To Swing Or Not To Swing

Rating: 5/10 (8 May 2007)

"Spoiler Warning"
This will be a difficult review to write. I have highly anticipated the release of Spiderman 3 since the end of Spiderman 2 and it pains me greatly to express my feelings here about it. I respect Sam Raimi and his directing ability, especially his character development. His movies ARE entertaining. I want to make that clear because my Spiderman 3 review is not a positive review.
This movie has many problems. The first and most important problem is the lack of character development. Sam Raimi put a lot of time and effort in the first 2 films to make sure we knew and empathized with the characters. It takes a lot of talent to make us sympathize with a Villain to the point that we almost hate to see them go at the end. That's good movie making. Spiderman 3 just didn't have those qualities. Not only did it lack insight into getting to know the NEW characters, it also made the ones we have grown to love in the last 2 movies seem like we didn't know them at all. They just didn't behave like the same characters.And that's even BEFORE the oozie goop took hold of Peter. As far as the NEW cast, the only new character we got ANY background at all about was Sandman. He has an unhappy wife and a daughter dying of a terrible sickness. We are supposed to understand here that it's his daughter's sickness that motivates him to rob banks and NOT the fact that he's a bad guy. But yet, he smashed police cars and armored trucks like it's a day at the office. Yeah, maybe no one got hurt because it was a PG movie but flying police cars DO injure and sometimes kill people in the real world. :) Then after the destruction of a city block, he'd turn to spidey and say "I don't want to hurt you." or "I'm not a bad guy." Did anyone get the feeling he seemed to be a bit wishy washy? It seemed like the screenwriters (or Sam) couldn't decide WHAT kind of person they wanted Sandman to be. And then of course there's Eddie Brock and Venom. Where do I start? I'll try to give Sam the benefit of the doubt here because he has stated that he doesn't like Venom. With that in mind, I'm sure his heart just wasn't in it. That probably began the demise of Eddie from the first scene with him in it. He just comes across as a womanizing jerk that likes to take pictures and doesn't mind faking them. And, that's pretty much all we get. Where did he come from? Did he have family? And the biggest question. WAS he REALLY dating Gwen Stacy? Although he tells Capt Stacy he is, other than the ONE conversation between Gwen and Brock in which she pretty much blew him off, there's nothing to support that. The film never says for sure. I'm guessing they weren't. So, this makes it EVER so strange that he'd be in a church praying for the death of Peter Parker over something he didn't really loose. Based on what we saw...I just didn't see anything happening to Brock that was terrible enough to be praying for God's help in ending someone's life. It was only a job that he JUST got the day before. How bad could it be? Not to mention he DID fake photos. How's that REALLY Pete's fault? Anyway, back to Sam. I understand that even though he didn't really want to do Venom, he wanted to give the screaming fans (me included) something. So,we got 15 minutes of a barely seen, barely speaking, undeveloped character that seemed to have no believable motivation for hating Peter. And this was pretty much just so we Venomites would close our traps about it. I might have wanted to see Venom, but not so much that I wanted to sacrifice story and character development for it. Not to mention Venom should be one of those "entire movie" Villains like GG and Doc Ock. They got a whole movie and Venom got 15 minutes? Again, Sam doesn't like Venom, I guess I can understand and forgive his lack of dedication to the character. But, can we forgive the Gwen Stacy oops? A major character in the world of Spiderman. At least in the comics. But, in this movie she was reduced to being nothing more than a character contrived to make Mary Jane jealous? Are you kidding? That would almost be like making the Black Cat a waitress in the French restaurant where Peter was going to propose to MJ. A very wasted character. The obvious problem with this movie is that it just has WAY to much going on to take time for that character development stuff. So, we end up with a detached story and empty faceless characters without a real purpose. Even the romance between Peter and MJ seemed awkward. It didn't flow as well as it did in the previous films. It almost seemed like Sam was TRYING to force some romance into a plot packed movie in between all the action scenes. I wouldn't say I left the theater thinking it was a bad movie, it was just very disheartening. This will in no way affect my future viewing of other Sam Raimi movies...but let me just say this to Sam. Sam, in the future, if you're not committed to a character or idea, don't do it. Only stick with the ones you have a passion for. I miss the old Spidey cast and it's magic.