Sam Raimi gets Control of Spider-Man 4

Sam Raimi will be featured in an upcoming interview in Empire magazine's May issue. In the interview he openly talked about some of the problems with Spider-Man 3 and confirmed some rumors we all heard about 2 summers ago when the movie was released.

“They really gave me a tremendous amount of control on the first two films, actually. But then there were different opinions on the third film and I didn’t really have creative control, so to speak.”

What he is referring to, of course, is that when Spider-Man 3 was in Pre-production, Marvel told Sam Raimi that he had to include Venom in the 3rd Spider-Man film despite Sam rumored to say he did not wish to. Sam Raimi is more of a fan of the 70's Spider-Man villians and even today states he does not quite "understand" Venom.

“I don’t even want to comment on Venom, because I know he’s a great character and all the fans love him. I never want to say anything bad about a much-beloved character because usually it turns out that I’m the one that doesn’t understand what makes it great.”

I remember hearing the rumors of Spider-Man 3 before they came out and I was thinking, "if they don't put Venom in the 3rd movie I will be pissed!" Well, maybe we should watch what we wish for, because Venom was in the 3rd movie and the 3rd movie ended up being the worst one yet. You can tell that Sam Raimi's heart wasn't in the character and it shows in the movie. Too many villians and not enough character development. It was a major disappointment.

The bottom line... I'm looking forward to Spider-Man 4. He'll do a great job. As for Spider-Man 3 (despite being a big fan of Sam Raimi's work) maybe they just should have gone with another director. I mean, Venom is repeatedly considered one of the greatest villians in the history of comics. Therefore, us Spidey fans needed to see Venom. But, Switch (Belinda McClory) in the Matrix says it best, "Not like this... Not like this".