Frequent readers of the entertainment section of The Daily Campus will remember that, here at the A&E desk, I was ridiculously excited toward the end of the semester about the crop of summer blockbusters that were headed our way.

Well, I patiently waited. I bought my tickets in advance. I stood eagerly in line at jam-packed midnight screenings. And sadly, I was sorely disappointed. What’s the deal?

Let’s start with “Spider-Man 3.” What a let down. Sure, it was good. It was even worth the ticket price. But I don’t feel like this is an entry in the franchise that I’d watch over and over again. There are more than enough problems with this movie to keep it from being a critic favorite.

Firstly, and most obviously, there’s just too much going on. With three villains (Harry Osborn, Sandman, and Venom), two love interests (Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy), competition at The Daily Bugle office, and brief pointless visits with Aunt May, “Spider-Man 3” too often feels bogged down. And in order to keep the pace, the film resorts to using horribly contrived and convenient plot devices to keep everything rolling (I’m looking at you, Osborn manservant.). This movie would have benefited from either losing a villain or two or being split into two films.

Director Sam Raimi was obviously infatuated with the theme of Dark Spider-Man with undertones of revenge and forgiveness. But the seriousness of that path is undercut by Peter Parker’s idiotic dancing and emo bangs. A better film could have been made by focusing on the black symbiote’s effect on Peter Parker and mirroring those aforementioned themes with Harry Osborn’s own obsession with revenge.

For goodness’ sake, an entire movie could have been made using just the Venom plotline. Venom is a fan favorite and he was completely and utterly wasted in “Spider-Man 3.” Topher Grace did a commendable job, and it’s a shame because it just made me wish he had more screen time. The same goes for Thomas Hayden Church as Sandman. There’s too much in this film to spend enough time on any one piece of it.

The one thing the movie may have focused too much on was the relationship between Mary Jane and Peter. With so much potential action with three bad guys running around, listening to Mary Jane whine about Peter and her stage career every 15 minutes really slows everything down.

In short, someone needed to tell Sam Raimi that bigger is not always better.

Which aptly brings us to “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” What a mess. It actually makes a nice companion piece to “Spider-Man 3”: both are convoluted and suffer from too much plot. In “Pirates,” dozens of plot points are set up but never followed through. A number of scenes feature characters double crossing each other behind closed doors and making shady deals with various characters that, by the time we finally reach the three hour film’s climax, you’re really not sure which side everyone is on.

It would be worth it for me to get the DVD of this installment of “Pirates” just so I could watch the deleted scenes. Maybe that would clear up some of the tangled web that is “At World’s End.” I would consider myself and the friends I took with me to see this movie intelligent and logical people. But, as we were walking out of the theater, we couldn’t really figure out what we had just seen.

Sure, a lot of it looked awesome. Captain Jack, Captain Barbossa and Davy Jones are really fun to watch. The ending is solid, but by the time it comes around, I wasn’t even sure that I still cared. It shouldn’t take more than one viewing to understand a movie based on a theme park ride.

What’s our next hope for summer entertainment? I would defintently recommend “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” director Judd Apatow’s new comedy-with-heart, “Knocked Up.” But if you’re still hungry for summer blockbuster action (because Spidey and Sparrow ended up a very light appetizer), “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” “Transformers,” “Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer,” and “Live Free or Die Hard” are on their way. Hopefully at least one of those entries can save the big budget popcorn movies of Summer 2007.