Spiderman 3: My Take

Rating: 1/10 (30 October 2007)

Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Review: I enjoy Spider Man movies. The first was a nice start and a fitting welcome. The second was one of the best superhero movies this side of Batman Begins. Now we reached the climax(Maybe), and is this good? Here's my take:
Spider Man 3 has a problem, it cannot decide what kind of movie it wants to be. We have Peter Parker(Tobey Maguire), living in a REALLY rundown apartment and his squeeze Mary Jane(Kirsten Dunst), who wants to sing Broadway. That's sounds fine and all. What we encounter is too much smooch-smooch talk that is highly evident in your average chick flick.
What's worse is that we are given Flint Marko(Thomas Hayden Church), a escaped con who winds up in some sort of experiment that turn him into the Sandman. Sandman has many inconsistencies. He has escaped police custody and is doing this risky stuff all for his daughter. The Sandman is a total second rate "villain". More on this later.
Then we got Harry Osbourne(James Franco), who has not forgotten about his father's death. He attacks Peter to give us one neat action sequence that Harry winds up hitting his head hard and suffers short term memory loss. He then becomes a unwitting rival of Parker for guess who.
Then there's Eddie Brock(Topher Grace), who is a rather desperate reporter that will do anything to get work. More on this one shortly.
As you can tell, there is WAY too much going on here and to top it off, we have some relationship troubles with our hero to add to the already crammed mix. But it's not over, a strange substance from outer space falls down and latches on to Peter's bike and follows him home. This substance make the host body act differently in many ways, especially aggression. Right. So The transformation starts off right with an impassioned Spidey taking on Sandman.
Then the worst happens, Spidey-Peter goes EMO on us. He does the stupid thing with his hair and dresses in black clothing. His attitude is laughable and painful to watch. It does a good job on making the Emo look bad as it should, but I cannot watch this without wincing in pain. This is not the way to undergo a transformation to the dark side. More like the douche bag side.
This movie has it's good. The action here delivers enough. The FX are nice if not a little cartoon like, but overall is nice. Bryce Dallas Howard is here and is just stunning. Too bad she is trapped in a helpless role as Mary Jane's rival. And the best scene of the movie belongs to Mr. Bruce Campbell. He is always funny and here he is a treat. The boss of the Daily Bugle is also hilarious.
Now for the bad. The Sandman apparently killed Peter's uncle. This is so bad. Then what was he locked up for in the first place than that? Also, Eddie Brock inside a church says to the Jesus symbol, "I Want You To Kill Peter Parker." Gahh. The character Venom is, here anyway came off as a second rate villain. He is suddenly Venom and knows all about his powers in record time. He finds Marko in even faster time and allies with him just like that unaware of the fact that he is merged with some type of monster talking to a guy who can transform sand. They just met and suddenly..."Okay." Just like that they ally.
The Sandman despite killing Spidey's uncle and almost killing Spidey himself is forgiven. Whaaa? I would have him locked up. Despite his intentions, he killed someone and tried to kill you. I would hold a grudge to be honest with you. Not to mention could have killed a armored car driver and many other innocent people in the process.
Did I mention the Emo? Ick.
In conclusion, Spidey 3 has too much story, too much sappy relationship issues, too little substance and not enough action.
The Last Word: A terrible mess. There are not enough janitors in the world to clean this up. From the chick flick stuff to the bad Emo stuff, Spidey's main problem is that it could not decide what type of movie it should be, A chick flick, a teenage Emo flick, or a Spider Man flick. Pass this one up. Even hardcore fans might hate this.