A shame ... (may contain spoilers)

Rating: 1/10 (6 July 2007)

My opinions: Spider-man 1 was flawed, but still decent. It had a number of rough spots where the acting was shallow, the script was weak, and the special effects were too cartoonish. However, the plot-line held together, and the movie was a fun ride.
Spider-man 2 surpassed the original in many ways - The characters were better defined, the humor flowed well, the pacing was good, and the acting was better overall. In addition, the special effects were more believable without being overdone. Marvel & Raimi learned from the first movie, and came up with an excellent sequel.
Now, on to Spider-man 3 ...
An odd thought crept into my mind about 20 minutes into the movie. Usually, I'm so engrossed in a movie, I just enjoy the ride and don't try too think hard about the quality of the production until after the movie is over.
During the first of many slow points, the thought that hit me was: "Don't worry ... It will get better." Sadly, I was mistaken.
Where the second Spider-man movie built upon the first, the third in the series was unfocused and added nothing to the other two.
The acting was arguably the worst of the three. This time, I can't even blame it on the actors being fed a bad script. The scenes that were supposed to be dramatic or romantic turned out to contain some of the funniest parts of the movie. The scenes that were intended to be humorous ended up being stupid or embarrassing, and not a single person laughed in the theater.
The pacing of the movie was poor - though not as bad as some other Marvel movies.
Again (as usual), Marvel attempted to bring too many characters & plot lines into a single movie. Let's see ... what plot lines did we get in this movie? Harry Osborn. The Green Goblin. The Sandman. Gwen Stacy. Uncle Ben. Eddie Brock. The symbiote. And, of course, personal issues with Mary Jane.
One thing that I thought that Marvel finally learned in the second Spider-man movie was to keep the plot lines simple and characters to a minimum. In that movie, it was basically just Doc Ock and some token appearances by Harry Osborn. (And, of course, personal issues with Mary Jane.) One major plot line with the rest of the subplots neatly weaving in.
Whatever Marvel learned in the second movie in this regard was forgotten by Spider-Man 3. Almost all of the plots mentioned were struggling to be the main plot line. Instead of weaving together, they tended to stand alone.
Regarding the special effects, they were obviously where the money went in this production. Spider-man 3 reportedly cost a quarter of a billion dollars to produce. That money brought forth a lot of flashy special effects that were way too congested during the fight scenes to be able to really appreciate what was going on. I can't imagine what they would look like on a small TV screen when they were so hard to follow on the big screen. The fight scenes had so much high-speed dodging of chunks of concrete/building parts/glass/etc, that the scenes lost credibility due to the special effects. I've always felt that special effects should add believability to a scene, and not draw attention to the fact that special effects are even being used. Spider-man 3 failed in this regard.
In my opinion, the best special effects were when the Sandman was the sole character on the screen. Those scenes were very believable.
Probably the most telling feature about the final quality of Spider-Man 3 was not what occurred on the screen, however. It was what occurred in the theater: People were walking out in the middle of the movie, and not returning. I would estimate that about 20% of the audience had left prior to the end of the show. There were many points during the movie that I was tempted to leave as well.
But, I kept thinking: "Don't worry ... It will get better."
'Nuff said.