Why aren't the first two SPIDER-MAN films available on BD by themselves?

Because Sony(?) chose to sell it this way.
Episode 3 was pretty bad so I suppose they figured this was the only way to get poeple to buy it.

I guess Sony assumed that every BD customer would either want to own all 3 (in the set) or only want to buy the last one on BD (and not want to upgrade the others from DVD).

Well, that, and they probably figured they could push everyone else who don't fall into those 2 categories to just buy all 3 at once anyway.  And I kinda doubt Sony really thinks the average BD consumer would dislike the 3rd one all that much more than the rest (as TonyD hypothesized).

Anyway, I (along w/ many others) also already owned the 3rd one (as a 1-disc freebie w/ my PS3 purchase a couple years back), but ended up jumping on a decent deal for the boxset at some point.

As someone relatively new(?) to Blu, you'll probably come across this kind of thing more often than you like although some studios have relented a bit on the practice by eventually releasing the most desired titles separately from the initial boxset releases, eg. The Matrix, Tim Burton's Batman (but still no separate Batman Returns), etc.  Austin Powers, for instance, still remains only officially available in a trilogy boxset although you can easily find the individual titles broken out and sold separately by one or two vendors (like iNetVideo.com) and/or on the used market.

However, IMO, the worst case of this practice so far is probably Sony's decision to only bundle Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon w/ House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower since both of those latter titles had been out for like 2(?) years before CTHD on top of being substantially inferior titles to boot *and* having so little relevance to CTHD (other than being Chinese period flix w/ some action and some melodrama involved).

_Man_
Edited by ManW_TheUncool - 12/8/09 at 7:19pm

I enjoyed the third just fine.  I don't have any of the hang-ups most seem to have about it (the 'dark' Peter dancing around all Travolta-style)

I picked up the box set with no issues because I didn't care about the extras for the first two films because after watching them the first time, I never did again. Before the Blu-ray versions I picked up the superbits of 1 and 2, so dipping again for HD versions was no problem.

To top it off, I must really be forgiving, since I've read a lot of reviews that say the first one has poor video quality compared to 2 and 3, but again - no issues from me about it. Looked great.

I think it's a safe bet with a 4th installment on the way that we'll see a rerelease of the Spiderman movies. I have the 3rd movie on blu (again, the PS3 thing) and am just waiting for the movies to be rereleased with the next movie.

i bought my spiderman 2 used from a movie/cd store so i had no idea it didnt come as seperate releases. i got it for like 12 bucks and spider3 for 5 bucks

I bought the trilogy and then sold 3 back to Movie Stop.

Right, check the Movie Stops. People have broken up their trilogy sets and sold back separately. I was only interested in 2, and found a used copy at Movie Stop.

Also, the Godfather movies are finally going to be sold separately, so anyone interested can avoid #3 there, as well.