Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Some say the mark of a great story is when the audience feels the emotions of that story’s characters. To laugh when the characters laugh, become angry when the characters become angry, to cry when the characters cry. Well with Spider-Man 3 the audience sure did cry, but less than half as much as Peter Parker.

Spider-Man 3 is a sad moment in movie history for a few reasons, most notably being such a horrible follow up to two incredible action movies, and it marks a very low point for one of my favorite directors and personalities, Sam Raimi.

I could go on and on and on about all of the painful flaws of this movie, but since they are all incredibly obvious ones like wanting to yell, “Stop crying!” and “Keep that damn mask on!” at Parker, I will place some focus on the good things.

Two of the three villains were done superbly. Harry’s decent into madness has been built up perfectly and I loved the idea of him just bluntly attacking Peter physically totally out of nowhere (from Peter’s POV that is). The ensuing memory loss and return was done nicely as well, changing his tactic from physical to psychological attacks. Of course the only thing that absolutely sucked about his story was the scene with his butler. It didn’t have to go completely, but the whole reasoning given during it makes absolutely no sense.

Then there’s Eddie Brock/Venom. Though given little screen time as Venom, the necessity for more was done away with by establishing Eddie as being completely insane. The guy is obviously lost in his own warped reality, and that’s not sarcasm on my part. He had coffee with Gwen Stacy once and immediately acts as though they’re a serious couple. He consciously commits a massive act of fraud and doesn’t get why he should be fired for it. Back to Gwen Stacy for a moment, he sees her on a date with Parker (the only one they go on and that ends horribly) and he thinks Parker stole her from him. It was perfect.

Sadly those are the only high notes in the movie aside from J.K. Simmons stealing every scene he’s in for the third time running. Sure the Sandman looked cool, but did he really have to be such an overly sympathetic character? And did you know that his first appearance in the comics was showing up at Peter’s high school and demanding he be given a high school diploma? Yes I am being incredibly serious. Ah the innocence of the 60’s. Plus using him to drastically change Spider-Man’s origin was just lame. I get how what they did didn’t completely change things, but there was no reason for it other than to make Peter mad.

I honestly believe a lot of story elements would be forgivable if it wasn’t just all rehashing what’s already been told in the first two movies. This entire movie is another chapter to Spider-Man’s origin story so no matter how cool the action scenes are, the story went no where. It was just another tale of, “Why is Peter, Spider-Man?” and trying to balance his personal life with his responsibilities. And it was hammered into our heads, too, unlike the first two movies that just flowed. Peter even flat out says, “We always have a choice.” Additionally it ended the same way as the first two; Mary Jane gets kidnapped by the villain, Spider-Man has to save her and gets a severe beat down in the process. This all goes to disprove the old adage of, “Third time’s a charm.”

A saving grace for Sam and Ivan Raimi (who wrote the movie) is how much pressure they were under from producers to keep throwing in more and more characters and story lines from the comics, primarily Gwen Stacy and Eddie Brock. One producer went as far as to talk out of her ass about how the fans wanted to see Gwen. Yeah we did, in the first movie before the introduction of Mary Jane just like she was in the comics. I have absolutely no problem with them starting with Mary Jane, skipping over Gwen completely, but to claim that the fans want the story to go backwards? Plus, her character is completely wasted here versus what she meant in the comics (read Spider-Man: Blue by Jeph Loeb).

Obviously compared to the previous movies this one falls short. To give a colorful analogy it’s like the three movies were in a long jump contest together. 1 and 2 landed at the same distance, breaking a world record, but when 3’s turn came up, it forgot to jump, running straight into the sand, tripping, and falling onto its face.

Marvel Movie Score: 4.5

Why That?: The fight scenes are awesome, I love the looks of all the characters, yes even Harry’s “New Goblin” outfit. And clearly it had potential, who knows what would’ve happened if there was a different writing team and producers had backed off as they did for Spider-Man 2. In the end, it was barely decent.