Overall Rating
 Awesome: 18.66%
Worth A Look: 17.7%
Just Average: 21.53%
Pretty Crappy: 26.32%
Sucks: 15.79%
9 reviews, 155 user ratings
|
|
| Spider-Man 3 |
by Peter Sobczynski
"This Generation's "Superman III"
|
When the first “Spider-Man” came out in 2002, audiences were so thrilled to finally see the web-slinger on the big screen after years of development hell that they were more or less willing to overlook its now-obvious flaws, such as a certain narrative pokiness that almost inevitably occurs with a superhero origin saga that has to spend over half the running time setting up premises and powers before getting to the story proper, in order to enjoy the lavish special effects and the occasional glimmers of actual wit. No doubt recognizing that viewers wouldn’t be as forgiving the second time around, director Sam Raimi stepped up his game with “Spider-Man 2" and presented audiences with one of the best superhero movies ever made–a work of popcorn art that popped the eyes and touched the heart so deftly that some people found themselves wondering why he didn’t make it that good the first time around.After a peak like “Spider-Man 2,” anyone crafting a third instalment could do one of two things–they could either try to live up to the challenge of the previous film by taking the time to devise a storyline that was just as smart, exciting and original or they could simply coast on the goodwill generated the last time around by slapping together a half-formed screenplay consisting of familiar faces going through equally familiar paces, uninteresting new characters who are haphazardly thrown into the mix and a bunch of graceless and noisy action scenes that try to distract you from the aforementioned flaws by smashing things up every few minutes. Within a few minutes of the start of “Spider-Man 3,” it becomes depressingly obvious that Raimi and company have chosen the second route and while the end result may swell their bank accounts and vaguely satisfy easier-to-please audiences, those who were surprised and delighted by the depth and drama of “Spider-Man 2" are likely to come away fairly disappointed with this go-around. If we can agree on “Superman: The Movie” and “Batman Begins” as the high-water marks of the superhero genre and “Fantastic Four” and “Batman & Robin” as the mossiest of depths, this one clocks in maybe slightly below “Superman III.”
As the film opens, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is actually in an up period of his normally bleak and depressing existence–his alter-ego of Spider-Man is the toast of Manhattan (with electronic billboards running videos of his heroic exploits around the clock), his freelance photography job at the Daily Bugle is fairly secure thanks to his unerring ability to snag photos of Spidey and his relationship with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) has progressed to the point where he is about to propose to her. Of course, no one wants to see a happy Peter Parker for very long and so the screenplay almost immediately begins to put the screws to him. On the job front, Peter is threatened with the presence of brash newcomer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), who is his main competition for a staff photographer opening. On the home front, Mary Jane is depressed over her failing Broadway career, Peter’s occasional ego trips and the attentions that he seems to be giving to cute college classmate Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) after saving her from certain death. Then there is Harry Osborne (James Franco), the one-time friend who still blames Peter for the death of his father, the Green Goblin, in the first film and who has taken up the family business of super-villainy in order to satisfy his desire for revenge. Luckily for Peter, the son is about as effective as the father and an early attack lands Harry with a convenient case of amnesia that allows him to forget his plans for revenge for the time being.
While all of these complications are banding together to make Peter’s life an endless series of complications, a group of disparate evils is coming together to do the same for Spider-Man. For starters, a mysterious black blob from outer space crash-lands on Earth and attaches itself to the Spider-Man suit, causing Peter to literally turn to the dark side by transforming him into a self-centered and hateful jerk. Then there is the emergence of Flint Marco (Thomas Haden Church), a small-time thief who, as it turns out, was apparently really responsible for the death of Peter’s beloved Uncle Ben. Alas, before he can be brought to justice, Flint literally falls head-first into a particle physics experiment, emerges as the shape-shifting Sandman and uses his new-found abilities to embark on a crime wave to raise money for treatment for his seriously ill young daughter. (With all the people in superhero movies who emerge from major industrial accidents with amazing powers instead of crippling-to-fatal injuries, I still await a token scene showing OSHA investigators sitting around the office with nothing to do.) As for Eddie, he winds up being transformed into the malevolent Spidey clone Venom after being covered in the alien goop and decides to use his newfound powers to get revenge on Peter for getting him fired from the Bugle over a faked photo. If that weren’t enough (and believe me, it is), this is about the time that Harry snaps out of his amnesiac fog and he attempts to destroy Peter by attacking him through his most vulnerable point–Mary Jane. Inevitably, they all come together in one of those epic battle scenes in which the heroes and villains take out most of the skyline, the damsel in distress is dangling hundreds of feet above the ground (you know, just like in the first film) and ordinary citizens gather below to watch even though you would think that they would want to take cover from all the chunks of debris that are presumably raining down upon them.
