Spider-Man 3....the web snaps, and brings us down with it.

Rating: 5/10 (6 May 2007)

Spider-Man 3 is not a bad movie. Just a mediocre one. Very much a been there, done that experience. The problems are many: 1. There is very little actual Spider-Man in the movie. For a movie that is almost 2 and a half hours long, do you realize that Spider-Man himself appears on screen for a mere 25 minutes total? How do I know? Well, I have a copy of it, timed all the various times he appears on screen, and added it up. 25 minutes. Sorry Tobey Maguire, but your Peter Parker is not a very interesting character. Three movies in, and you should have evolved beyond the whiny geek you were in the first movie. No change at all. In fact I think Peter cries more in this movie than in the first one. 2. Sam Raimi has said in public that he does not like the character of Venom. Among fans however, he's a favorite. Many, I'm sure, actually like him MORE than Spider-Man. Since Raimi doesn't, he does not do the character justice. On screen, he's never referred to as Venom, never refers to himself as "We", thus eliminating the whole purpose of the symbiote existence. The goo is attracted to rage and negative feelings? Great. They took the pink slime from Ghostbusters II and turned it black. Venom was what the majority of fans were looking forward to in this movie. But we're given the scrawny Topher Grace giving a performance almost as whiny as Tobey ("Do you remember how you hurt me?"). He's never shown as being as evil and as powerful as he is, even needing Sandman's help to defeat Spider-Man. Yeah. OK. Raimi obviously gave in to studio pressure to include Venom. His heart wasn't in it. 3. Sandman is not a very interesting villain. We're never given any reason for Spider-Man to root against him. The scene with his daughter establishes the fact that he's not a bad person. So when it's said that he really killed Uncle Ben, any person with a modicum of common sense will instantly realize that his death was an accident. They show Peter's nightmares about what happened, but the intelligent moviegoer knows that that's not how it happened. So Sandman's confession at the end is just another reason for Tobey to cry. Plus, he lets Sandman go! He just flies off. What? The death of Uncle Ben may have been an accident, but he's still a criminal. He hurt several people, including police officers, since his escape. So...Spidey will let a criminal go as long as he hasn't done anything to him personally? Sandman's storyline is never resolved, so in the end, there was no point of him being in the movie to begin with. 4. The absence of previous screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. They are the creators of Smallville. Both with Smallville and in their Spidey 2 script, they showed that they have a real gift of knowing the characters, and developing them properly. Their absence on Smallville is felt in the current hit or miss season. It's also felt in Spidey 3 because Raimi and his brother are only slightly better screenwriters than George Lucas. They have no real grasp on character development. Tobey Maguire has not matured at all as Peter or Spider-Man. Mary Jane was at her most annoying in this movie. She says to Peter "Everything is not about you", but it's her that seems to have that attitude. "I got fired. Pity me." With Harry Osbourne, we get the cruelest injustice of all...amnesia. It is one of the oldest, and poorest excuses for conflict in a script. His friend-turned enemy-turned friend-turned enemy-turned friend routine in this movie is cheesy and manipulative, because we know it won't last. The resolution to the whole this is far to convenient, and a sell out. I've already said the problems with the handling of the villains, so there's no reason to go into that. 5. The visual effects. They were bad. There's no two ways about it. The backgrounds never fit in with characters in close up. This is especially evident in the fight between Peter and Harry. It SCREAMED blue screen. The CGI doubles for the actors always looked rubbery, and never looked convincing. 6. The movie ends on a down note. It's supposed to be a heroic movie. Even if you look at this as a trilogy, the second act (Spidey 2) is the one that is supposed to end a down note, to be redeemed by the end of the third movie. Here, we don't even get Spidey's triumphant swinging across the city, which in my opinion, is as necessary as Superman's flight over the earth at the end of his movies. Here we get yet ANOTHER sequence of Peter and Mary Jane staring silently at each other (which I had enough of even before the end of Spidey 2), before slow dancing into a fadeout of Peter's solemn face. HUH? Nothing like sending the audience out depressed. Now the movie has opened to $148 million in it's opening weekend. In all probability, it will gross more than $300 million. Problem is, it doesn't deserve it. It opened big because of the popularity of the first two, and some slick marketing by the studio. The product itself doesn't deliver on what was promised. Not by a long shot. Shame. Because it's success will show the studio that they don't even have to try anymore. They can turn out a mediocre product, and the American movie-going public, like the drones they are, will line up, and hand over their money without a thought. So if you, like me, were severely disappointed...be honest. Tell people it's not worth it. Wait for video, because you aren't missing anything. There's nothing here you haven't seen before. Let the second weekend grosses plummet. Show the studio we deserve better than this. Not that they'll listen. But it's worth a try.