Sam Raimi never wanted Venom in the movie to begin with. He knew nothing about the character and was only familiar with Spider-man's enemies before the 1980s. He was forced to shoehorn Venom in the movie by the Studio's head honcho because Venom's popularity = profitability. Sam had to deal with it the best he could and adding Venom ruined the flow of the original script.

I agree that he never wanted to work with the Vnom character and that he was forced to.what also happened was that he must have said "fine Ill shoehorn him in my film, but if Im goping to its going to be my way" and thats where he F***ed up. He got too cocky and forgot that this movie is based on a comic book and not out of his selfish imagination. He knew fans really wanted Venom, but didnt care when he let his ego get the best out of him and decided to just toss him in there for the sake of the movie. Instead of using creativity and doing justice to the character, he went the lazy route and still jacked up the $300+ million budget. Ive seen movies before SP3 that had better sfx with less money to work with IE The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy.

Speaking of which; the difference between a talented director vs a mediocre director scoring big time on a popular franchise can be seen in how the newest movie The Hobbit:DOS Legolas was shoehorned as well, but man Peter did an excellent job making him fit there, Raimi could have done the same, but he lacks talent and creativity and for that I still blame him for destroying the Venom character, Topher Grace is the other culprit...