This is a letter to Paul Scheer.  Paul: I’m in the middle of the new episode of How Did This Get Made, and this time we actually do know the answer.

Spider-Man 3 is the extreme example of what happens when the bean counters make creative decisions in Hollywood.  Poor Sam Raimi, life-long Spider-Man fan, he signs up to do the Spider-Man trilogy with the whole idea that for the third one he’s going to go horror and do the dark one with The Lizard as the villain.  It’s why Dylan Baker and the character of Dr. Connors are in the series at all.

But at the last minute, Avi Arad told him to change plans and make Venom the villain.  Raimi protested, insisting that there’s nothing good that can be done with Venom on screen, but Arad was insistent because “Venom has a huge worldwide following.”

You can literally go through the movie scene for scene and pick out which scenes were part of Raimi’s original concept for Spider-Man 3, and which ones were just dashed off after the studio made him use Venom for the villain.

More than anything else that’s awful about this movie, I feel like you can feel Sam Raimi’s heartbreak all over it.  

And we also know why the new ‘reboot’ movie is a bit of a turkey, wedging The Lizard into the origin story for no good reason.

Your pal,
Sean