Except for one or two small issues, I loved Spider-Man 3.
Sandman's character was far more fleshed out than Venom's.
Good point. But if you ask me, that character was as far off from the comics as Topher Grace's Venom. About the only thing they got right was the green-striped Wally Cleaver shirt. Also, I can't help it. I look at Thomas Hayden-Church and I don't see Flint Marko. I see Lowell Mather.
Making Sandman Uncle Ben's murderer, and then Peter having that "moment" with him at the end. That was a glaring case of "okay, pay attention boys and girls. Here's our SOCIAL STATEMENT!"
Comic Flint Marko was an irritable sonofabitch who never showed any humanity in the comics until after he and Hydro-man fought Spider-Man together, collided with each other and merged to form some mindless mud monster. I don't quite remember how they separated back to their original personas, but the experience totally unnerved Sandman.
The next time I saw Sandman was in Marvel Two In One - The Thing and Sandman. Marko is seperated from Hydroman but he's only operating at about 50% efficiency as he stumbles into a bar on Yancy Street. The bartender recognizes him which wasn't difficult given the token green-striped shirt and all the sand on the floor. Bartender calls the Baxter Building. Moments later, Ben shows up spoiling for a fight.
"Forget it, Thing," Marko said wearily. "I'm in no shape to tangle with you. I'll go quietly."
"What?? Ya mean we're not gonna spend the next twenty minutes bashin each others brains out?? What gives?!"
The two end up having a beer together in the bar during which Marko tells his life story, and Ben ends up walking out and letting him off the hook.
The black symbiote which becomes Venom had a long history in the comics before it got to Brock.
In the movie.....it just lands next to Peter's bike.
Another good point. If I remember correctly, it all started with a 12-issue limited series written by editor-in-chief Jim Shooter called The Secret Wars. A host of Marvel heroes and a host of Marvel villains are all transported to some unknown planet by a near-omnipotent entity who claimed to be "from beyond." This being (subsequently referered to as "The Beyonder") wanted to study the concept of conflict.
During the cataclysmic fights that ensued, Spider-Man's costume got trashed, and Captain America's shield was broken. The two found some alien technology there on the planet that allowed Cap to repair (or replace, I don't remember exactly which) his shield, and enabled Spider-Man to replace his costume. The new costume however was mostly all black with a white spider on the front, a radical departure from the traditional red and blue, but quite cool nonetheless. A big plus about the new costume was that it could generate it's own web. Spider-Man no longer needed his mechanical web-shooters.
After the Secret Wars and all were returned to earth, Spider-Man discovered another very convenient property of his new black costume. It would morph and dissolve into street clothes whenever Spider-Man wanted to change back to Peter Parker. It seemed too good to be true, and since Peter Parker is a magnet for tragedy and bad luck, it was.
After a few months, Parker began to show signs of exhaustion, due to somnambulism. Shortly after falling asleep, the costume would envelope Parker. He'd hit the city and web-sling all night long in the black costume until dawn, then return to bed and shortly wake up, having no recollection of the night's activities.
Parker ultimately figured out it was the costume doing this to him so he went to the Baxter Building to consult with Reed Richards. Richards performed some tests and concluded that the costume was alive, and had a symbiotic connection to Parker. They contained the costume in an airtight plexiglass cylinder, and that was that. Parker went back to the red and blue costume while the spurned symbiont stewed with rage.
Ultimately, the symbiont escaped somehow (something to do with Franklin Richards) and wandered the streets until it found somebody who hated Spider-Man as much as it did. Eddie Brock was huge, and a weight lifter. A former reporter for The Daily Globe who was fired over a story he did on some douchebag villain from the "Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man" series called the Sin Eater.
That's a lot of history to try and cram into a movie, so from a production standpoint, I can see the value in settling for the "blob out of the meteor" bit.