You may notice that while the description above contains a large number of subplots, there doesn’t really seem to be one overriding storyline to drive the narrative along in the way that “Spider-Man 2" had. That, in a nutshell, is the central flaw of the entire film–Raimi and co-writers Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent have come up with a lot of ideas that individually have inspired a pretty decent story but have chosen to merely throw them all into one big pot instead of trying to develop one into a compelling story. As Raimi flits about from event to event, I found it almost impossible to work up any interest in any of them. The Sandman strand is silly from the get-go–especially the way that the screenplay tries to tie him in with Parker’s history and destiny–and turns downright mawkish by its conclusion. The Venom concept has promise but there is so much other stuff going on that the character doesn’t even appear in all his black-suited glory until the 100-minute mark, which is a little late to be introducing your arch-villain. We get plenty of mumbo-jumbo about the properties of that interstellar slime but no explanation of why it has landed or why it has chosen Peter as its host.
As for Harry Osborne, his plotline is the biggest zero because we don’t care a whit about his scheming and since it is pretty obvious from the get-go that he will have a last-second change-of-heart, there is no real sense of suspense generated from his potential vengeance. He also figures in the worst scene in a film chock-full of bad scenes–a bit in which his faithful butler finally informs him that Spider-Man was actually not responsible for the death of his father. This is interesting because a.) you would have thought that he might have thought to mention this to Harry before and b.) because, as far as I can recall, this particular character was nowhere to be found when the events in question occurred in the first place. Of course, one could argue that this seemingly enormous loophole is merely Raimi’s sly homage to a similar gaffe in “Citizen Kane”–the fact that everyone knows that Charles Foster Kane’s last word was “Rosebud” even though it was clear from the outset that he died alone–but I sincerely doubt that a film could be that clever in that one respect while being so resolutely dopey elsewhere.
The human element of the story–always a key component of the “Spider-Man” saga from its earliest comic book days–is also profoundly disappointing as well. The idea of bringing up the idea of the Sandman as being the real killer of Uncle Ben seems to have been shoehorned in as a desperate effort to lend emotion to an otherwise undistinguished story arc and added interest to an otherwise undistinguished villain and then, after all that, it is resolved in such a perfunctory manner that you almost want to throw something at the screen. Peter Parker’s flirtation with the dark side of his nature sounds like a good idea in theory but it is fatally undercut by Raimi’s odd decision to play most of the transformation for laughs and Maguire’s inability to turn off the puppy-dog charm. That said, this part works better than Peter’s flirtation with Mary Jane–the element that has been the weakest aspect of the previous elements and which reaches its nadir here. Once again, Maguire and Dunst demonstrate virtually no discernible on-screen chemistry and it is therefore impossible to work up any feelings towards either one of them–Dunst’s Mary Jane is a particularly bitter pill to swallow this time around and Maguire’s cruelty to her when he mistakenly thinks that she has been untrue is so unpleasant that it nearly undoes the entire film. As for the introduction of the Gwen Stacy character–an important part of the original “Spider-Man” mythos but basically an anonymous blonde her–it is dealt with in such a throwaway manner that you wonder why Raimi and company even bothered to bring the character in if they weren’t going to utilize her in any significant way.“Spider-Man 3" has its moments–a few of the visual effects are impressive (especially a brawl between Spider-Man and Sandman amidst hurtling subway trains), J.K. Simmons is winning as always as the perpetually scowling newspaper editor J.J. Jameson and the scene between Maguire and longtime Raimi cohort Bruce Campbell (here playing a snooty head waiter with a French accent that even Peter Sellers might have found questionable) is a legitimate comic gem–but as the film lumbers along, those moments grow fewer and further between and while it may be about par for a typical big-budget threequel these days, the decline in quality from the previous instalment may come as a shock to some. When I emerged from the likes of “Spider-Man 2" and “Batman Begins,” I found myself eagerly anticipating further adventures. After “Spider-Man 3,” however, not only did I leave the theater with the distinct feeling that enough was enough, I got the sense that everyone involved with the film felt the same way as well.
link directly to this review at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=15898&reviewer=389
originally posted: 05/03/07 01:12:25
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
Marvel Characters: For more in the Marvel Characters series, click here.
|
 |
USA
04-May-2007 (PG-13)
DVD: 30-Oct-2007
UK
N/A
Australia
03-May-2007
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
