Better Spider-Man 3

-No Venom.

-Sandman's daughter dies, he blames Spider-Man, turns into a Kaiju and goes on a grief-stricken rampage.

-Peter and Harry (inspired by Mary Jane) team up to fight him.

-In the battle, Sandman unintentionally kills Harry. Instead of going for revenge, Peter sees his regret and uses the opportunity to talk Sandman down.

-Sandman turns himself into the police.

There. Much better movie. It all plays so much better with only two villains. Luckily, no Spider-Man movie would ever make the mistake of featuring three villains again.

Official ASM Hater reporting for duty

So the reason I've been thinking of Spider-Man 3 is the realization that, well--in the eyes of Sony, it was a success. They did three villains, so I'm sure they sold three times the amount of action figures. The fact that Sam Raimi's vision was irrevocably compromised and the movie itself rejected by audiences doesn't matter to them. That's why they're doing the same thing in Amazing Spider-Man 2. To them, it's just good business.  So let's hate on this the way God intended--by the numbers.

So the Rhino isn't that big a deal. Apparently, he's more of a cameo, like the bad guy who Bond kills at the beginning of any Bond movie. Spider-Man beats him up, he comes back in Spider-Man Sinister Six to continue being a shit. Fine. I was actually a little interested in how the movie would work with Rhino as Electro's henchman, but sure, that works too.

What doesn't work is the look of the character. When I saw set photos of Paul Giamatti in a mo-cap rig that looked like the cargo loader from Aliens, I was expecting something like Iron Monger with a big horn on its head. Just a huge robotic suit in the shape of an anthropomorphized rhino. Not as faithful to the comics as just finding a huge wrestler, putting him in a costume or mo-cap suit, and going nuts, but fair enough.

I was not expecting to get Rhinox from Beast Wars. Or possibly an Evil Humvee. The design is so cluttered and odd that it's hard to even tell it's meant to be the Rhino. Are those tentacles? Is it Dr. Octopus in a mech suit? What's going on?

Congratulations, Marc Webb. You have messed up "Supervillain named the Rhino" = "Big tough stupid guy who looks like a rhino."

Then we have Green Goblin/Hobgoblin/whatever.

That's pretty much just James Franco's look from Spider-Man 3; "green" (black) armor and not even an attempt to do some sort of facepaint or make-up to justify the goblin thing. But I will admit, Sam Raimi never thought of giving the Green Goblin what every supervillain needs--a hairstyle from Dragonball Z.

How many ways does he have to kill Gwen Stacy? Over NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAND!

Which brings us to Electro, whose look we already know and I actually think is quite fair, considering his comic look is pretty much completely unworkable. He has electric powers, so he has blue skin--that works. Although I do think it's weird that he's wearing a hoodie as part of his supervillain outfit. I know it's become de facto wear for "edgy badass outsider person," the way trenchcoats used to be before the Matrix sequels ruined them for everyone. Andrew Garfield wore a hoodie in the first movie, as did Tom Cruise in that last Mission: Impossible. It's just kind of weird to me that the only example of an edgy badass outsider person wearing one as a villain is... a black guy. Oh, and that raceswapping is impossible when it comes to the hero, but perfectly fine when it's the villain.