Spidey 3 sucks...

Rating: 1/10 (16 May 2007)

Profoundly disappointed is the only way to describe how I felt about "Spiderman 3". In fact, commenting on what was good in the movie is easy, Kristen Dunst, that's all. The entire movie felt like first take scenes strung together by coincidence and contrivance. I found none of the fights or action sequences to be entertaining or thrilling or remotely engaging. I have read many reviews which equate "Spiderman 3" into nothing more than a glorified video game, and I find that insulting to video games. Much more thought and care goes into the construction of video games and their respective story lines than anything that Sam Raimi and Sony vomit up on the screen in "Spiderman 3".
When blended correctly with animatronics, make-up, and real action, CGI can be an enormously effective tool in movies (See the original "Jurassic Park", The Lord of the Rings series, The Harry Potter series). However, nothing but CGI does not illicit any response at all. It is flat and boring with nothing to emotionally invest the viewer in the action. "Spiderman 3" felt like a contractual obligation, and Sony just wanting to blow as much of their wad on the screen as possible. The best thing is that for $250,000,000 it looks pretty crappy. If you have seen "The Mummy", then you have seen the Sandman effects, which are only slightly better. The best thing about the first two Spiderman Movies is that no matter what happened, it all came down to very human and believable characters thrust into very special circumstances. "Spiderman 3" looses its focus and goes the way of "Batman and Robin" by just cramming as much crap as they possibly could in order to justify the budget and try to deflect attention from the fact that it is really an awful movie. Tobey Maguire and James Franco gave Peter and Harry so much depth in the first two are basically turned into either jokes or CGI figures with the actors heads digitally pasted on top. New additions to the cast are also completely useless, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas-Howard, and Thomas Hayden Church barely get any time, any lines, any depth, or any reason for the viewers to give a damn about what happens to them.
What bothers me most is when people treat comics with the proper respect and really take full advantage of the emotional punch they can pack just decide to give up and make hackneyed crap like "Spiderman 3". This sentiment is best illustrated by the scene in "Spiderman 2" in which a room of doctors try to remove Doc Ock's newly fused tentacles. That scene in "Spiderman 2" is thrilling, dark, action packed, and really showed just how much Sam Raimi respected the mythos of Spiderman and its possibilities. This scene and the treatment of the Doc Ock throughout the movie, along with the original Goblin, gave me great hope that they would continue this tradition in the third movie, especially considering the inclusion of the Venom character. This movie had all of the potential and resources to make a dark, funny, thrilling, and moving third movie. Instead, the villains in "Spiderman 3" are flat and uninteresting. Sandman and Venom become nothing more than excuses to utilize special effects that are in no way innovative and have been done much, much better.
Sandman is boring. His initial set of motives in the movie is even less compelling, and it shows by the screenwriters desperate attempt to tie Sandman emotionally to Peter and Aunt Mae. It just felt contrived. And poor Eddie Brock/Venom! What a f**king waste of an enormous opportunity! "Venom's" (if you want to call that CGI booger Venom) inclusion and total dismissal in the movie smacks of Sony forcing Sam Raimi to include a character which he didn't like or understand. Venom, the symbiote, the black suit, and Peter's turn to the "darkside" are treated as nothing more than a joke, or, worse, a convenient way for them to attempt to ratchet up the action in the final battle between Spidey and what amounts to nothing more than a sandy version of the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man. The Venom/Eddie Brock storyline was more than ample enough to provide fertile ground for the entire plot of "Spiderman 3". Proper handling of the Venom storyline would have enabled "Spiderman 3" to easily become the best movie in the series. All of it could have been incredibly emotional, dark, twisted, thrilling. Instead, we get this heap of crap that you don't even have to see to know exactly, and I mean exactly, what is going to happen from the minute you walk into the movie. Hell, you don't even need to see it! Just based on the information released by Sony before the movie's release was enough for me to find not a single scene of interest in the entire film, except for a lone fight between Harry and Peter in the Osbourne Mansion. After very conveniently crashing to earth at the exact same time that Peter and Mary Jane just happen to be in the same spot, the symbiote turns out to be nothing more than a creeping pile of alien dog doo that amplifies aggression, which no one who steps in it can scrape off, and the final 15 minute full incarnation of Venom is not threatening, scary, or even necessary. Here's hoping that they learn their lesson and don't make the same mistake with Carnage in the next movie.
Finally, before the third film was released, everyone was speculating what would happen if Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, and Kristen Dunst decided they didn't want to return for a 4th, 5th or 6th film in the series. Well after seeing what the did to the third movie, the answer is simple and blatant: maybe they can redeem themselves and make a film that isn't just plain insulting to anyone who wastes their time or money on "Spiderman 3".