also because it would simply be a waste of time.
Yes Spider-Man 3, even though a great movie just how it is, could have lived up to the high expectations from movie critics by ousting either the Sandman or Venom which would have given more time to the villain kept, however director Sam Raimi isn't as concerned about the critics as he is the fans. Director Sam Raimi was NOT even going to have Venom in this movie; however the pressure from the big wigs over him kept pushing for Venom to be in the movie because of the loyal fans out there that wanted to see Venom on the silver screen. Lets just say for the sake of arguing that one of the villains was omitted from the movie. I personally feel that the movie would have had the "been there done that" feeling with just the one bad guy. Spider-Man fighting just one villain again would have been too mundane for me. Not only would it have been too mundane but it only seems logical that after the first two villains failed at beating Spidey one on one, that the next super-villain would want to out number Spidey to increase their odds of winning. Plus I sometimes like it when the odds are heavily against the super hero but yet the hero finds a way to prevail.
Now I could go on and on about how this movie has been unfairly judged but I will save you, the reader, the time and just tell you that the plots the characters, basically everything in the movie (despite some rushed CGI animation which all together is fantastic)is still solid and Spider-Man 3 is definitely worth seeing.