More complexity, less coherence - still a lot of fun

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2007)

This is my first, spontaneous reaction of Spidey 3, and I guess I have yet to see the film again, preferably on DVD, to see if I missed something.
First of all, the previous 2 films made me cheer like a fool since I am a child of Marvel and even though I have not touched a Spider-Man comic book in any significant way since I was twelve, they did blow me off my seat in a mix of nostalgia and well, a sense of having that same old fun, fun, fun again. As many others, I felt that while the first film was an impressive adaption the second did kick some serious butt. All I needed from there was Venom, and I'd be sound as a pound.
The third Spidey takes on a somewhat new direction. Claiming that it's "dark" would perhaps be to overdo it (after all, Spidey will never be no Batman), but the intrigue this time is filled with a lot of complications and characters feeling fairly miserable. More importantly, I feel the film takes on a symbolic coherence in it's thematic department, something that the first two films had no interest in, since they were mostly about buttering the popcorn. Spidey 3 is in many ways a film about symbiosis and duality. Naturally, we have the alien gooey stuff which turns him into a "bad" spider and creates Venom out of Topher Grace's nicely played Eddie Brock. But overall, the film is filled with situations where two images or personalities are standing in between each other - Harry's memory loss, the truth about the murder of Peter's Uncle Ben - and not to mention characters with fatherly angst going up against each other. For me, this is the most surprising and interesting element of the film and it sets it apart from the other two in a reasonable way - after all, what can you add to the near perfection of "Spider-Man 2"?
The critics have a point or two, even though I don't see why now's the time to be picky. The film is uneven and way too long, it has a lot of plot holes and have a lot of things going on instead of just tying together a couple of good tight few ones. It's perhaps trying too hard. But these films are often more interesting than more conventionally structured ones. I like the playfulness and the elimination of predictable dramatical events. This is not a film where the plot follows Aristotle like clockwork - it's almost passionately rough, constantly being all over the place. It could be a flaw, but I kinda like it nevertheless. A bigger problem is the slow parts in the middle of the film, where it feels like the soap opera of Parker & MJ is fairly routine stuff in the hands of Raimi & C:O (noticing Bruce Campbell is however a treat, as always). I also have some nerdy comments, like feeling that Venom is given the Darth Maul-treatment and furthermore having a hard time taking Topher Grace as Eddie Brock - he does a fine job, but it annoys the heck out of me that the physically more suitable Thomas Haden Church is stuck with Sandman (which he does splendidly as well, so I realize my comments here are pointlessly subjective).
Needless to say, the action and special effects in Spidey 3 is just plain "rocks off"-splendor. But there is also a kind of intensity, and even intelligence, in Spider-Man 3 that the two previous films did not have. On the other hand, they definitely felt more solid in structure and pace. So, in general, I had just as much fun watching the third entry as I had watching the other two.