Is Spidey 3 Indicative Of A Bigger Problem With Franchises?

A third movie in a franchise, history tells us, is one of the hardest projects to get right. After Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back somehow George Lucas and Richard Marquand managed to make a lackluster Return of the Jedi that only showed glimpses of the previous two movies. Batman Forever sparked the beginnings of the commercialized Batman movie and totally took it into a kid friendly zone in the mid 90's. Alien 3 is an absolute disaster. Terminator 3 is a comedic joke. Rocky III is a fun but childish movie. X-Men 3 was fun but was ultimately not a fraction of what went before. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, The Matrix Revolutions, The Godfather Part III, Scream 3, Jurassic Park III, Superman III, Home Alone III, Lethal Weapon 3, Austin Powers 3 and so many more struggled to make a good third movie. Look at all those movies above, and what do most of them have in common? They all changed the basic tone and atmosphere of the original movies and went in a direction that ultimately marked their downfall. This weekend, Spider-Man 3 opened and showcased a much darker and problematic version of our superhero in a movie that wasn't made to the quality of the previous two. You can read my review for a more indepth discussion on that. Why did this happen? How could this happen? Why does it happen so regularly with the "third film"? It seems hard to imagine that the studio's would make such a radically different movie after the first two in most of the franchises above were successful and stayed true to the same vision. Why change the path of Spidey 3 when it was working fine? Why add more villains? Why add more secondary characters? Why change Peter Parker in such a radical way? The reason audiences came back for this third movie was because they enjoyed the original two so much, they obviously just wanted to see that type of movie again. Yes there should be progression... obviously. Peter Parker needs to grow (which they didn't do) with every movie and it's not always about him being reluctant to be Spider-Man he should eventually become comfortable with it and more bothered about the terrible things the villian's are doing to the city. The villains do need to get tougher... Yes, but why add so many and do each one an injustice. With Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Shrek the Third set to hit theatres before the end of the month, are both movies set to descend down the same path? Are they going to change the fundamentals and atmosphere of what was working so well for them already in the franchise? You could certainly make a case for the second Pirates movie already doing that to some degree, so the warning signs are most certainly already there. This shitty "third movie" syndrome has to stop and studio's/director's and writers have to become aware that they don't need to produce such a different tale for the third film because that's not what we want to see. We are already invested in your franchise, please don't turn us off it.