Equally impressive is the introduction of The Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), which allowed the film to produce some truly spectacular special effects and another set of memorable fights with Spider-Man. I even enjoyed the new black costume (even if the introduction of the alien symbiote was rushed and sloppy), along with the themes of what happens when the great power that makes Peter Parker act so responsibly becomes too much power that corrupts.

If you were to stop the movie here, after Spidey has taken down Sandman for the first time, and dealt with Harry at his house, and take a break for a bit (as I did when rewatching it to go to sleep), you'd probably still be in high spirits and have good expectations for the movie going forward. Sadly, this is where the movie falls apart, rather spectacularly, rendering all that came before it forgotten and replaced with the horrifying image of Disco Pete.

Having Peter Parker Saturday Night Fever his way up the street and perform a dance number in a club as a means to show off his dark side was one of the worst calculations in a previously successful franchise since Jar Jar Binks. There's a tight balance in superhero movies, where you want to capture the fun and adventure of the subject matter, but still need to treat the material seriously. Because if you don't, everything about the project will then seem stupid, because, well, these stories aren't exactly above reproach. Costumed men do battle after being bitten by radioactive spiders, or falling into scientific experiments. It's easy for these things to feel ridiculous, so it's paramount that the filmmakers avoid doing things that make them feel overtly ridiculous.

It's fine to have jokes in a superhero movie, but you can't make a joke of the movie itself, and that's what Sam Raimi does here. The sequence is a joke, Peter Parker is a joke, and the rest of the movie feels like a joke. It never recovers from this moment, as the rest of the movie crashes together in the big rush to squeeze in one more villain into a final act that should have dedicated to wrapping up the stories it had already effectively introduced.

Which brings us to the movie's biggest flaw. Sure, the dance sequence stands out, but the film could have recovered from it. But the fatal flaw of the film comes when Raimi's effective movie about the resolution of Peter Parker's trilogy-wide rivalry with Harry Osbourne and the challenge of the Sandman is forced to also become a movie about Venom. This goes beyond the fact that cramming a movie with this many big characters is never a good idea, and more about the simple fact that Sam Raimi was never interested in making a movie about Venom, and it shows.