Spider-Man 3.

Well what can I say to do this justice for an introduction. This is Spider-Man 3...THE Spider-Man 3. With plans for this to be only the half way point of the series, instead of the series saving itself we get...Amazing. And that is a damn shame, but whatever, here we go... Spider-Man 3, Enjoy! As an aside I found it amusing that my Dad's copy of Spider-Man 3 was unopened and clearly years old, hidden at the back of his collection. It says a lot. And leads nicely into the review...

Released three years after the second movie, this time written by Sam Raimi himself along with his brother Ivan Raimi...and Alvin Sargent again, oh God... Everyone reprises their roles again (even Bruce Campbell has a cameo again too!) and Sam Raimi is still directing. About the only difference is this film isn't set three years after the second one, it's just a few months later in the films universe, so it is no longer moving in real time.


Despite being basically slammed by critics, in the end Spider-Man 3 was the greatest success out of all three movies in terms of money. Being the highest grossing Sony movie ever and one of the highest grossing Marvel movies ever. IRONY.

The film has been criticised for bad pacing, that even though there are more of them, the individual villains are all weaker characters than previous villains, that the script was too big for its boots and that overall the film was a bit of a mess really. Even Sam Raimi himself said that this should have really been two movies and that he was actually forced into putting things like Venom into the movie due to fan pressure. That being said the action sequences received praise, as did the humour and most critics have stated that the one thing Spider-Man 3 never is...is boring.

And my feelings? Well let's dig into Spider-Man 3... I'm not sure how popular I'll be for this, either.

It opens with Peter Parker and Spider-Man living the dream. Everyone loves Spider-Man and Parker's life couldn't be more perfect. MJ too is now a huge broadway star, also living the dream, her life couldn't be anymore perfect. And Harry... still has a stick up his ass and an obsession with vengeance. Of course things go wrong, MJ gets jealous of Spider-Man's popularity because she fails at broadway, Peter ends up getting caught up in an alien symbiote that turns him into some kind of emo asshole and Harry becomes a full on super villain that looks like he came straight out of SSX but equilibrium is restored by the end. Yay and stuff...

The pacing is definitely worse in this movie, way too much happens, way too fast. And it all happens in this small universe kind of way, they try to make having such a huge heap of plots all in the same movie work by attempting to connect them all back to Peter and it really doesn't work, it just makes everything feel so contrived.

The movie also still has the classic problems this series has had. The cheesiness doesn't work, it worked in the first film, but I just don't feel it worked in the second or the third movie. The dialogue is still that is completely unnatural info dump nightmare and as said, there is just way too much plot convenience. Just...so much of this movie just feels so forced and by the numbers, so little makes any sense and so little is ever actually explained. Loads of shit just happens and we either buy it or not, they don't care, the movie has already moved onto something else. It's like a child who has just drank a two litre bottle of cheap cherryade. There are so many characters that some have to drop out of the movie with no explanation just to fit other things in and then they'll always suddenly pop back up after you've almost forgotten about what happened to them and there'll always be some twist or loose connection back to Peter Parker to make a random, seemingly unrelated scene or plotpoint fit it's just...ugh, so insanely badly written, it has so many different plots all jumbled together it's just ridiculous. The worst writing in the entire series.

Thankfully though to balance this Spider-Man 3 has easily some of the best action in the entire series. And I'd argue action is much more important in blockbusters than story...especially in the Superhero genre because let's be honest, comicbooks aren't really remembered for their storytelling. This is Spider-Man at his biggest and most exciting. Such a fun movie.

I have to say though, with my praise comes my same criticism, these movies have aged horribly! I don't like CGI anyway, I think it looks shitty but this is five year old CGI so it's super shitty. And I mean you could kind of forget about it in the first movie and to a lesser degree but at least to some extent in the second since it was usually just slid in to create moments that really captured the superhero feel and would be difficult to do with wirework, I get that. But Spider-Man 3 is just an onslaught of CGI, I struggled to find even brief second long shots when it was actually the actors in the fight scenes, apart from when they were standing around talking - it's a gratitious, unnecessary CGI overload. Well over 60% of this movie is just a badly animated cartoon.

New villains include Harry Osborn's take on Green Goblin - it looks insanely stupid, Sandman - who probably looks the least shitty but is easily the worst written given this bad plot twist involving Uncle Ben and of course Venom who was clearly added in the last five minutes and is so awfully shoehorned into the story it is just laughable and really Eddie Brock played by Topher Grace? Just no. I guess you could also count Gwen Stacy as a villain as she only seems to be there to complete Eddie Brock and Venom's mirror to Peter Parker and Spider-Man and break up MJ and Parker's marriage but honestly Bryce Dallas Howard is so much more gorgeous than Kirsten Dunst I preferred her. A shallow critic I am, but I'm just sorry, not only does Dunst not look the part, she has none of MJ's personality either. I hate the casting, I'm sorry.

For every problem with this movie - the climax basically makes up for it. The climax is just beyond awesome, a huge epic battle as Peter and Harry put their differences aside to save MJ and defeat the evil duo of Venom and Sandman. It's just so fun and exciting and the movie is worth watching just for this. Ace. Although I like how the grenade completely disintegrates Eddie and Venom but only makes Harry ugly.

So do I recommend it? You watch that climax and everything you disliked about the movie just falls away. It's a badly written, mess of a movie but so was Spider-Man 2 and that is regarded as the best movie in the series. I'd actually argue this film is better because of all of its huge, action moments that are more epic than anything in the other two movies - even with the overuse of CGI.

Spider-Man is the best movie in the series, there is no doubt of that in my mind. But in terms of sheer enjoyment and fun Spider-Man 3 is a close second with 2 trailing behind somewhere. You just can't hate a movie this fun, even if it is a bit rubbish in all other regards.

Think About It!

-Locke