7. Spider-Man 3 - $890,871,626
Sam Raimi's third Spider-Man film isn't that awful when judged on its own terms, but when compared to the highly positive reception met by his first two efforts, Spider-Man 3 can't be seen as anything but a disappointing conclusion to a promising trilogy. As with Pirates 3 released the same year, only less severely, the films suffers from an overpopulated cast and numerous storylines and subplots not given satisfactory resolution. Eddie Brock's transformation into Venom is fantastic to observe but occurs far too late in the film to give the audience time to invest in the character before the film's climax, and detracts also from the more emotive, if still slightly lacking, characterisation of Flint Marko/Sandman. Gwen Stacy gets established as a major character early on but then vanishes for almost the entirety of the second half. Much of the film's running-time is also devoted to the turbulent relationship between Peter, Mary Jane, and Harry, resulting in a number of hilariously bad and overdone scenes: Harry's response to being asked how his pie is, so good, before looking out the window to grin wickedly at Peter and then disappearing from view after a truck drives past: Peter's dancing in the night club at which MJ has been forced to work, throwing off his jacket and in doing so blowing back Gwen's hair: Peter's dancing in the street: MJ and Harry dancing in the kitchen....it's fair to say that almost a quarter of the film gets taken up by dancing, all of it terrible. Interestingly, North American box office receipts fell with every film in the Sam Raimi trilogy but Spider-Man 3's international takings somehow managed to dwarf those of it's predecessors by well over $100 million, thus making this inferior third film the most successful of the franchise. Last year's Spider-Man reboot didn't even come close to matching it.