Has Spider-Man 3 been vindicated by history?
As a writer of and on films, I never limit my frame of reference on something to a single source or random website — and especially TV Tropes — as a be-all end-all of film criticism. One example being when TV Tropes claimed that Spider-Man 3 was “vindicated by history”, for that it’s supposedly looked at more kindly after the Marc Webb duology and the characters’ inclusion in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Was it?
Like the Star Wars Prequels, there’s a substantial fandom for Spider-Man 3 and Raimi’s films — a lot of which is built from memes and YouTube videos made by young film fans who grew up with them. Despite this I can’t help but notice that 3 is still by and large considered a disappointment, if not down-right failure, by other fans. Much of the praise for it is half-hearted (“Yeah it wasn’t perfect, but it’s emotional.”) or ironic (“Hey it’s got fun memes.”). Like The Godfather Part III and Game of Thrones Season 8, it suffers from dramatically lower critic ratings than its predecessors; the critics apparently haven’t turned back around on it as they did for The Empire Strikes Back. Spider-Man 3 hasn’t been thought of by them like Spider-Man 2, which was on over 130 top 10 lists in North America for 2004 — including being one of the earliest superhero films to be honored by the American Film Institute. So for Spider-Man 3 being vindicated by history — No, I don’t buy it.
