Spider-Man 3
With Venom, starring Tom Hardy, on the way, it’s worth revisiting the symbiote’s first outing on the big screen. Spider-Man 3 is often blasted for its treatment of the Venom storyline, as well as just being an all-round lesser effort than Spider-Man 2. Well, while it’s true that it doesn’t live up to its predecessor, most of the criticisms leveled at the film aren’t all that fair.
Topher Grace isn’t the comics’ Eddie Brock, sure, but Sam Raimi clearly had an alternate vision for Eddie as a sleazier mirror of Peter Parker, which Grace is the right pick for. Complaining about Tobey Maguire’s dorky dancing as embarrassing is also pretty redundant, as the scenes are clearly intended to be moments of cringe comedy that you watch through fingers (think David Brent’s moves in The Office). And as for how Venom is reduced to a last-minute, third act threat, we’d like to play devil’s advocate here: isn’t that also true of Two-Face in The Dark Knight?
Despite the initial plans for a Spider-Man 4, this film actually closes the trilogy in the perfect way, ending with the death of a long-running character and leaving Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s romance in an ambiguous place, which only makes sense for the couple who were continuously flip-flopping.