Spider-Man 3

Scott Hardie | May 11, 2007
Spoilers ahead, duh.

The movie's been out for a week now. Comments?

Me, I feel a tinge of the same anxiety I felt over The Matrix Reloaded, when I loved the sequel and everyone else hated it, and I wonder if it's only because I loved the previous film so much. Why do people pick on Spider-Man 3 so much? No, it's not quite as good as the second film, but it's still light years ahead of most superhero sequels (two names: Brett Ratner and Joel Schumacher), and it serves up great amounts of every element you expect from a movie like this.

I never quite understood the criticism that a movie has "too much" of something (in this case plot lines), which is really a masked way of saying that you don't like some of them. If you stuff yourself on a multi-course meal and feel like there was too much food, and wished some of the lesser dishes could have been skipped so you could fully appreciate the best entrées, is the problem "too much" or "the green beans sucked"?

The element that everyone seems to want rid of is Venom. Me, I would have made Eddie Brock into a major character in the next trilogy, giving him the same arch as Harry Osborn: A friend in the first movie who is betrayed at the end, a sniveling jerk in the second movie who gains powers at the end, and a physical enemy in the third film who forces Peter to face his choices. But that said, I understand why Sam Raimi relegated Brock/Venom to such a small part in the overall series: He's not a Raimi villain. Raimi loves to find the humanity in his villains and show how they have decent hearts and often decent objectives, and Venom doesn't have any decency about him. He's a cold-hearted, irredeemable monster, and that's part of why jaded 90's comics fans like me enjoy him, but that's just not Raimi's cup of tea. Maybe he should have saved the character for some later director in the series, but I don't blame him for treating the character the way he did. It suited the story well.

I think what Spider-Man 2 did right that 3 didn't is give each story arc time to develop independently; each arc got a string of scenes to itself to build up a head of steam before the focus shifted to another arc, whereas 3 bounces around all over the place. Consider the villain transformations: In 2, Octopus is more-or-less transformed in the ER, then we see him learning his powers in the street, then we see him go to the dock, then we see him thinking about his experiment and how he'll use his powers to continue it; this sequence of scenes builds forward momentum. By contrast, the instant that Marko becomes Sandman and Brock becomes Venom, the movie immediately shifts to some other storyline and we lose the emerging grasp of the character.

What happened to Pete's spider-sense? It got annoying how many times his enemies attacked him from behind, Venom not withstanding since he's supposed to be able to do that. The friends I saw it with pointed out that Pete lost the spider-sense with the rest of his powers in the second film, but apparently it didn't come back like the others. I'm confused. The spider-sense is one of the definitive elements of the character, but then, so are the wisecracks, and none of the movies to date have bothered with those either.

One critic complained that this movie was "more of the same," and I can see what she means. Not only was this the third time in a row that Mary Jane was kidnapped by the villain for the express purpose of Spidey rescuing her, but this was also the third villain in a row created by a scientific experiment gone awry. And if they make the Lizard the next villain, it will be four in a row. There's a whole pantheon of Spidey villains out there who were created by a variety of means, but somehow the series keeps winding up on these cases.

Kerry Odell | May 12, 2007
Scott....

I found the movie to be a bit too long...perhaps because of the 3 simultaneous plots or maybe because of the crescendo to monotony pattern throughout the film. The relationship between Mary Jane & Peter/Spiderman was very two dimensional and childish. It felt more like a high school relationship than anything, which is a shame considering the potential that was there. It was also a stark contrast to the emotional character development of Sand Man/Flint Marko. How can these both be in the same movie???

I think the script writers bit off a little more than they could chew. With so many characters and relationships to explore and develop, it felt like they couldn't do it all so they chose a couple to focus on and left the rest to tired movie cliches.

That being said, the special effects were fantastic and the action scenes were breath taking. Definitely worth seeing on the IMAX or big screen. Perhaps not the best movie as a whole, but a great spiderman saga nonetheless.

Kerry

My flickr

Jackie Mason | May 12, 2007
[hidden by request]

Jackie Mason | May 12, 2007
[hidden by request]

Scott Horowitz | May 17, 2007
I thought this movie was a complete pile of horseshit. First off, the acting was subpar compared to the previous installments. I liked Thomas Haden Church, but they made his character a bit too tragic, and completely useless. Venom was in 1 fight, and I kept thinking "Why is Eric Foreman attacking Spiderman?"

I think the "Jump the Shark" movie was the jazz club scene, it was completely and utterly useless. I call this a "Franchise Killer"

Scott Horowitz | May 17, 2007
SPOILERS

Tony Peters | May 19, 2007
OK halfway through and I am soooooo unimpressed....goes back to the movie

movie over now and I agree with George Lucas, Silly movie, way way to shallow with no real substance or story...the jazz club scene was cool though, have a plot finally show up 2/3's of the way through the movie is the biggest problem. My other major complaint is the overall darkness of the film, only Batman should be that dark

Tony Peters | May 19, 2007
NOT really spoilers just complaints