A rare quality third film of a series

Rating: 8/10 (9 May 2007)

SPOILERS So it comes to this. Yet another superhero franchise moves beyond it's two film maximum. Just like how Batman went downhill after two films and Superman went beyond farce post it's second film, so you'd expect a similar pattern with Sam Raimi's Spiderman films (led by an awkward Tobey Maguire and your standard damsel in distress Kirsten Dunst, this series has all the makings of any other tedious example). So how come this third film is actually good? There are major flaws, but on the whole this is an incredibly enjoyable experience.
Life for Peter Parker (Maguire) is great. He's doing well in class, his long term love adores him, and everyone else in the city loves his alter-ego. When a film starts this positively, you know things are going to go wrong. Sure enough, when multiple "bad guys" arrive on the scene, Peter's life goes downhill as he must deal with not just new threats, but his own personality flaws.
Tobey Maguire remains a weak actor. Whether due to his own skill, or parts of the script, Maguire is at times excruciating to watch. Managing to look out of place both when serious or doing a John Travolta style dance sequence, Maguire's Parker is possibly the weakest part of this film.
It's amazing how these stories seem to unfold but yet again for all the weak superheroes, the story is saved by a well played super villain. In Spiderman 3, this character is Flint "Sandman" Marko played by Thomas Hayden Church. Both visually stunning for his CGI scenes, and well acted when human, everything about the Sandman is practically perfect. This is so accurate in fact that when Church is absent from screen, so the film suffers.
The CGI of the Sandman is even more impressive when compared with the cartoon like nature of Venom and the increasingly tiresome special effects of our hero. When the first film was released, Spiderman was fresh and beautiful on our screen. Years later though and the originality has gone. It's a tiresome fact, but I suppose there's no way around it.
All in all the third Spiderman film doesn't quite follow the typical Superhero trend. Whilst it is definitely a weaker film than the second, and the series is obviously getting tired, it is still a sufficiently pleasing experience to merit your time and attention. Go see.