*UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD!*

I do feel Spider-Man 3 got a bit too harsh reviews, because it's a solid film despite its flaws.

Although I was initially skeptic about the deal with three villains, it turned out to work surprisingly well. Of course it doesn't quite have the charm of concentrating on just one villain (which worked marvellously particularly in the wonderful Spider-Man 2), but it did work nevertheless.

I have to tip my hat to the script writer for connecting all the storylines as well as developing most of the characters the best he could. The Sandman is a tragic character although he should've been highlighted a bit more. The New Goblin is also a sympathetic character with some nice analogues, and overall I feel the character was treated properly. Although Venom doesn't quite have as much screentime as the others (and I do feel they should've included more stuff for Brock and Venom just to establish their symbiotic relationship), it works for the most part.

The plot of the movie is basically in three acts, all emphasizing a different aspect of the story. The first one is 'Hubris' where various characters (including the good guys like Peter and MJ) are in a sense 'drifting apart' and particularly in Spidey's story becoming somewhat arrogant.

This leads to the wonderfully tragic 'Fall from Grace' where everything seems to go wrong in Peter's life and which the symbiote takes advantage of, leading into disastrous results (the goofy scenes are a good contrast to the ominous scenes where Peter under the influence of the black suit brutally beats up both the Sandman and Harry and 'gets back' at MJ with Gwen).

The third act, 'Redemption' is the least developed of the three acts and would've definitely needed more length despite the already lengthy running time of the movie itself. The church scene and the birth of Venom is a wonderful tribute where things start to click together, but the end result is still a bit too jumbled to work as well as it should. Although the ending scenes are satisfactory and wonderfully downbeat as opposed to the endings of the two previous movies, I was left yearning for more because some characters just weren't developed as well as they should've been.

There were some annoying scenes (those kids and that annoying reporter), and some things were lazily explained or not explained at all and some characterization was missing, but for the most part the story resonated in me. However, many of the action scenes were breathtaking, and the final battle worked surprisingly well although it wasn't quite as powerful emotionally as the other final battles in the previous movies.

I was somewhat disappointed that the score itself turned out as confusing as some of the elements of the storyline. Although Danny Elfman's themes were used when appropriate, Christopher Young's material just didn't mix well with Danny's style (not to mention Young's stuff usually became a bit too overdramatic although the compositions themselves were quite exciting). Things weren't that better when additional music was written by the likes of John Debney and Deborah Lurie, and the mix didn't work as well as it did in SM2 where Danny composed most of the score. Still, the score wasn't a complete loss, but it's annoying in a sense that it could've been so much more.

All in all Spider-Man 3 doesn't reach the emotional heights of Spider-Man 2 but it does get to the level of Spider-Man 1 for the most part. I feel that for the most part it's a fitting end to the trilogy, but I hope that for future installments they'll only concentrate on one villain in order to preserve the narrative and give characters needed character development.