Sam Raimi never does "Spider-Man" as just a guy in tights beating up bad guys. The first film had a huge moral message and the second even tried having Peter Parker give up the powers. Now, "Spider-Man 3" even revises some events from the original.
–SPOILER ALERT–
We find out that Flint Marko, who becomes the Sandman, was the accomplice of the wrestling ring robber and actually pulled the trigger, killing Uncle Ben.
"By adding this, it’s all about the awareness things," said Raimi. "Peter Parker sees things as a proud person in this picture in a very narrow way. He’s right and they’re wrong. It’s all about taking on other points of view. There are so many more truths than the simple truths of good or bad or the name as perceived. For instance, that man didn’t kill his uncle as he had thought. It was another man."
This was never part of the Sandman’s backstory in the comic books, but Raimi felt it served the themes well enough that it was okay to embellish. "We also wanted something you could look back at the first picture and turn the whole thing on its head so that by the time you got to the end it was more than some of the parts. We thought that it would be an interesting experience with the audience and what they had seen in the first part was true, but there was so much more to the story. Like with Peter Parker, they didn’t have the whole truth and they thought they did."
Raimi still keeps "Spider-Man 3" very faithful to the comic books. Perhaps to make up for altering the Sandman backstory, he makes sure Venom forms as it was drawn in the comics.
"That imagery from the church is really from the story. We wanted to be true to the comic books. It’s very similar in how it was depicted in those classic Marvel comic books of the ’80s that I’ve more recently become familiar with of how ‘Spider-Man’ sheds his suit and how it became onto Eddie Brock. We were trying to pay tribute to those books."
