10 Awful Movie Retcons That Pissed Off Everybody

2. With Great Backstory Comes Great Responsibility - Spider-Man 3

The Sandman

As if a plot about The New Goblin wasn’t enough. As if a shoehorned third act Venom wasn’t overkill already. The powers that be thought a thrown in Sandman would jazz up Tobey Maguire’s third outing as the webslinger. And to top it all off, forget about that guy from Spidey 1, this is Uncle Ben’s actual killer.

In making such a drastic plot change, the series defining concept of great power coming with great responsibility is sabotaged. Peter not stopping the thief in the first film no longer matters. Uncle Ben died at the hands of a 3rd party Peter never met. In turn, it ruins Peter's lesson and makes him a bloodthirsty killer in hindsight.

After totally ruining the (much better) previous films, it all ends with Peter quietly watching Sandman fly away after a spot of unlikely forgiveness. Forgiveness despite the ferocious fights between the two, the death of Uncle Ben and the still fresh demise of Harry Osborne. What wound up happening to Sandman? We’ll never know, we’ll never know for any of the original Spidey film characters since it all got rebooted in 2012 and then re-rebooted in 2016.