So I'm a big fan of the first two Spider-Man movies. Apart from the first two X-Men movies and Chris Nolan's two Batman films, I consider Spider-Man 1 and 2 to be the bets comic book movies of the 21st century. Obviously, they are only up against DareDevil, Elektra and Fantastic 4 in this category, but still, my point stands. However, Spider-Man 3 is barely on a par with Fantastic 4 in my eyes, due to a lack of it being good.
First of all, this film starts out with a weedy, poor monologue from Toby Maguire. Now this guy is not a great orator. He's no Morgan Freeman, that's for sure. So anyway, it starts off with this poor monologue, and leading into Peter Parker dicking about with Mary-Jane and being sad because he's not friends with Harry anymore. Not great.
We see Mary-Jane singing (badly) in her Broadway show and then get introduced a the guy from Sideways, who is now a massive beefcake in a stripey top. He then gets turned into a really bad CG-guy by some sand. Meanwhile, Spidey and the Goblin have a fight and Harry gets concussion, allowing them to be friends again.
After this, Peter gets taken over the mystical and unexplained Venom, turning him into a super-confident and weirdly sexual emo guy. Now this is where it gets really shit. By my count, there are four weird musical sections in this film; MJ's Broadway show (relatively acceptable and relevant), Peter dancing down the street pointing at lots of ladies (insanely ridiculous and one of the worst things ever conceived), Harry and MJ dancing in Harry's kitchen (pointless and irritating), and Peter and Gwen dancing to make MJ jealous (reminiscent of Anchorman. Not really necessary in an action film, right?) This adds up to plenty of fat on a not-too-skinny film, and if Sam Raimi had spent a little more time reading his Shit Watchers pamphlets, he might've cut out these sections and made this film a lot better.
And those aren't the only bad bits. The final fight scene is awful. It is very much part of the structure of comic book movies that the film should finish with a fight scene. This particular fight scene is a tag-team match up between the weedy Spider-Man and the powerless yet scientifically-aided Goblin, versus the massive, ridiculously strong, shape-shifting Sandman and the crazy evil, very underdeveloped character of the Venom-ised Eddie Brock.
Call me old-fashioned, but this is not a fair fight. I don't quite know what Venom's powers are, but he seems to be a ruthless, evil version of Spider-Man. The essence of the unfairness of this fight is displayed just before Goblin shows up, when Venom ties Spidey down, allowing Sandman to pummel him with one massive, arachno-man sized fist.
When the Goblin shows up, he helps out a fair amount; he blows up part of Sandman's head, allowing Spidey to get back to his feet, and then gets his arse kicked by Venom for long enough for Spidey to figure out how to defeat the alien goo-man. Now, herein lies the problem of this final fight (as if the total imbalance of the two 'teams' wasn't enough); the final defeat of the villains. In Spider-Man, Green Goblin got impaled by his own glider - pretty cool; in Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock gets drowned and blown up. In Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man lets one go and kills the other with music. Yep. He forgives Sandman/Flint for killing his uncle and lets him fuck off in his inimitable sandy fashion, and then plays music to defeat Venom. Granted, he then blows him (and Eddie Brock) up, but it's a shit explosion. Meanwhile, Harry is dying.
So all in all, Spider-Man 3 is not a particularly good film, with the negatives far outweighing the positives. Here it goes in a pros and cons sort of breakdown:
Pros:
- It's Spider-Man
- James Franco is excellent as Harry Osborn
- Decent fight scene between Spider-Man and the Goblin
- JK Simmons
- Tobey Maguire is not a superhero, even a weedy little bitch like Spider-Man
- Kirsten Dunst and Bryce Dallas Howard, while being fairly easy on the eye, are two of the dullest actresses about
- Crap villains
- Crap CG - it looks like early PS2-standard graphics
- Crap final fight
- Stupid musical sequences
- Far too long (2 hours 13 minutes)
I read an interview with James Franco the other day, where he was saying that although he auditioned for the part of Peter Parker, he was glad that they chose Maguire and that he was a perfect cast for Spider-Man. Now I know that Parker is supposed to be a geeky little bitch with no backbone, but Tobey Maguire is quite simply not a good actor. Franco would have been a far better choice. Admittedly it wouldn't affect the quality of this latest instalment, where the problems should have been apparent from the scripting stage, but it might've made it ever so slightly more watchable.
Anyway, I feel compelled to give films a rating, and I give it 6/10. This may seem high, given the fairly voluminous criticism I have just levelled at the film, so I feel the need to justify this. Firstly, JK Simmons is immense as J Jonah Jameson, editor of the Daily Bugle. He is an excellent character actor, and should be in more things. Secondly, the subplot of Harry Osborn getting Peter and MJ to break is excellent, despite being carried solely on the shoulders of James Franco, who hits some superb comedic beats in the process. Next, there is an excellent comedy sequence, involving Bruce Campbell as a French maitre d' with excellent comic mistiming. Sadly, this is the best scene in the entire film. Also, it's hopefully going to be the last, seeing as how the trilogy seems to be the 'in' thing to do in films. At least until around 2020, when it will be brought back, with the same guy as the main hero, having had a fairly poor career since, and creating a film that everyone will be excited about, until it comes out and sucks, because Spider-Man used a car to kill a helicopter, or something along those lines.
So there you go, my review of Spider-Man 3. Only a year late, but whatever. Don't waste your time.
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