Okay, I’m going to try and make this quick and to the point. Spider-Man 3 is a grand disappointment. I’ve never been so let down by such a built up franchise before since maybe Jurassic Park 3 or Batman & Robin. The only thing more disappointing is that the same team that did the first two Spider-Man movies stuck around to do the third one, which begs the question “what were they thinking?” Now, it may sound right now that I am saying that Spider-Man 3 is a piece of trash, which I’m not. It’s just that when you look at the first two it seems like something was lost in that transition to this one.
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Spider-Man 3 picks up right where Spider-Man 2 left off. Harry still accuses Peter for killing his father, and Peter is having problems balancing his responsibility for Mary Jane Watson and his alter ego. After Harry suffers a severe blow to the head during a duel with Peter he is left with amnesia. So, Harry forgets all about his quarrels with Peter and everything is just dandy, for the moment. Conveniently, a meteorite strikes Earth a few yards from Peter Parker just in time for an alien substance to hitch a ride on Peter’s moped back to his place. All the while we have Flint Marco, a villain the audience is supposed to sympathize with, escaping from prison to try and help his terminally ill daughter. As the movie progresses Peter discovers that Marco was Uncle Ben’s true murderer, only now Flint accidentally tripped into a science experiment that allows him to transform into and morph with sand. The alien substance attaches itself to Peter’s Spider-Man suit and soon changes him; this is where the movie falls flat on its face.
Many reviews complain that the movie tries to handle too much, that it overstuffs itself. I didn’t find that problem at all. The problem I found was in the middle of the film where Peter’s personality is affected by the venomous substance thus alienating (no pun intended) himself from everyone. I don’t know what Sam Raimi was thinking, but all of a sudden we go into this comical Saturday Night Fever type sequence where Peter basically becomes a prick. He dances and gets boogey with it. He pushes Mary Jane away and tries to make her jealous while all the while it makes the audience laugh at how out of place this part of the film is. Soon he realizes that this new Peter is not him at all, so he tries to put a stop to it. While Peter’s rival photographer, Eddie Brock, is praying for God to kill Peter Parker at a local church, Spider-Man tries separating the venom from him in the bell tower. Brock overhears him and goes to see what the commotion is thus leading to him encountering the substance and becoming Venom. The sad part is that Venom has the least screen presence of any of the villains.
There are some well done action scenes but they are spread out and stuck in between painfully bad dialogue. The final battle royale was impressive but it came way too late because at that point I was just looking at all the expensive visual effects and didn’t care about the story anymore. The only bad part about the finale battle is that we watch parts of it through a news broadcast where the reporter over dramatically says “could this be the end of Spider-Man?” Now, this movie cost a massive $300 million dollars, which is sort of an embarrassment considering the product. Sandman is the most impressive CGI in the film even though we’ve seen the effect in The Mummy films before this. The crane sequence was embarrassing though. The CGI looked rough and unfinished and I kept asking myself where did all that money go? Bottom line, there is such a thing as too much CGI and Spider-Man 3 could have been much greater if it was toned down visually. When I look back and see that three amazing Lord Of The Rings films were made for $200 million it makes me sad that $300 million was wasted on such a misbalanced film like Spider-Man 3.
We also get a new composer on board. Danny Elfman had some creative issues with Sam Raimi ( I can see why) and he dropped from the project. Elfman was the soul of the first two films; he is really one of the best composers for comic book movies. The very subpar Christopher Young stepped in and created a lifeless score. There was a prominent trumpet theme somewhere in the middle, but it only sounded like some hollow replica of Elfman’s work for Batman. The score never really supports the film like it should, but then again I don’t think any composer could support this movie when you have to switch from comedy back to drama back to action so many times in one movie.
The acting was also pretty atrocious. Dialogue felt forced and unnatural pretty much like a high school play. Some lines were laughably bad like when Peter mocks Harry in the midst of a fight and says “little Goblin gonna cry?” Each character gets their own crying scene and each actor looks like they are trying so hard to cry that you wonder why they didn’t practice in front of the mirror some more. Thomas Haden Church’s character really served no purpose in the film and in fact I think he only appears in like 5 scenes in non-CGI form.
The bottom line is that I went into this film expecting a dark and very deep film about self conflict and I ended up getting a mixed bag of bad and misplaced comedy and poorly structured pathos. I loved the first two Spider-Man movies and thought they were extremely enjoyable, but I actually said out loud in the theater in the middle of the movie, “what is going on with this movie?” It’s all over the place and switches tone so many times that it breaks any care the audience has for the characters. Eight year-old boys will get a kick out of this movie; everyone else will walk out of the theater thoroughly confused at what they just saw. The only part I loved was Bruce Campbell’s hilarious cameo because it was at the point that I didn’t care that it was out of place and ruined the tone of the film.
