Spider-Man 3 Review
“Not a total miss, but dissapointing”
When everyone’s favorite web-head swung back into theaters on May 4th, many expected the same tour de force as it’s predecessors. Whether it be the complete super hero movie in Spider-Man or the epic, romantic nobleness of Spider-Man 2, fans of the movies and comic book movies in general, clamored to see the third installment. If #3′s have taught me anything, it is be cautious(i.e. X-Men 3, Matrix Revolutions etc.). But for some reason I wasn’t worried about the third Spider-Man. The same director, Sam Raimi had the same stars in Tobe and Kirsten. What’s there to worry about? But like a proud father on prom night, I got phone calls from all the other parents telling me the bad news. My son had lost prom king. (Wow I just realized how bad that metaphor is…but alas poor readers)
People texted me, IMed me and called me, complaining about how bad this movie was. I’m never one to really buy a review if it’s a movie I wanted to see. Reviews help me with movies that I sit on the proverbial fence with. I was seeing this movie regardless and barring the negative reviews I went to the theater, with as open a mind as I could. This was a harder feat than most could acknowledge, seeing as how I had been inundated with bad reviews. And let me say this; for the most part, you nay sayers were wrong.
I was dissapointed. To a point, very dissapointed. But I was entertained. This movie doesn’t stand as a suitable bookend to the first two, but certainly wasn’t the worst super-hero movie ever. As a matter of fact I thought it had some really good things going for it. For example, Tobey Maguire is now understanding Peter Parker/Spider-Man. He sold me in this movie. He touched upon it in the second film and really couldn’t grasp it in the first movie, but definetely gets it in the 3rd film. Topher Grace was good as Eddie Brock. The action sequences were breath taking and fun, and barring my issues with story, the final act battle was spectacular. It had some romantic moments, some geeky moments and some genuinely funny moments. The movie has good content and good concepts, but doesn’t execute clearly as a story.
Let me equate this situation: Spider-Man 1 and 2 are like reading a graphic novel or a story arc over a series of comic book issues. Spider-Man 3 is like being forced to read a box full of your uncle’s back issues that are all Spider-Man: They are fun to read and watch, yet nothing ever connects. This is the problem Spider-Man 3 mainly suffers from. It tries to fit so much into so little, even with an appropriate run time. The script tried to do way too much and wasted too much time on unnecessary things. Sam Raimi took a few chances with scenes (i.e the dancing and symbiote Peter) and missed. It was distracting and irritating, but didn’t make it an awful movie. The parts that really got to me was the rushing of so many pertinent and potentially franchise continuing characters and stories. I can’t say without ruining parts of the movie, but suffice it to say, why so much?
I feel like #3′s suffer from this internal need for the film-makers to outdo themselves rather than notice what worked well for them at first. It’s all about upping the ante and making this one better than the last. But what they fail to see is what worked the first two times around, and how the mistakes of the first two can be better reflected in your next installment. And it’s not like there was a book Raimi had to follow. It’s a huge friggen universe, with thousands of storylines. This was a well produced, entertaining, mis-step. The writing and the decisions that ultimately allowed the writing to undo this potentially epic movie makes this movie very dissapointing to me, because I could see what it could have been. Albeit, it’s still one entertaining movie with certainly plenty of cool story and characters to go around. Make this a movie you see. This regrettably gets an 7 out of 10 Bones. Thats because its above average entertainment, that makes mistakes like a below average script.
RATING: 