Haven't Felt So Betrayed by a Sequel Since Star Wars

Rating: 5/10 (6 May 2007)

I don't usually talk to myself, so when I'm sitting in the movie theater and saying out loud, "This is freaking lame!" or "What?! Move on already," it's a pretty good indicator that something is wrong. I really enjoyed the first two and could not wait for the third (and hopefully last) installment. The whole movie had a different feel to it, as if a key member of the production crew had been replaced. Comic book movies are by nature allowed some lee way in the plot, but that is no excuse for bad acting or a poor script. And, I'm sorry, but Tobey Macguire is now officially a bad actor. But, my comment is getting as garbled as the movie, so I'll straighten it out: 1. Acting - Kirsten Dunst and James Franco are both really good actors. They can display multiple emotions convincingly. Tobey Maguire has one look and one emotion - retard. Was anyone really frightened in Spiderman 1 when he was fighting that robber in the beginning and the robber fell out the window? Did Tobey Maguire have the look of fear? No, he looked like a frustrated retard. In this movie, he tries to expand his one look of retard to sad (he cries - horribly) and mean (the black Spiderman/Peter Parker), but they all looked the same. It was like Zoolander. I wanted to just cry out: "They are all the same look!" I could deal with the mean Spiderman, but the mean Peter Parker was horrible. I felt like I was watching The Mask with Jim Carrey, right down to the jazz dancing. 2. Crowded plot/too many villains - Spiderman 1 did a really good job of building up the stories behind both Spiderman and Goblin. Spiderman 2 did a really good job of showing the struggle that Peter Parker is going through in his life to be Spiderman and developing Doc Oc. Spiderman 3 tried to fit a sub plot about Peter Parker's life, Mary Jane's life, New Goblin, Sandman's origin and sad story, Bad Spiderman/Peter Parker, and Eddie Brock (who becomes Venom). And on top of that, they add so much unnecessary stuff. And they threw in Gwen Stacy, who was not attractive and just took up too much plot time. It just didn't work out. 3. Bad villains - By bad, I mean horrible. 1) New Goblin - He modified the glider and the mask (the mask is also now mechanically retractable) to make him look like a snowboarder. This is the guy that was almost failing out of high school that did this. 2) Sandman - he goes from about 200 pounds of sand to a 15 FLOOR BUILDING OF SAND at will and he can fly. And the CGI did not look real. I felt it would have looked cooler if they used real sand more instead of cartoon sand. I mean, you already made the most expensive movie in the galaxy (literally), fire some cgi guys and buy some real sand. 3) Venom - I did not buy the cgi on Venom. Why was it that when Spiderman had the suit, he did not get the Venom mouth or the big muscles or the black web? And Venom is afraid of loud noise, yet there are explosions all around him and they don't phase him. It's only when the loud noises are made by Spiderman that they phase him, I guess. Just none of it worked out. 4. Cheese - There was so much potential for a bad Spiderman/Peter Parker. Look at when Superman turned bad in Superman 3(?). That was cool. He went from nerdy do-gooder to bad guy and there was no cheesiness involved. Here, Tobey Maguire/the writers were just not up to the task. You have someone who for two movies has the weight of the world on his shoulders and when he finally blows up and gets mad, what does he do? He goes disco dancing? There was also a scene in the end where Spiderman is standing in front of a huge CGI American flag. It just looked so cheesy. And when Peter takes the venom substance to his professor and the professor looks at it under a microscope and tells him that the material bonds to "aggression," I thought, "How can you look at aggression under a microscope?" And they discover an new alien life form and the two of them just study it in the lab and don't tell any one? 5. Camera work - there were some scenes where I couldn't tell what was going on because the cameras were moving too fast - most of the first Goblin/Spiderman chase scene, some scenes with Sandman. It just looked like there was one camera and it kept moving back and forth between characters as if to capture both at the same time. But, that was only the 5th most distracting thing in this film.
Overall, there was just too much going on and too much stuff didn't make sense and just bad all around. I give it a low score because I expected so much more.