I think everyone should listen to the commentary (Director + Cast version), and you will get a much better understanding and respect for the movie they made. Atleast i did. Specially hearing Topher, speak perfectly about Secret Wars and being the resident geek of the group. And you see that the whole MJ/Harry stuff was justified and worked well, bringing you back to SM 1, where Harry for a brief moment was innoncent and had MJ, everything Parker didnt at the time.
And for the Venom stuff, i love Venom, hes just cool, but no need to waste three movies on him at all. If you where going to have any villian have more than one movie arc, it would either be GG or Doc Oct, easily.
The way they handled Venom i though was fine, yeah small screen time, but you know what, if you give Venom an entire movie, and its PG-13, he wont be killing anyone, and he doesn't have any outside goals other than hurting Peter, so random Spidey/Venom fights throughout 2 1/2 hour movie would get pointless, leading to a final fight that we have seen probably 3-4 times already?
How they did it was good, cause the real plot of the story they made, if you look at it, is not a Spider-Man/Venom/Sandman plot, its a Peter Parker/Harry Osborn/MJ plot. Where Peter is gaining a this ego, and is enhanced by the symbiot, where then MJ/Harry play into it all. Than you have the Sandman stuff to help teach Peter about forgiveness, and Venom just there to appease the auidence.
And for anyone that complains about time, and blame it on Riami, get a clue about the movie industry. Sam has no control about that, its the boss' at Sony that control how long they think a movie should be, so if they feel that the stuff that got cut out (Eddie at the park with Sandman/ Sandman's daughter/wife at the final fight) had to go...Sam and the editors at to give in.