Marvel Mania 2: Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco
Directed by: Sam Raimi


When you're a filmmaker like Sam Raimi, who has completely changed the landscape of superhero movies with the first two Spider-Man movies, you would hope the studio lets you do the movie you want to do. Because if they interfere, you get Spider-Man 3. Raimi, a fan of the older Spider-Man stories, really wanted to do a film that tied a dual plot with Spider-Man having conflicts with both Sandman and his former best friend Harry Osborn. The studio, looking at characters and stories that viewers thought were the most popular, suggested adding the Symbiote story to this all. They also wanted to create as many love triangles as possible, so they also tried to introduce the character of Gwen Stacy into the mix. So, Raimi went from a film that needed to focus on Spider-Man, Mary Jane, Harry, and Sandman to a film that needed those four characters, plus the black-suit Spider-Man storyline, plus Venom, plus Gwen Stacy, and have all of them link up to each other and make sense in a reasonable amount of time. No wonder this movie was a critical disaster. Let's take a look at how some very good ideas are lost in some really bad ideas to give us the messy results of Spider-Man 3.

Let's just get right off the bat and talk about one of the dumbest aspects of this movie: the Symbiote suit. This storyline, while one the big cornerstones of comic book folklore, was so poorly handled that it took a dark and tormenting story and turned it into what fans lovingly refer to as Emo Peter. For the most part, they properly showed how much of a power boost the new suit is for Peter, but they really mishandle how it alters Peter's personality. In the movie, they even say it alters aggression and we have one scene of that. After that scene, they play it up for comedy. Screw an emotionally tormenting story when you have humorous dance sequences and Peter demanding cookies. When you give us the amazing imagery from the teaser poster and teaser trailer that told the fans we were getting the black-suit story and then you give us the horrendously awful scenes of Spider-Man dancing like a reject from a Broadway musical (not HIS Broadway musical, but that's beside the point), you aren't going to have happy viewers.

And if THAT wasn't going to piss off comic book fans enough, what they did to Venom certainly was the straw that broke the camel's back on this film. Again, when you're looking at storylines involving Venom, you're looking at emotionally tormenting material. Venom is supposed to be everything Peter Parker, both physically and morally. In this film, they were going for a character that mirrored Peter physically, with the major difference being their moral code. I like Topher Grace when I watch him on That '70s Show, but he's not a good Eddie Brock at all. And then when Venom shows up, he's there for maybe the last half hour of the movie and is taken out very easily. This is FREAKING VENOM we are talking about here. If there was any character in the entire Spider-Man universe that is just as popular, if not MORE popular than Spider-Man, it's freaking Venom and they absolutely wrecked him in this film. In my opinion, any future reboots that are coming out and are thinking of tackling the Symbiote storyline need to plan for 2 movies. Introduce the suit and all of Peter's torment in the first film, then reveal Venom to close out your movie. Then you have an entire second movie where Spider-Man and Venom go at it. That isn't THAT difficult, so filmmakers please take my advice and plan it out that way.

One of the things I thought the film got right was Thomas Haden Church as Sandman. Admittedly, the story of him being Uncle Ben's killer might be a bit hokey to some, but with the original idea that Sam Raimi had for this story to fuel Spider-Man in a battle of revenge vs. forgiveness, it worked for what it was. The sand effects are actually done really well, including one scene that is absolutely beautiful thanks to the film's score. While maybe some of the creative elements of Sandman's involvement in the plot are questionable in quality, Church's performance is definitely not. He does a good job as Sandman and I wish he was in a better Spider-Man movie as Sandman.

The final main character in the trilogy that I can talk about is Harry Osborn, played by James Franco. With how big a name Franco is in the comedy world today, I wasn't expecting much looking back on his performance as Harry, but I was pleasantly surprised. He's one of the only characters that shows any major growth over the course of these three movies, but Spider-Man 3 is the one where they gave his character a few hiccups. After taking the mantle of being the New Goblin, they rush a fight between Peter and Harry only to give Harry amnesia so they can keep him out of the main story for a while. The amnesia is a little goofy and I could've done without that. Everything else with his character in this movie works for me. Seeing him blinded by rage, much like how Peter is towards Sandman, and seeing whether he'll bury the hatchet to help Peter take on Sandman and Venom. There's a considerable amount of growth from Harry when you go through these three movies. He's not following the same beats of his character in the first movie by the time you get to the third movie. Peter and Mary Jane always feel like they're doing the same old routine with every film, so I like that Harry is given material to exercise and play with over the course of this trilogy.

Spider-Man 3 had so much potential going for it, but ended up having too many cooks in the kitchen. There are so many storylines and characters to balance that it can't really satisfy anyone. Not a financial failure by any means, but people definitely noticed a change in quality and this movie has been the butt of numerous jokes in the comic book movie community. This was a comic book failure that came out at the wrong time. At this point EVERYTHING was going wrong with the Marvel movies. Shortly afterwards, the MCU took over (Thank God!) and we can look back on a movie like this and enjoy it for its silliness. If you're a comic book purist, you probably still have some sour grapes about how the creative process was handled on a lot of these things, but it holds that cheese value to it that a Batman & Robin would. But unlike that abomination, this has a lot more moments that are strong and well handled, they're just covered up by a lot of moments that make you smack your forehead and go "What?!?!"


Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

A hot mess that will leave fans of the Venom and Symbiote stories highly disappointed, Spider-Man 3 is one of those superhero movies that probably could've been better had studios not interfered. Had it followed Sam Raimi's original vision for the film, it probably would've been fine. But it is what it is and even though it's a franchise killer, it's one of those bad superhero movies with a bit of charm to its horribleness.

Spider-Man 3 and movie images are copyrighted by Columbia Pictures