What the bloody hell was this????

Rating: 2/10 (1 August 2017)

After an excellent first Spider-man film and a reasonable follow-up it's hard to believe that this third film in the franchise could possibly be as bad as this. I mean seriously what were Raimi & co thinking here???
In the first two films, Spider-man had some decency and likability about him and despite the fact that I still felt that he originally donned the costume out of guilt for what happened to his uncle I could always find myself rooting for him and cheering him on, but not so here...
For unknown reasons, some black gunky substance has arrived on Planet Earth. Where did it come from? How did it arrive? Nobody knows as it's never explained. This gunky black matter then wraps itself round Peter Parker after stalking him for quite some time and alters his personality; we get some lame hypothesis stating that it alters one's personality and makes them more aggressive, but how does it do this exactly??
I'm aware that different plot elements will be introduced into franchises from time to time, but in order for these additional elements to sit well with an audience we need to have an understanding of why said elements are introduced? The fact that we have no understanding of what this black gunky matter is, Who sent it and where it came from meant that it was just there to reignite Parker's identity crisis and to give him another reason to fall out with Mary Jane.. Only this time he is much more cruel and even hits her at one point... Seriously, this is a guy that we're supposed to continue to root for??
Other nonsensical elements come later in the film when the black gunky matter moves from Peter Parker onto Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) and he now finds his personality altered, but worse than that when he is encased in this black gunky stuff he is also able to create webs?? How does that work? Wouldn't he have needed to have been bitten by a spider to create webs?
In this third film, we're introduced to Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church) a man whom escapes from prison and goes on the run. Whilst escaping from the police, he climbs a fence (surely a top secret facility would have a fence that was either alarmed or electrified??) and ends up in a secret research facility which in the dead of night has no security lights, no guards, no cameras and nothing preventing you from falling down a giant hole into some kind of particle testing device. As a result of this, Marko ends up fusing with the sand at the bottom of the hole and becomes The Sandman; the idea that he becomes The Sandman as a result of a series of unlikely contrivances is merely the tip of the iceberg and it turns out that Marko was actually the guy that killed Peter Parker's uncle giving Parker additional motivation to bring The Sandman down..
Then finally we have Harry Osborn who is still ticked off that Spider-man killed his dad and out of nowhere he gets hold of his dad's surfboard and starts chasing Spider-man all over the place until Harry bangs his head and gets amnesia and doesn't remember what happened prior to his accident? Quite why the narrative was written in this manner is a mystery to me as from this point on till much later in the film Osborn just wonders round being nice to everyone and genuinely not doing much till he inevitably regains his memory... it's just a waste of screen time!!!
I gave up trying to understand all the ridiculous narrative choices that were made in this over-plotted and overwritten mess and just waited for it to end. The fact that nothing is explained and that things seem to happen for no apparent reason just goes to show that the filmmakers had made enough money from the first two films and stopped caring what the public wanted. It's painfully dull with none of the likability or fun that it's predecessors offered - in fact the only thing that was better about this film than the previous offerings were the special effects.
The one bright spot in this film was JK Simmons who was consistently good in all 3 films and that's the reason that this film is getting 2 stars rather than 1.