12 Times Terrible Acting Ruined Potentially Great Movies

1. Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 remains one of the most highly-anticipated superhero movies of all time, which made it all the more painful when it spectacularly bungled Spidey's (Tobey Maguire) battle against fan favourite villain Venom (Topher Grace).

Grace is just woefully miscast as Eddie Brock, who was traditionally a confident and physically imposing foil to Peter Parker in the comics, but here is played by...Eric Forman from That '70s Show? OK.

Grace is fundamentally the wrong actor to play Brock and seeing his totally non-threatening face underneath the peeled-back symbiote is borderline laughable. He makes Venom less a ferocious monster and more an irritating douchebag.

That's not to forget that Maguire gives his worst performance of the series in this movie - granted, he had his worst material to work with - while Kirsten Dunst is once again left to flail with nothing interesting to do, and James Franco goes full cringe when eating a pie ("So good"). Enough said.

In fact, the only actor who really delivered on expectations was Thomas Haden Church, who did a fine job with Sandman despite the obvious scripting issues.

Above all else, Spider-Man 3 would've been decidedly more entertaining if Sam Raimi, who famously wasn't keen on adapting Venom to the big screen, actually took the casting process seriously and wasn't committed to making the supervillain into a total joke.

Which other movies belong on this list? Share your thoughts below in the comments thread.