Director Sam Raimi is convinced that Spider-Man fans still “hate” him for “messing up” the third Spider-Man movie.
Spider-Man 3, which starred Tobey Maguire, was released in 2007 with hundreds of negative reviews. Many critics acalled the movie a “mess”, and “hastily assembled from a bargain rack of lesser movies”. Raimi now admits he made several mistakes with the movie and he blames himself for making a crappy movie.
He tells Nerdist.com, “Working in that big-budget arena, with so much at stake, with much-beloved characters that Stan Lee created, people really hold them so dear to them that you don’t want to mess up, and I messed up with that third Spider-Man.
“People hated me for years. They still hate me for it… 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, and so that can’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.”
Raimi admitted that he considered splitting the movie in two after he started prdouction and had doubts about the character of Venom, played by Topher Grace, but he eventually gave up on the idea when he could not decide where to end the potential first film.
He continues, “I think (raising the stakes) 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.”
Despite the negative reviews, the third film in his Spider-Man franchise was the biggest at the box office, grossing $891 million worldwide.
Director Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield have since rebooted the superhero in the films The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There are rumors circling around suggesting another Spider-Man reboot to start production in the next five years.
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