5) Spider-Man 3 – The Real Reason Marko Shot Uncle Ben
Spider-Man 3 had its problems, no one can deny that. It was tangled up with a bunch of plot threads, had an inconsistent tone, and ended up rushing through the narrative in order to fit everything in its 2.5 hour runtime.
Adding to this was the retcon of Spider-Man’s classic origin story. Instead of a random burglar killing Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, it was changed to being a partner of the burglar’s named Flint Marko. As police captain George Stacy divulges, Marko murdered Ben in cold blood in order to gain access to his car for a getaway.
This alteration hurt the original Spider-Man as it removed the fact that it was technically Peter that was responsible for his Uncle’s death by letting the thief get away. Regardless, this was one aspect of Spider-Man 3 that director Sam Raimi chose to follow all the way through, and if viewers stuck with him, they would see that there was a plot twist to all this.
Following the epic battle between Spidey, Harry Osborn, Venom, and Marko’s supervillain alter ego Sandman, Parker and Marko have a final conversation where he reveals that the events regarding Uncle Ben’s shooting were actually an accident. Ben was trying to convince Marko to walk away from all this, and almost succeeded till Marko saw his partner running up to him, panicked and pulled the trigger.
As a result, his life was permanently ruined and now all he has left is his sick daughter. The twist turned Marko from a conventional killer to a man who was the victim of circumstances, and that’s something that Spider-Man 3 deserves to be praised for.
