10 Terrible Threequels That Ruined A GREAT Trilogy

10. Spider-Man 3

Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man was at the forefront of Hollywood's superhero boom in the early 2000s, but Spider-Man 2 was basically an improvement in every single way.

The sequel elevated the stakes, brought greater emotional dimension to the central characters, and delivered an all-timer villain for comic book cinema in Alfred Molina's Doc Ock.

But as is so often the problem with a legendary second movie, it becomes so damn difficult to top or even match it the next time. And so, like so many horrid threequels, Spider-Man 3 ended up grossly overegging the pudding.

The film's most-cited issue is its excess of villains, hurling Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church), Venom (Topher Grace), and New Goblin (James Franco) into the mix and ultimately struggling to pay off any of them satisfactorily.

It's no secret that Raimi was basically strong-armed into including Venom in the film against his will, and boy it shows.

Elsewhere there are atrocious retcons like making Sandman the killer of Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson), and awkward tonal shifts which, while clearly intentional, rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way.

A concluding Spider-Man movie in which the web-slinger battled Venom or Sandman sounded great on paper, but we ended up with a chaotic melange of ideas, characters, and tones that felt frankensteined together in post-production.