spiderman 3 leaves black-spidey with a black-eye (warning, spoilers)

Rating: 3/10 (4 May 2007)

After thoroughly enjoying the first two installments of the series, (and personally thinking that Spiderman 2 and Batman Begins to be the best of the superhero movies) I was really excited to see this movie. Unfortunately, I was to be dreadfully disappointed. The movie was a hodge-podge of side-characters, bi-polar emotions, and terrible script writing. Tobey Mcguire was at his best when he was a CGI spiderman and not actually acting. The sandman's entire character and backstory seemed forced, and since this is not the only "bad-guy" that spidey faces, but one of three, there is definitely not sufficient character development. Not only this, but there were some terrible choices in the writing of the movie. For example, but not limited to, are the following: Once peter parker is taken over revenge, how does it affect him?? Well, apparently, it turns him into a moody, punk-rock looking emo-kid who gels his hair down straight out of my chemical romance, and now he can suddenly dazzle any lady on the street. he loves to buy new suits and dance and hump the air. Oh, and I guess since he's so "bad", that means that he can go into a jazz club, pull off crazy dance stunts that no human could do, and everyone just claps and yells "yay!" without even thinking about the fact that what just happened was completely unreasonable. The movie definitely started to lose me at this point. Then, it got worse. Venom, the darkness in spidey that everyone is so excited about and wanted to see come to the big screen, is a big disaster. He isn't introduced until much later in the film, and really probably should have been saved for a 4th installment because his development was terrible. Basically, Peter Parker's fellow photographer (Eddie Brock) photoshops a false pic of spiderman, and so is called out by Peter and humiliated and fired from his job. Then Parker takes out Eddie;s ex-girlfriend (kind of) on a date, and suddenly Eddie is in a church praying to God that he kill Peter Parker. LAME! Venom's entire reason for trying to kill peter parker is "you humiliated me in front of my co-workers...DIE!!" Venom deserved better. Better development, as well as a better and bigger (literally) actor portraying him. Hard to believe Topher Grace as a jacked bad-guy. (Haven't you seen him on That 70s show??) I could keep going on, but let me just finish with these two points. For me, the absolute low point of the movie was near the end, right before the big showdown when spidey is running across the rooftops to go save mary-jane. Suddenly while he is running, a giant American flag fills the entire background of the screen, and spidey runs in a slow motion pan across it. I just died laughing. Oh, and apparently, the sandman can cry human tears????? I don't get it. Please, don't make another spiderman Sam Raimi. Leave him in peace.