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| Release Date: | May 4, 2007 (US & UK) |
| Runtime: | 140 min |
| Rated: | PG-13 |
| Genres: | Action, Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Romance |
| Directed by: | Sam Raimi |
| Written by: | Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi |
| Starring: | Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons, James Cromwell, Bruce Campbell |
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 I promised my son that I wouldn’t see Spider-Man 3 without him as I normally do with most superhero type movies. The last live action hero movie we saw together was Superman Returns and he threw up at the end of that. Well Spider-Man is his second favorite hero next to Superman so I was hoping this would fair better.
I’m going to first state Spider-Man 3 has fell victim to the dreaded third film “Suitcase Curse”. For those that aren’t familiar with this curse it’s when a successful franchise, usually with two movies, tries to cram as much shit they possibly can into a two hour movie the third time around. This in turn makes the plot so convoluted with crap, there’s not enough time to spend on good character development and everything just blurs together like your white socks and underwear.
Let’s see why this movie seemed crammed shall we? Well, after the first two Spider-Man films, we find Peter Parker (still played by Tobey Maguire) in a nerdy relationship with his aspiring Broadway actor girlfriend Mary Jane Watson (again played by Kirsten Dunst). Life seems peachy other than his inability to explain to his best friend Harry Osborne (James Franco) that he didn’t kill his father, the original Green Goblin. That was pretty much all carryover from the previous films; now we introduce three new characters who don’t get any real light in the film but should have been big plot devices for movies going onward. Thomas Haden Church plays a small time crook named Flint Marko who by accident becomes the Sandman, a misunderstood villain who manipulates his body into sand. Also we meet Gwen Stacy (played by Bryce Dallas Howard from the Village and Lady in the Water) who should be a pivotal character in the Spider-Man story arch but in this plays a simple character to cause jealousy between Parker and Watson. Lastly, for whatever reason, they decided to include Eddie Brock into the equation played by the very terrible Topher Grace. Throw in an alien symbiotic black costume and you have an over-stuffed superhero nightmare similar to the Batman & Robin fiasco.
Ok, I was all for the Sandman, he had a very back-story and was a very formidable villain for Spider-Man not to mention Church just looks like the guy. The black costume was also a very neat touch. They wrote in a very simple alternate plot for how Parker obtains the black alien suit since they couldn’t write in a massive Secret Wars planetary battle where he actually was supposed to obtain the alien costume. The biggest flaw came with turning Brock into Venom, it was too rushed and came out very corny and if you ask me would’ve been more appropriate for a fourth film.
The second terrible flaw in the plot was the mishandling of Harry Osborne. He was a very crucial character in the first two movies and in this one they use him as some kind of filler persona. They stuff him as a second villain, then he’s back to being Pete’s best friend, then he’s got some kind of thing going on with Mary Jane, then he’s a hero. It was just confusing as hell and again very rushed.
Raimi also spent too much time on Peter Parker’s dark side when he is wearing the black costume involving Mary Jane and less of his actually fighting in the black costume which we really wanted to see. In fact, probably the most bizarre and unimportant parts in the movie is where Peter Parker does a song and dance number in a jazz club to stun Mary Jane. Maybe, the worst part about this movie is the negative time between stuff we wanted to see. My six year old yawned and squirmed through a good majority of the two and a half hour flick and even though I knew he liked seeing what few good shots of Spider-Man zipping around like he did the first two films, the movie was way too in depth for him to care about.
I’m very confident that Sam Raimi is not likely to return to do another Spider-Man despite rumors of his continued involvement. This movie has all the tell-tale signs of a closing movie. Raimi wanted to get everything cool out of the characters he possibly could before he left the franchise. The movie reflects that very obviously. Now Spider-Man 3made a lot of money already; I mean a lot of money. So there will probably be another movie in the works somewhere down the line. My bet is that it will be a big stink-o. Corporate a-holes like Sony will make sure to that.
My views aren’t much different from my son’s in the end; this movie looked all too familiar. It had all the charms of a superbowl commercial with its obvious over-the-top, predictable finale not to mention its inability to not hide an actor’s face behind a mask for more than 25 seconds. The way Raimi let every bit actor he could have a line or two in the film despite how pointless it was or how dry the ending was. It all made this movie stink. The film had everything it needed to be a long distance runner but this one decided to attempt the 100 meter dash instead.
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