Good movie, but lacks that joy from the old days

Rating: 8/10 (4 July 2008)

Spiderman gets pinned by nothing less than three villains this time. It is clear that many have complained about this. One can agree that there is a risk of the different character's plots of getting too shallow, but we already knew the story of Harry Osbourne and why he is angry at Parker, so that is one less to be concerned about. Now Sandman, as I recall, was a whole new character that Raimi made dedicated entirely to the movie. Personally I did not mind him getting involved in the plot in the way he did (I will not go further into details for the benefit of readers who has not watched the movie yet,) but some might also think that it ruined a lot of the initial take on the story, which was created in the first movie and furthermore that they abandoned the concept in the early cartoons and Graphic Novels (which I am a bit, but not much acquainted with). This is of course a huge let down especially for the fans of the original Spiderman stories. The bit I was looking forward to in the movie was how they had created Venom and what their take on him would be. I remember sitting in the living room watching Spidey on the TV fighting this weird substance from Mars, first because it was going to take over his personality and later Brock who attained it. It became my favorite villain in the series. I did not quite feel the satisfaction of Venom's personality in the movie though, mainly because it did not quite fit the story in the TV series. The CGI is a complete other issue, and I believe that they graphically made Venom just like everyone had imagined. The thing with today though is that graphics are not all and people are famishing for some good stories to the animated characters. Today many companies make animated movies and CGI and it has become so standardized that you can not exceed the barrier of the audience just by relying on technology. On the other hand if the animation lacks because of the standard expected today, people are disappointed as well, but we will save that for some other time. As many other people I also agree on the fact that Parker was ridiculed in the most extreme way as possible. First of all his character does not fit this kind of persona, and secondly, Tobey did not manage to convince me of Parker having changed due to the new outfit. It was a bit misplaced in the movie, but it was quite obvious to see what the director wanted with those scenes. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out I might add. But besides that incident the movie was quite appalling to me and it could definitely have been done better, but many sequels end up being minor movies in which many people might think that it was just made due to commercial reasons. I did enjoy the moments in which one could recognize some of the original ideas, for instance that Venom is vulnerable to high pitched sounds and I do believe that Spiderman 3 had other moments. The soundtrack in Spiderman 3 pretty much sticked to the kind of music played in the other movies and one did not doubt which movie the music belonged to. The same theme song in the start of the other two movies also played in this one, so that was satisfying.
So to sum up: The CGI was amazing and the way The Sandman forms is very thoroughly made and you are not the least doubting which character you are looking at when Venom is on the take. Spiderman as usual also looked pretty good and the animation in the combat scenes did not falter much either. The story line could have been more thorough and for the more critical fans it might even have been a disappointment. Since I am a fan of Spiderman I decided to give it 8 stars instead of 7. It could have been better, but compared to other sequels it was quite good.