A pretty solid superhero franchise drives right off a cliff.

Rating: 4/10 (17 April 2012)

"Spider-Man 3" wasn't so much a letdown as it was a massive disappointment. A movie that was so preoccupied with the effects budget that the filmmakers forgot to cook up a decent script. I wanted to see if five years' passage would improve my outlook on the film, but it's still just as aggravating as it was in May of 2007.
For starters, the movie suffers from too many bad guys. And none of them are in Doctor Octopus' league. Harry Osborn's still super miffed at Peter Parker for killing his father (even though he didn't), and has taken up Norman's mantle as some sort of misguided Green Goblin 2. At the same time, a freak accident turns escaped con Flint Marko into the Sandman - pretty much the granulated equivalent of Robert Patrick's T-1000. He doesn't have a beef with Peter, but he does need convenient bank job money to afford health care for his sick kid (and Spidey naturally stands in his way). Peter is also dealing with anxiety over proposing to Mary Jane (whom he's fought tooth and nail for two movies to win over). That seems enough for a movie, doesn't it?
Nope, needs more.
A sticky black substance plummets to Earth, finds its way to Peter's apartment and bonds to his skin. Turns out it's an alien symbiote using Peter as a host organism. Good news is it makes Peter more powerful. The downside is it also makes him a bit of a douche. So Peter finally manages to get this thing off of him, where it finds another host; this time, it's Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), the new photog at the Daily Bugle. Brock's relationship with the symbiote manifests itself in blind rage, and we have our third villain: Venom.
The villain congestion underlines a major problem with the screenplay: Sandman's the only character that feels like he got a full showcase as bad guy. Venom and Harry are treated as momentary distractions where they feel like they could've carried a lot more of this thing. And the black costume was a pretty major storyline in the comic. But here, he's in possession all of 20 minutes' story time. It's symptomatic of too many cooks getting short shrift in the kitchen.
And that is precisely what is so infuriating about Spider-Man 3: the script. One that comes as not only lazy, but altogether cheap. Take Harry's character arc, for instance:
1. Harry and Peter have a knock-down drag-out fight, Harry suffers head trauma and forgets he was ever mad at Peter. 2. Harry suddenly hears his admonishing father in his head, remembers why he was out to kill Peter, and now he's evil again (more fighting) 3. The butler (who wasn't even there in the last two movies) conveniently shows up and lays it all out for Harry. Dad was the bad guy, not Spider-Man! You've had him all wrong all along! 4. Harry sees the light and proceeds to help Peter fight the Sandman and Venom.
But wait, there's more ...
Peter and Aunt May are told by the police that the guy they thought killed Uncle Ben in the first movie was only an accomplice. The real killer was actually ... wait for it ... Flint Marko!
I'll admit, it's a pet peeve of mine to see this brand of retcon. It's smacks of laziness, and it's dismissive of the audience's intelligence. I get it - they needed to give Peter an emotional reason to go after the Sandman. But even kidnapping his girlfriend (though it's been done before) is more ingenuous than this. Or Marko could kill Harry, and that might give Peter a reason to grow annoyed.
What's mystifying about "Spider-Man 3" is witnessing just how many things went wrong, compared to just how many they got right with the previous movie. "Spider-Man 3" has too many villains, subplots and bad writing to be anything other than background noise when you're washing the dishes. Or, when you've lost the remote, and can't shake your vegetable torpor to get up and change the channel. It's not "Superman 3" bad, but it's not good.
Not good, at all.
4/10