Spiderman 3 - Harry Osborne

Harry, spiderman's best friend, goes through quite a transformation himself. He's lazy in high school, and Peter helps him through school. He's a disappointment to his father, the ambitious, successful scientist, who would rather have Peter as a son than Harry. Thus, Harry has to overcome alot just to remain friends with Peter. Amazingly, their friendship last, but in S 2 it's fraying because Peter, as the photographer of spiderman, Harry perceives as spiderman's friend. Harry thinks spiderman killed his father.

At the end of S 2, just after learning that Peter is the spiderman whom Harry thinks deserves to die, Harry begins to hallucinate like his father, and he finds his father's equipment and drugs. But Harry is not the same as his father. He's not that selfish ambitious type. He can be lazy, he can be a jerk, he can love being wealthy and famous, but his actions in S 3 are for revenge, an excess of justice. It's an excess in the sense that an individual human doesn't have the right of revenge, even if it's just. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Harry's use of the Goblin equipment and drug are for one purpose - to get spiderman, and he thinks this is justice. Harry being Goblin Jr., as Peter taunts him during a fight in S 3, is not at the expense of humanity and solely for himself. It's for the sake of love really, a misplaced love of his father. That is vengeance, the love of family, friend, the innocent. So, Harry can return to friendship with Peter and spiderman, once he knows the truth.

But Harry reveals a different character after his "bump on the head." He's a very caring person at heart, and he tells a nurse after Peter and Mary Jane leave his hospital room: "I'd die for them." This is prophetic, for at the end he does die for the very spiderman he originally wanted to kill. Harry's hatred and vengeance were rooted in passion, not a cold self-centered ambition like his father's. Therefore, once he knows the truth and accepts it (he doesn't accept Peter's explanation at the start of the movie), he can move straight to his true self, that of caring deeply for his friends. Don't get me wrong; he's capable of great evil and manipulation, for instance, his instigation of the break-up between Peter and Mary Jane. But still, even that is rooted in love and loss, partly for Mary Jane and partly for his father.