Watched the original Spiderman trilogy with my son over the past few weeks and we watched the heavily lampooned but very strong in parts S3 last night.

Taking Sandman out would have made it more cohesive overall and rival, if not surpass S2. Though my boys found Green Goblin scarier than Thanos (go figure), we never felt Peter was actually going to LOSE until Venom appeared. Also, the dynamic between a beloved hero and the starlet love of his life who quickly becomes yesterday's news AS his star is rising, with a former one note third wheel (they finally let Franco act in this one) becoming a compelling completion of the triangle was very well done, but a bit rushed in parts due to Sandman screen time.

Point is, because the Raimi trilogy was on a complete solo mission, they never put training wheels on him. He WAS the hero.

Marvel has not taken the training wheels off of Spiderman yet. In Civil War, he catches the fabled Winter Soldier arm like it's sparring practice, yet he has barely had the tires kicked. Even in Homecoming the implications of Vulture getting Stark tech is that *perhaps* some of the Avengers will be needed to stop him. The Beck/Stark outcast plan would have allowed them to manipulate more public opinion on a grand scale, but still not cataclysmic.

It APPEARS that the next film will raise the stakes significantly, without even knowing what villains are coming, (flash thompson will probably become more prominent) but until his identity was revealed, Holland's Spidey has had nowhere near the responsibility that Tobey's did. Stark's shadow looms so large that all problems thus far are of HIS creation, not Spiderman's.

>>The stakes are always gonna be him holding down a
>>life more than it is defeating a villain.
>
>First of all, over half the film is dedicated to the villain.
>So those scenes *need* personal stakes. And we don't have
>them.
>
>Second, the Peter/MJ conflict also, outside of *maybe* the
>opera scene, doesn't really have earnest emotional stakes imo.
>It's a lot of jokey sitcom shtick, which I'm cool with... but
>nothing compared to the personal stakes of Spidey 2, or Into
>the Spider-Verse... or even Spidey: Homecoming tbh.
>
>It's content to just be fun and jokey throughout. Which is
>fine. But I prefer more earnest engagement personally.