Spiderman 3 is darker, murkier installment in series
Spiderman is one of those superheroes that people can really relate to; that’s what makes him so popular. As the alter ego of Peter Parker, a college student trying to make his way in New York City as a freelance photographer, finding a balance between paying the rent, falling in love, weeding out moral dilemmas and saving the Big Apple is all in a day’s work for the web-slinging crusader. But as a film, Spiderman 3 is probably the most unbalanced and unrelatable.
After the events of the second film, Peter is riding high. Spiderman is loved by everyone, he’s in line for a staff job at the Daily Bugle, and most importantly, he’s finally dating his long-time crush Mary Jane and looking to propose. But as is often the case, things begin to take a turn for the worst.
Still bitter about his father’s death, Peter’s old friend Harry Osborn is plotting his revenge; Flint Marko (Thomas Hayden Church), the man who killed Peter’s Uncle, has broken out of prison; he’s being scooped by a new photographer named Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) who has his eyes on the staff job Peter wants; and despite his best attempts, Mary Jane wants attention that Spiderman just can’t give her.
While these scenarios are all par for the course by now, the problem with Spiderman 3 is that director Sam Raimi tries to cram each of them into a 2-1/2 hour movie. What makes this so annoying is for the, at most, 30 minutes that Raimi spends on the two actual villains of the movie, the rest of the time is spent on Peter whining about being rejected by Mary Jane and screwed over by Harry. And rather than working through the problem like an adult, Peter becomes the emo version of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. These sequences and overall poor dialogue make the movie so cheesy it should cause coronary.
With the time not spent on character development for the newly introduced villains, unlike in the previous movies, it instead gets spent on Kirsten Dunst and James Franco dancing while making omelets and Tobey Maguire visibly forcing himself to cry. This goes on so long that the villains almost seem like an afterthought and by the end of the movie, when we finally get to see the awesome tag-team battle sequence between Spiderman and Harry as the New Green Goblin and Marko as The Sandman and Brock as Venom, we really don’t care what happens to any of them.
When I look back at Spiderman 3, instead of seeing the introduction of one of the coolest arch villains in comic book history, a serious and darker adaptation of the comic (think Batman Begins), and revenge for the sickeningly cotton-candy-sweet ending of Spiderman 2 I can only see unresolved plot holes, cheesy dialogue, undeveloped characters and a hero who has only succeeded in pissing me off. Although, probably not as pissed off as some of the fans of the comics will be with how the movie ends.
And given how the movie ended, I’m not sure what Raimi could do for Spiderman 4; I can only hope that he doesn’t make one right away. Because when I can’t find myself relating to what is supposed to be one of the most relatable superheroes of all time, something is amiss. I think, for a movie with a lesson about making tough choices, the ultimate lesson for Raimi et al should be that when choosing between making a good movie and a popular movie, sometimes a compromise is the best solution.
Grade: C+
