No good villains!

Rating: 6/10 (21 May 2007)

Movie pundits are projecting it to be one of the biggest openings ever, perhaps surpassing the first Spider-man's mark of $110 million opening weekend - or even breaking the all-time record set by last year's Pirates of $135 million opening weekend. After seeing it, I can see why this may be the case. It has pretty much what everyone is looking for - drama, comedy, romance, and lots of action.
Tobey Maguire reprises his role as Spider-man - one in which I have never been completely sold on him - and Kirsten Dunst is back as his girlfriend. Tobey actually gets a chance to do a little bit more with the role this time, gleefully hamming it up as overly cocky and aggressive when a parasitic black goo from outer space fuses with his suit (only in comic books can you come up with this stuff!). There are some scenes of him strutting down the street like John Travolta and flirting with women that are pretty darn funny. Kirsten, however, moves to more of a background role. Yes of course she still gets kidnapped by bad guys and has to be saved repeatedly. But in the few non-perilous scenes she's in, she looks tired and haggard and barely says much. When did she turn 40 anyway? I could have sworn she was like 24 last year.
The action scenes are of course fantastic again, featuring dazzling special effects and huge fights. But while these were fun to watch, I couldn't quite get into them as much as in previous Spider-man movies. Some of this I believe stems from the problem that there isn't just 1 clear-cut super villain in this movie. Instead, there are 3 or 4 different villains, but some of them aren't *really* villains. They're just nice guys who are having problems. Take for instance the Sandman. He's the father of a deathly sick little girl who's trying to raise money to help her. And what happens? He falls into some particle physics experiment and has all of his molecules turned into sand. Great, as if he didn't have enough problems. Then of course there's Peter Parker's best friend Harry, who is still trying to kill him (daddy Willem DeFoe is still egging him on). Oh yeah, and the extra-terrestrial black goo - you know that's got to be bad. And all of this while poor Peter is trying to ask M.J. to marry him.
All of these characters and action are great, but there isn't really a clear-cut plot with one antagonist that needs to be stopped. Even Spider-man himself starts looking pretty un-protagonistic himself through a lot of the movie. So while there's lots of stuff going on, there's almost too much stuff going on, and the movie seems to wander around for a good portion in the middle. Of course, everything comes together and makes more sense in the end, and the last half hour is great. Although it does stoop to a pretty low "deus ex machina" moment. Just when we're thinking "Man, this is terrible, how is this conflict ever going to get resolved?" out pops some completely random character to give us exactly the information we need to resolve the conflict - in about 30 seconds. How convenient. Where the hell did this guy come from? And why didn't he give us this information before - like in the last Spider-man movie! He could have saved them a lot of trouble. But better late than never. And so, the problems are resolved, good stuff happens, the end. Maybe they didn't want to add any more to the already long 2 hour and 20 minute running time.
I may be exaggerating some of the flaws of this picture, but I actually did like it. I just think I preferred Spider-man 2. At least, I liked Doc Ock a lot more than any of these wannabe villains. But director Sam Raimi continues the great comic-book-to-movie-screen adaptations, and most audiences will not be disappointed. Be sure to look for Raimi's childhood film-making buddy and "Evil Dead" collaborator Bruce Campbell in a hilarious little role as the maitre d' of a snooty French restaurant. I also liked the addition of Topher Grace as a slimy photographer competing with Parker for shots of Spider-man. He's probably the most interesting character, but unfortunately he doesn't really get the time to develop.
I can be picky about some of the things in this movie, but maybe that's just because I was half asleep at 2am watching it. Overall, it does deliver exactly what people expect. As long as you know you're going to watch a summer popcorn movie based on a comic book, you should have a decent time.