Welcome to the newest edition of "Andy makes amends for a bad review". After reassessing Fantastic Four last week, I decided that it was time for me to reassess another glaring mistake on my reviewing resume: the time I gave Spider-Man 3 3.5 stars. In my defence, one of the reasons I went that high on the movie was because it was at least as good as Fantastic Four, so since I biffed that review, the mistake carried forward. (The lesson here is for me to ignore the outliers in my reviews, lest I go back and fix every mistake in my index).

The thing of it is, subtract the score at the end, and the overall positive tone of the review, and I wasn't that far off. I identified the problems of the film; yet for some reason, couldn't drop the hammer on it. Part of this is a lesson in expectations. Sometimes when you get too excited for a movie, your expectations are impossible to meet. But sometimes the opposite happens: you get so excited for something that you refuse to accept when it fails to meet your expectations. You wanted to like it so much that you just do. I'm guessing this is what happened to Matrix or Star Wars fans who refuse to accept the terminal shittiness of their respective sequels or prequels. And I'm guessing it's what happened to me.

Because pretty much since the moment I typed the last period on that review, my estimation of this movie has been dropping. The bad parts became more pronounced in my memory, while the good parts faded away.

And yes, there were good parts, even if you're too busy remembering Peter Parker dancing, or Kirsten Dunst singing, or the complete waste of the Venom character to realize it. In fact, I'd argue that the first 90 minutes of the 139 minute movie were pretty good, and had the film continued down that path, it would have been a successful venture. The opening battle between Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker and James Franco's Harry Osborn compares favourably to big moments from the earlier two films, with both characters flying through the New York skyline in a fight that shows the three-dimensional nature of Spider-Man fights. Even better, it shows how, while it might be cool to Spider-Man, it still sucks to be Peter Parker, who must balance his need to survive the attack with his need to not lose the engagement ring his Aunt May just gave him, all the while trying to defeat a friend without hurting him too badly.