I’m conflicted. On the one hand, Spider-Man 3 had super cool special effects, totally solid acting by all of the secondary characters, a decent amount of action, and an ambitiously complex plot.
But you can probably tell from what I just said where I felt the film came up short. Tobey Maquire? Kirsten Dunst? Plot is TOO ambitious? Action a little lacking? Yep, that sums it up fairly well.
My biggest beef is with the storyline. We’re treated to ANOTHER film about how Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson have an unstable relationship, and the extent of their love for each other is tested. Give me a break, Sam Raimi (director). That should NOT have been focused on so much, even if we DO get a bit of a different twist on that story this third time around.
Unfortunately, because their relationship IS such a big focus of Spider-Man 3, I didn’t get to see as much of Spider-Man as I wanted to. When I did see Spidey doing his superhero thing, I was happy. And the villains were pretty great. But because Mary Jane and Peter keep having to work the kinks out of their relationship, Venom and Sandman and the Green Gobblin’ have just about zero time to develop as villains. No sooner does Venom show up than he’s forged an alliance with Sandman and set off to destroy Spider-Man (and no, the hows and whys of Sandman working with Venom are not explained). Sandman, in particular, gets screwed. Thomas Haden Church does a fantastic job in the movie, and Sandman is a great character in the beginning of the movie. And then… well… nothing really happens in his character arc. In fact, he doesn’t have an arc at all. As awesome as his special effects are (except, what the fuck, Sandman can fly?!), someone apparently forgot that it would be more worthwhile to spend more time on him as a character than, say, on Harry Osborn (AGAIN, because we ALREADY went through all of that stuff in the second damn movie) or Eddie Brock (which I could accept, if not for the fact that he gets about five minutes of screen time once he’s become an actual villain). Gah. There was a lot of wasted potential there, I felt.
Also, Tobey looks ridiculous when he has a crying scene in this movie. And he looks ridiculous when he styles his hair all Emo n’ stuff and acts like a badass while looking like a dork (which is intentionally done, I think. See, Peter is turned to the Dark Side by a creepy alien goo… but Peter is so naturally a good guy and a nerd that the sludge cannot turn him into an actual BAD bad guy. You know, a guy so bad that he looks cool doing it? That’s just not Peter Parker).
The debate over Spider-Man 3’s merits and failures may rage on forever, but this review will not. The movie was totally worthwhile to watch, merely disappointing lacking in fresh substance. Definitely check it out if you liked the other films (I think I still like Spider-Man 2 the most), if only for Bruce Campbell’s HILARIOUS and awesome role as a Maître d’. Bigger and better than his other Spider-Man roles by far. Hell, it’s a bigger and better role than Venom gets.
Shit, I almost left out the part that explains the picture! Well, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out, but lemme lay it out for you: Those three guys spend WAY too much time out of their masks in the movie. And I’m just talking about when their characters are wearing the entire rest of their outfit – Spider-Man goes around dressed up as Spider-Man, but without his mask on. A LOT. Where ordinary people could easily SEE him, even. The “New Goblin” has some sort of helmet thing (which, of course, retracts and folds away all sci-fi and shit into NOTHINGNESS), but he’s apparently too cool to use it (wear your helmets, kids!) longer than a couple of seconds. Venom, as short as his screentime already is, goes around looking like Topher Grace half of the time. Just in case, you know, we FORGOT what the faces of these actors look like. Because we totally might have done that if they didn’t always fight unmasked. Hell, Sandman probably spends the most time not actually looking like the actor who portrays him (well, because he looks like sand. Y’know).Annoying.
Byting Reviews 
dude, Bruce Campbell totally ruled and you’re right “Peter at the Disco” was lame/funny/lame.
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“I’m Topher Grace.”Hilarious. I don’t like Smirking Boy or Potato Dunst, and I think I might IMAX it. Is it worth it?
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Damn, you guys didn’t use my suggestion in the forum. Oh well.Also: http://panicatthedamndoor.ytmnd.com/
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Woah, I should have pointed out that I actually saw the IMAX showing of this. Because I did, and it was amazing. Everything in the picture was as sharp as a razor (including the one preview we got, which was Harry Potter). Our theater’s new IMAX sound system wasn’t set up ideally, though – the rear speakers weren’t all the way at the back of the theater. Instead, they were hanging about 3-4 rows in (which was where I was sitting, unfortunately). Gonna have to sit somewhere else next time, unless they fix that.I was pretty impressed with the IMAX deal. You won’t see many previews, since only the super-awesome IMAX-format previews are allowed… and you won’t see the aggravating 30-minutes-before-the-show show that plays inane crap about movies or television shows and retarded commercials. There weren’t even slide projector ads. I liked it.
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I finally got around to seeing this. Usually I feel I’m harsher on films than you are sometimes (you being Jai), but I think you hit this movie harder than I would have. I thought, all things considered, it was a good movie. The action was amazing, although it began to wear a bit when it seemed like a lot of fight scenes were just two characters falling from a great height. As much as I disliked Dunst and smirk boy in the previous two films, they didn’t bother me as much this time around. I liked everyone in the film. That said, Venom needs to be cut. The symbiote plot device wasn’t terrible, but they could have just left it with him being introduced to Brock in the church, and maybe have the end of the film be a shot of Venom screaming in the night or something (like how <>Batman Returns<> ended with a shot of Catwoman, ignoring the part that Catwoman was in the entire film). Anyway, Venom got no screentime and should have been cut to make more room for Sandman, who was a cool villain with a great story (better than the comic, I’d say), and who apparently can grow 30 feet tall. I don’t mind finally wrapping up the Green Goblin storyline, but having three bad guys (or two bad guys plus whatever) is entering into Joel Schumacher Batman territory. In fact, so many main and supporting characters mean a lot of more interesting ones got the shaft. Did we need Gwen in the movie for anything but to make Eddie Brock mad at Peter some more? Why would Aunt May travel from Queens to Manhattan just to talk to Peter for five minutes and then leave? Harry Osbourne’s Alfred was actually enjoyable, so why not give him more screen time instead of cutting it to give us 3 seconds of Captain Stacy?I’m sure we’ll see more of the Stacys and Venom in movie #4, so I guess that’s why they introduced Captain Stacy, but whatever they plan to do with him, he was not in the film long enough to have any resonance should he reappear next time, so it wasn’t really worth it. See? I was <>slightly<> less critical than you with this film.
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Oh yeah, I wonder if Peter banged that Greek chick. I know I would have. I know all of us would have.
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I would have gone to her falafel stand until I lost mobility in my jaw, if you know what I’m saying.She seemed a lot nicer and level-headed than MJ, in fact. But that’s based on a lot less screentime than MJ had, so we’ll never know. Maybe she’ll become Black Cat for the next movie!
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