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It's as if a rule exists in Hollywood that as a franchise progresses, subsequent sequels must lose the luster that attracted audiences to its initial installments. While there are a few exceptions along the way, many franchises like Batman, Superman, The Matrix and The X-Men movies slowly but surely degrade by the third and fourth sequels. The reason for this phenomenon is simple; studios want to attract the widest possible audience with their initial effort, establishing a successful formula while showcasing their best and most substantial content right out of the gate. As the first of the major 2007 summer blockbusters swinging into theaters, Spider-Man 3 proves without a doubt that rules are meant to be broken.

For web-heads, the long three-year wait since the last Spider-Man epic has finally come to an end. While director Sam Raimi fell just short of matching his franchise best with Spider-Man 2, the series' third installment casts such a big web that the balancing act the filmmaker achieves is nothing short of amazing.
Picking up where the last film left off, Peter Parker is on top of the world. A peaceful New York City loves him, his girlfriend, Mary Jane, is finally headlining her first Broadway production and the webslinger couldn't be more content. Of course things can't always be so easy, especially for a hero that seems to constantly get picked on by the series' founder Sam Raimi.

With the emergence of not one, not two, but three new super villains, Raimi has stacked the deck against our friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man. To top that off, Mary Jane's acting career takes a turn for the worse and her newfound jealousy of Peter's beautiful, new lab partner, Gwen Stacey (Bryce Dallas Howard), doesn't help matters, especially with the blonde bombshell's very public crush on Spider-Man.

With all these new narrative threads building towards the epic conclusion of Spider-Man 3, one begins to wonder how Raimi will be able to tie it all together into a conclusion which will end this three-part story arc on a high note. Not to mention he has to address the unresolved narrative holdovers from the previous films, such as Peter's ever evolving guilt and anger over the death of his Uncle Ben and his love/hate relationship with his former best friend and son of the deceased Green Goblin, Harry Osborne (James Franco).
With all this stress mounting on Peter it only seems natural for his overly chipper, dorky demeanor to dim. That is the strength of Spider-Man 3, its willingness

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