The curse of the 3rd installment!!!!

Rating: 6/10 (5 May 2007)

I have always thought that the 3red part of any movie trilogy come off as a near miss or a complete failure. There are many examples of this. Alien 3, Lethal Weapon 3, even Return of the Jedi is for me the weakest film in the 1st Star Wars trilogy. Spider-Man 3 is no exception. It is in no way a complete failure, but is the weakest of the Spider-Man films. It has been reported that it is the most expensive film of all time, and there lies the problem. I think that Sam Raimi and company had so much money and pressure to deliver a home run on this film that they packed the movie with way to much stuff. There are three villains this time, Sandman, Venom, and The Green Goblin. That is one too many, the movie lacks the focus of the first two. It's all over the place. There is the inner conflicts that Peter Parker deals with, his relationship with Mary Jane, it all was dealt with much better in the other 2 films. The disadvantage with here is that the audience is already so familiar with these characters that there isn't anything really new, so the conflicts between them are not as compelling.
Yes, the FX are impressive, but they are nothing that we haven't seen before. The action is well done, but without the strong story it just doesn't involve me more because the CGI cost so much. Sam Raimi balanced all the elements of a big budget summer movie to near perfection in Spider-man 2, the FX and action were there, but the story is what made it a great movie. Here he was given as many toys as he wanted and it almost got completely away from him.
It is entertaining, but I heard almost every person that was walking out the theater say that Spider-Man 2 was much better.
Grade: B-