All good things must come to an end...

Rating: 3/10 (5 May 2007)

The first two entries into this franchise were nothing short of magnificent and I will be the first to admit that I had very, very high hopes for this film. Unfortunately, this turned out to be yet another example of the ever-increasing disposable blockbuster.
Along the way, some suit at Sony demanded that for Spiderman three, there needs to be... wait for it... THREE villains! That would be totally fabulous! Well, you may as well forget the three villains because the film's pacing was the only real villain that actually showed up to the party. The plot was thin to the point of being incoherent. Don't get me wrong, the Sandman, Venom, and Goblin Jr. story arcs all had enormous potential by themselves. Thomas Haden Church and Topher Grace put on great performances for their 15 seconds of fame. But they did not have enough screen time to have any lasting impact. Instead, their potential was wasted by mashing all of them together into a convenient 2 1/2 hour box so that we could endure Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst going through the motions for the rest of the film.
I don't know if Maguire came to work everyday with images of Seabiscuit 2: Son of Seabiscuit dancing around in his head or what but the entire returning cast's wooden performance was painful to stomach on a scale only matched by one of those insipid Lucas prequels. The movie literally felt like watching a child play with toys. What's worse, these emotionless, cookie cutter character interactions were merely segue to redundant action sequences that have all been done before, only better in the previous two films. The opening scene went right into a really weak chase/fight between Spiderman and Goblin Jr. that lasted way, way too long. Reminded me a lot of the car chase in Star Wars II. No real point, no buildup, just mindless SFX for 10 minutes. 100 million dollars later, we have Gwen Stacey (an utterly useless character) falling off some random building... for no apparent reason at all. Hasn't that already been done before? Plus, correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't Mary Jane been left suspended in mid-air in a different vehicle at the end of EVERY MOVIE??? God, I wonder which vehicle they use at the end of Spiderman 4? I hope it's a Segway.
This movie was unforgivable precisely because I could guess what was going to happen. There was never any sense of urgency by any of the characters because nothing was ever on the line. The whole thing stunk like a bad episode of Murder She Wrote and I was waiting for the Angela Lansbury cameo. Instead I got Bruce Campbell and Stan Lee. How distracting is that? In the end, product was a obvious rushed hack job which really should've been two movies. It added nothing positive to the franchise and sold out to the toy/video game companies who financed this train wreck. The overload of useless action and lack of real story is proof enough. This movie was a glorified toy commercial... and oh yes, there will be toys... and games. Raimi has squandered a great deal of goodwill on this film and maybe you think I am being unfair in taking him to task and giving his film such a low grade. But my dollar is my vote. So now I am going out of my way to get the word out that this movie is terrible and as long as blockbusters continue to wear outrageous price tags as a sense of accomplishment, they deserve to be knocked off their pedestal with an equal amount of due criticism. Effects do nothing to a movie that sucks. Any movie can have good effects if you throw enough money at it. It's the story which makes or breaks a film. Less pointless action and more character development would have saved 100 million dollars and the franchise. I shudder to think of the turd that will eventually become Spiderman 4.