Aaaagh! Too--many--villains. Please. 2 and 1/2 is enough.

Rating: 9/10 (4 May 2007)

SM3 was a long movie, and with good reason. It translates to the big screen epic plots that had a large amount of buildup to work with to establish their depth. Translating these plots to the big screen usually means condensing a lot of it into a short space. Sadly, SM3 tries to do that, and craft five different story lines around 5 different characters.
There's Mary Jane, there's Peter Parker/Spider Man, there's Harry Osborn, there's Sandman and there's Eddie Brock. All five of the main cast are dynamic characters. Dynamic characters are characters that go through changes of circumstance and/or character in a movie; as opposed to static characters who go through the movie relatively unchanged. SM3 suffers from trying to give all 5 of these characters spotlight and ultimately, you don't know who the movie is really about or who is supposed to be the most important.
The real reason the movie suffers is because all 3 villains try to fill the niche of being Spider-Man's arch-nemesis, and when all three try to take center stage, there ends up being no lead villain. This mirrors Spider-Man's situation from the comics where he's got Doctor Octopus, Venom and Green Goblin each vying for the top spot of Spider-Man's all-time nemesis. But at least in the comic books, you can devote arcs to each individual villain. When you stuff 3 cats into the same bag and give them one mouse to fight over, you end up with what SM3 comes out with: a hero flying blindly into piles of sand and web.
The only redeeming aspects of the movie come at the final half where the plot threads finally start to come together and it feels like we're reading a single comic book again rather than putting down one in the middle of reading it only to pick up a different issue.
Any longer and this movie would have thrown The Lizard/Curt Conners into the mix.