I'm guessing that you have already read one or two other reviews for the third Spider-Man movie, since they are hard to miss nowadays. I'm also guessing that you got the general consensus, that Spider-Man 3 is a bit disappointing after the first two movies in this series. I would love to be the bringer of good news and tell you that all these other critics are wrong, and that Spider-Man 3 is in reality an amazing movie, where every dollar of it's reported $300 million budget shows. But sadly, I only bring more bad news. Because even though Spider-Man 3 is by no means a bad movie, it's also not as good as what we have seen before. Director Sam Raimi has tried too hard to make this third movie something extra special, but that hasn't turned out all that well, with the result that Spider-Man 3 is too long, with too many villains and too many emotional moments. Actually those emotional moments wouldn't have been that bad if they worked. But they don't.
When Spider-Man 3 starts, all seems well in Peter Parker's world. Everybody seems to love Spider-Man, there are no villains on the horizon, and his relationship with Mary Jane is going better than ever. Heck, he's even planning on proposing to her. He's happy, which makes you feel sorry for him in those opening moments, because, as the clever moviegoers we are, we know that this cannot last. And slowly but surely Peter's perfect world starts crumbling, to fall apart right in front of our eyes. Where to begin? Well, there's the fact that there's a new photographer trying to get Peter's job at the newspaper. This guy, Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) is taking better pictures of Spider-Man than even Peter Parker can take and he is charming the pants off of Peter's boss J. Jonah Jameson. Then there's Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), who is starring in her first major musical, and who is subsequently butchered in reviews. She's happy that Peter is doing so well, but what she needs is for him to get his head out of the clouds so that he can pay a little bit of attention to her worries for a change. We've got Peter's ex-best friend Harry Osbourne (James Franco), who is still angry at him for supposedly killing his father (The Green Goblin), and who has decided that's time to take revenge, using spiced up versions of his father's gadgetry.
Wait, I'm not done yet. Because there are also some new villains, like The Sandman, a small time crook who during a freak accident has his molecules changed in such a way that he falls apart, only to find out that he can regenerate and use these powers to transform into nigh indestructible sand sculptured means of destruction. And who turns out to be the real killer of Peter's uncle in the first movie. And then there's the mysterious black goo that has fallen from space, and that attaches itself to Peter, not only given him extra powers, but also an extra bad attitude. About an hour into this movie, Peter has lost practically everything he has always held dear, but, thanks to the symbiont attached to his body, doesn't really seem to care. And when his eyes finally open and he is able to get rid of the symbiont, said creature attaches himself to one of his biggest enemies and the trouble really starts.
Sounds lilke the ingredients for a fun movie, but no. Raimi has tried too hard to make this movie more than just fun, and didn't succeed. Every character in this movie seems to have their own issues, and since too much time is taken up with all of these different characters complaining about their problems, there just isn't enough time for the spectacular action sequences. The movie is 140 minutes long, but most of the time is taken up with talking. As the first two movies in this series showed, there doesn't have to be anything wrong with Spidey and Mary-Jane having a romantic discussion or two, but for some reason the discussions in this movie just don't have the kind of spark they had earlier on. And honestly, how much more time are these two people going to spend being miserable with each other? Isn't it about time for them to have some fun? Peter has more fun with new girl Gwen Stacy (a cool Bryce Dallas Howard) than he does with the woman he's supposed to love.
Things even get rather ridiculous when Peter is at the height of the symbiont's influence and starts wearing his hair different, wears stylish new clothes and starts strutting through the streets of New York like this is an episode of Happy Days instead of Spider-Man 3.
And this is such a shame, since the movie does have it's fair share of cool moments. Besides Howard (and a great new cameo from Bruce Campbell) I'm really digging James Franco in this movie for instance. When he's in action as The New Goblin, he is very believable and it's one of his scenes near the end of the movie when I most felt the adrenaline rush that you are supposed to get from movies like this. And I also very much liked the Sandman character, Thomas Haden Church giving a great performance as the troubled (aren't they all) supervillain. As a matter of fact, Spider-Man 3 could have been a great movie if it would have just focussed on The New Goblin and The Sandman as the villains, since Sandman's story now feels unresolved and had deserved a better ending. Instead, we now have another villain, in the form of Venom, which is the name of the symbiont after it attaches itself to Eddie Brock. In an interview, Raimi has stated that it wasn't his idea to add Venom to the mix, but that it was producer Avi Arad who insisted on inserting Venom to please the many fans of the character. Well, I don't think many of them will be pleased at all, since Venom is dealt with half-heartedly and would have been served better as the sole villain in a fourth Spider-Man movie. Because this is how Spider-Man 3 feels: like a third and fourth movie squashed together, with most of the fun bits taken out to make room for more discussions. I don't mind a bit of depth with my superheroics in a movie, but this is a superhero movie, and you would expect the focus of the movie to be on the super stuff.
So while you will probably enjoy the visual spectacle in this movie more than enough, and there is plenty there to enjoy, there just doesn't seem to be enough of it to make Spider-Man as memorable as the first two pics in this series are.
*****
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