Following the massive success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which currently ranks as the sixth highest-grossing movie ever made and one of the best-reviewed releases of last year, fans began mobilizing in an effort to drum up support for the idea of having Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire reunite for the one that got away.
We are of course talking about the abandoned fourth installment in their Spider-Man franchise, which went so far as to cast Anne Hathaway as Felicia Hardy and John Malkovich as Vulture before the plug was pulled. There’s a ton of people who’d love to see it dusted off and thrown back into development as a result of the No Way Home effect, but it can’t be forgotten how much the diehards abhorred the third installment.
Spider-Man 3 might not be as awful as you remember, or even as bad as you’ve been led to believe by the internet, but the blockbuster sequel has a huge number of problems. Raimi didn’t even try to hide the fact he wasn’t interested in Venom at all, while there’s simply too much going on, and not enough of it is worthy of your time and/or attention.
It did make $890 million at the box office, but Spider-Man 3 also holds a measly Rotten Tomatoes user rating of just 51%, positively dire by the standards of a genre that’s always given a lot more leeway by the intended target audience.
The film may not have been reappraised as an unsung gem quite yet, but it is making a splash on Netflix. As per FlixPatrol, Spider-Man 3 is currently the unlucky 13th most-watched feature on the platform, and there might even be subscribers seeing it for the first time.
