Don't pay money to see this...

Rating: 3/10 (10 May 2007)

Never been a Marvel comics guy, and never read a Spider-Man comic, but I was a big fan of the first two Spider-Man films and was looking forward to the third one. Figured, if nothing else, it would be a typical fun summer flick. It wasn't.
Everyone's going to comment on the whole "too many bad guys" element, but I'll have to disagree. It wasn't "too many bad guys." It wasn't even "too many plot elements" or "too many loose ends to tie up." Too much is one thing, and a valid excuse if that's really the problem, however, I'd argue that's not the problem here. What people seem to be overlooking is that nothing was done well. Not one element; not the love story, not Spidey's ego issues, not the Sandman. You can do a lot in a film if you do it all well; if characters are developed and the focus is tight and snappy. Spider-man didn't do that, and ultimately, Spider-Man 3 did nothing well, except maybe special effects.
The writing was pretty sad, and half the film belonged on the cutting room floor. I think the first thing anyone bad-mouths is the "emo bad guy" Spidey, and rightfully so. I swear to God, I was praying that was a dream-sequence the whole time. It was absurd. Every movie deals with it's own reality, and when you violate that reality, you make a bad movie. Peter Parker tapping random girls' behinds is pretty iffy, but when he walks onto the stage at a jazz club, steals the piano, grabs the microphone, dances on the tables, swings off the lights, and rocks out on the middle of the dance floor with background dancers snapping behind him like he's in a production of West Side Story, the movie loses all touch with it's reality. I'm not saying Spider-Man 1 or 2 were "realistic," I'm just saying that even in Spider-Man's reality, that doesn't happen. It was absurd, and while obviously an attempt at humor, I found it insulting.
I could probably go on for a long while Spider-Man's problems, but let me just say a three more things. First off, in Spider-Man 3, grenades aren't grenades, they're plot devices. Just another violation of Spider-Man's internal reality. When Spider-Man throws a plot device at Harry Osborn and it explodes next to his face, he gets a nasty scar. When Spider-Man throws a plot device at Venom and Eddie Brock, it destroys them completely. That makes tons of sense, eh? Secondly, Sandman. Since when can Sand fly? I dunno, I'll leave that aside. Clearly, Sandman is one heck of a villain, and he's established as being pretty darn tough to kill. Spider-Man tries water, that doesn't work. Harry later tries turning him into glass and cracking him, but clearly that's ineffective too. So how does the movie get rid of him? Magical change of heart. No build up, no explanation other than the implied one that goes like "he's just a good guy who had tough luck, and now he wants to show it." One minute Sandman's trying to kill everyone, one minute he's asking Spidey to forgive him. How satisfying to the audience. I wanted resolution. That's pretty poor.
Lastly, the black stuff. What the heck? I don't care that it fell from the sky, just give me a little bit of back-story or some kind of development. Spidey takes it to some random scientist who just happens to not care that a reporter just brought him a weird black alien organism in a glass jar. Maybe they figured he'd do a better job at giving us expositional dialog than a Spider-man voice-over. If you read the comics, you know all about the "venom symbiote," but if you don't, you're imagining the Doctor saying something like; "Peter, be careful, it enhances aggression, it seems to want you, and appears to be some symbiotic alien organism. I know, because that's what it says in the script." And finally; look, if a weird black alien goo falls down from the sky and takes you over, amplifying your aggression and your anger and essentially all the bad traits within you, I'm pretty sure the love of your life would understand that if you told her.
Maybe I didn't hit on the best points, because there are tons of things to criticize here, but those stand out to me. Others could be summed up by phrases like "convenient bout of amnesia" or "Gwen Stacy is invulnerable to getting hit in the face with a desk" or "emo hair is not a bad-guy look." Disappointing, and seems to show that Spider-Man is going in the direction of the old Batman series: turning into a cartoon, not a comic.