Spider-Man 3

This is far and away the worst third installment of any series ever. This movie was overdone and convoluted. The fact that the Venom story was tacked is almost sad, they didn't need three villains, four if you count the impossible building smashing 'runaway' crane.

They could have taken any one of the story elements and made a decent movie, but instead, they tried to pack as much as possible into the the 'final installment.'

The reasons for this are pretty simple. Sam Raimi wanted Sandman, he couldn't do without him. At the same time, he was under pressure to add Venom, because that's where the people wanted it to go, you can't do a series of Spider-Man movies without Venom. And finally, in the previous chapters, we had seen all the foreshadowing for the 'new goblin,' and it would be wrong not to include that bit of story. Of course, it also helps that it gave them a lot more toys to work with. No one 'really' wants an Aunt May toy, or a 'Uncle Ben's Corpse' toy.

The other problem with the movie was that they needed to explain everything within the confines of the story. Did we really need to see Sandman get his powers? I couldn't help but laugh at the oddly specific sign on the fence he scaled: "Danger: Particle Testing Facility". And why is it that whenever anyone gains a super power, it involves a machine with bright lights and spinning?

The symbiont suit (that becomes Venom) falls from the sky and Peter finds it and wears it. He takes a sample to his Physics professor (the one armed man that would become The Lizard or whatever). The man, who's not even a biologist, looks at it through a microscope for a few seconds and nails it's description on the head. "I'm just a physics professor, but I think this is a symbiont."

As Peter falls victim to the suits powers, he becomes a bad boy. This basically means he strut walks around town to bad 70's porno music looking like the lead singer of Fall Out Boy. At one point the Professor calls him up, and his tell him that the suit must amplify aggression (his reference is a microscope screen where a molecule seems to be playing Pong with other molecules), Peter ignores him while playing badboy with the Russian Girl that lives next door. The worst thing he can do? He asks if she has nuts and tells her to make him cookies with nuts.

Venom. Wow. What a joke. I was worried about Topher Grace when they announced it, and I was right. The comic had Venom as a big ass crazed lunatic. The movie had him as a moronic photographer. His motivation for being angry with Spidey? He stole the girlfriend he never had... or perhaps it was because he got shown up as a hack at work and lost his job. I couldn't really tell.

Marko (Sandman) it is discovered, is actually the one that killed Peter's uncle Ben, and Peter and Aunt May are brought in to the station for this revelation. The information is given to them by the Cheif of Police himself. They make it seem like this thing is still being heavily investigated.

Here's the problem. They say that Marko actually bragged about this crime to a cell mate. But all throughout we are supposed to see him as this tragic villian. He's stealing money to save his daughter's life... she seems to be sick, though we don't know why. In the end, he says it was an accident (he and Peter have a nice cry over it). Why would someone so morose over this crime 'brag about it', let alone tell anyone?

Next, there's a whole bit where Osborne feels the need to go after Spidey yet again, first component of his evil plan? He's going to force Mary-Jane to break up with him. We don't really understand her motivation in doing it, but he sits by and watches it happen in the park while sitting under the tree. I expected him to say "excellent" like some sort of Hanna-Barbera villian, perhaps stroking his massive handle bar mustache. Then Osborne invites Peter out to coffee to tell him that 'he's' the other guy, because what MJ said totally played into his scheme.

The final battle finds Spidey facing Venom and Sandman. We don't understand why Marko and Brock actualy teamed up in the first place. But, Osborne comes to back up Spidey (after Spidey blew him up with one of his own bombs. The reason Osborne comes to help Peter is that the butler, a forensic scientist apparently, says that he cleaned his father's wounds and they could only have come from his glider, so Spidey didn't kill him. Of course, that bit of information should probably have been revealed two movies ago). When Spidey defeats Venom using a bomb (one that had merely burned Osborne's face earlier, but this time went off with near Nuclear force), Marko is on hand to have a quick cry with peter before 'flowing off' into the sunset. It's never clear why Marko worked with Venom when he's really just a good guy trapped in a bad guy's body.

The entire thing could have been about an hour and a half shorter without all the pointless exposition. Every few minutes Peter or MJ are crying about something. I get that they want to make Peter the everyman hero, a guy with real emotions, but he weeps throughout the entire film as though he'd just skinned his knee.

This is a tragic example of what happens when movie makers go too far. I would gladly have gone to a fourth movie, and possibly fifth as well, had they done all three of the movies this was correctly. I don't recommend anyone waste their time with this. Of course, it's too late, about 80% of the population already has.



There's more I can say about this...

Honestly, I could write 20 pages and get into near frame by frame detail about why this movie was awful.

To listen to the conversation that Mike and I had on the way home from the theater, click here. It's 160 MB. I took the audio and threw some slides on it in Premiere. It's free file hosting, so it will likely take a while to download. For only 20MB of your time, you can just check out the MP3 version, however, the video is really where it's at. ;)