When it released back in 2007, shackled with a weighty expectation off the back of its acclaimed predecessor, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 proved to be somewhat of a misfire. Cluttered with too many villains and poorly conceived plot threads, Tobey Maguire’s third outing as the friendly neighbourhood web-slinger was a damp squib on the biggest of scales.
And now, almost eight years after its release in theaters, Raimi has looked back in retrospect at the much-maligned threequel, claiming that “he messed up plenty.” Here’s what the director had to say when he appeared on the Nerdist podcast:
It’s a movie that just didn’t work very well. I tried to make it work, but I didn’t really believe in all the characters, so that couldn’t be hidden from people who loved Spider-Man. If the director doesn’t love something, it’s wrong of them to make it when so many other people love it. […]
I think [raising the stakes after Spider-Man 2] was the thinking going into it, and I think that’s what doomed us. I should’ve just stuck with the characters and the relationships and progressed them to the next step and not tried to top the bar. I think that was my mistake.
When it comes to Spider-Man 3, Raimi now joins an ever-growing list of detractors. It was a superhero film that proved to be an overstuffed mess, and one that undermined the excellent work that the filmmaker had achieved with the first and second movies. As many of you will surely remember, Raimi exited Spider-Man 4 when it was still simmering in development, which then led Sony to reboot the franchise from the ground up and place Andrew Garfield in the superhero guise. And given the current status of the Spider-Man franchise, it could well be that Sony will hit the hard reset button again before long.
Tell us, what do you think about Sam Raimi’s comments regarding Spider-Man 3? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.