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Posted by:

MacGlaspyn

Date:

May 11th, 2007 1:20 PM

Header:

Spider-Man 3 Review

Bulletin:

Huge Honkin’ Spoiler Alert!

If you don’t want things to be ruined for you, STOP READING!

Here there be dragons and so forth…

Okay, if you are still here, I will assume that you either have seen Spider-Man 3 and would like to see what a fellow movie goer thought of it, OR you have no intention to see it and are merely curious as to what some dude who did see it thought. Either way, thanks for stopping by!

The final contractual movie in the Spidey series was a good action movie, heck; it was a great action movie. Yep, tons of action. Right there on the screen (and I saw it on an IMAX, so the action was 5 stories tall). Now, while I like fast paced action as much as the next guy, this movie seemed to be more geared toward the people who are easily distracted by jangling your car keys or by bright lights. Sure, the argument can be made that with a character who is always in motion like Spidey, that is needed… fine. However, the character is also one of wit, banter and brains; which implies some sort of script/dialogue. Here is how I saw it break down…

Spider-Man 1: One villain (Green Goblin)
Spider-Man 2: Two villains (Harry Osborn and Doc Ock)
Spider-Man 3: Three villains (New Goblin, Sandman, and Venom)

And just like in the late 80s through today, when you add Venom things quickly go downhill. Ironic that they turned him into a brain eater isn’t it?

Okay, barring the old chestnut of movies of villain escalation, they just put too much into the film. Why did we need the Sandman in the first place? Why did we need to see his origin? Why did he need to be made sympathetic to the point of it being crammed down our throats? Why, oh why did he need to be added to the Uncle Ben death scene!?!?

Sadly, I liked him the most…

The meteor goo that was the symbiote. Fine, can’t have Secret Wars or even the Astronaut Jameson explanation from the mid 90s cartoon for it… but just a rock hitting the ground and sticking to Pete’s moped? Ooookay… Then we have Topher Grace who managed to turn Eddie Brock into “Eric Foreman as Venom”. Interesting choice. I never saw him as petulant, whiney and super petulant before. Entitled and in it for himself? Sure. Not whiney. At least he is somewhat dating Gwen Stacy, at least in his own mind.

Wait… Gwen is in this one? Didn’t we do the Goblin/Bridge scene in the first one, but with MJ? What is Gwen in here for? Love interest for Petey? Hook to bring Captain Stacy in to the films? Nope. Just random character who can be used to make MJ jealous when Spidey is hopped up on the space smack. For two scenes nonetheless. At least one of them has Pete playing cool jazz piano in a bar… To her credit, Ms. Howard is dead on as Gwen; too bad she wasn’t used more efficiently.

While no SINGLE issue in this movie could give it a bad review, they add up. I can get past organic webshooters, so fine, I can get past the hiccups in this movie. The only point that needs to be heard is that the more you try to cram into a movie (villains, action scenes, characters “just because”, etc) the less of a plot and story you have. This film could have been a swan song, instead it turned into a garbled mess. Will I see it again? Of course, it’s Spider-Man after all… I just won’t be as happy about it as I should have been.

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