incoherent, bloated and painful

Rating: 3/10 (28 May 2007)

I am a long time spider-fan. I enjoyed the first two movies. Did not enjoy S3.
Why not? In general, the plot is thin. With a bad story, poor character development, and incoherent action, this is a step back from the standard of the first two Spider movies.
As has been mentioned, the story in S3 is bloated with characters. Too many characters and not enough time spent developing any of them. These are talented actors, but with so many of them, they end up sharing scraps of screen-time. The back stories of the new characters are weak to begin with and their motivations are poorly or partially expressed.
Returning characters do not fare so well here either. The big hype of Peter Parker facing his "dark side" is mostly played for laughs, but the attempts at humor fall flat. Deadly flat. The scenes featuring a new "cool" Peter Parker were cringe-worthy and too long. The more serious scenes unintentionally brought out laughter from the audience - I have never heard an audience mock another movie so much. No wonder that Tobey Maguire may not want to come back for a fourth film (but I bet the $ will be hard to say no to...), as many of his scenes were painfully embarrassing.
I enjoyed the bits with J K Simmons and Bruce Campbell. These scenes were a welcome relief... attempts at humor that actually worked.
There seems to be a push to pump up the action for this outing, but with all the CGI, it felt more like I was watching someone playing a video game, except less cohesive and more disorienting. A chase scene between Spidey and Harry was well done, with the camera swinging and spinning (maybe too much spinning) around the characters. Similar techniques are used throughout the other action scenes with less success. Later action scenes with the new, poorly developed characters do not seem as complete. A battle between the Sandman and Spidey which passes from storm drain, to subway tunnels, and back to storm drain, is hard to follow. The lack of continuity in the climatic battle was distracting as characters (the Venom/Brock character in particular) seem to simply vanish for stretches without explanation.
Big spoilers here----- The Spidey movies are a little less planted in reality and more about fun than other comic- book films, but several gaffes take away from S3. A grenade that totally destroys Brock/ Venom, only scars Harry. When the Sandman and everything else with him is first dissolved into molecules of sand (which looks great), for some reason the chain and locket with a picture of his daughter does not. What is the deal with Sandman being able to "fly" as a cloud of dust? It looks cool, but sand has the power to fly? Why do Brock's teeth grow into fangs as Venom? Dumb.
In the end, S3 is simply a bad film, totally disappointing. I would go so far as to call it awful. Bad plot and poor/laughable character development make for a bad movie no matter how much you like Spider-Man or how good the special effects are.