Film RE-REVIEW: "Spider-Man 3"

[Firaga 5,947]

 

On May 24^th, 2007, “Spider-Man 3” premiered in North America... Tears were shed, dreams were shattered, and countless lives were lost. It remains as a dark, black stain on not only the film industry, not only the comic book industry… but American history itself…

 

Okay, fine, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but seriously, what the f*ck?!

 

Hello, boys and girls, it’s time once again to gather around the campfire and listen to Ol’ Sensei complain about superhero movies. A while back, I reviewed the widely hated “Fant4stic” on a whim, and in that review, I lambasted it for being a product aimed for a different time, a time where superhero movies were either “giant broodfests” or “asinine shitfests”… “Spider-Man 3” manages to fill the quota for both.

 

So if the first film was decent, the second one was slightly worse, and now this film, the third and final installment, is mostly known as a steaming pile of doo-doo, where did it all go wrong? What were the elements that took an already waning franchise and drove it right into the ground?

 

Well, let’s put on our symboite suits and find out. And no, there won’t be a spoiler tab because it doesn’t deserve one... okay, the first part will because it's actually pretty long. But the rest won't.

 

Peter Parker and Mary Jane are enjoying themselves and reaching a new stage in their relationship now that Peter has finally shared his secret with MJ and is even considering popping the question. However, a meteorite falls to Earth, bringing with it an alien symbiote looking for a host to latch onto, and chooses an unsuspecting Peter. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn, following his actions from the last film, has burrowed some Goblin gear and wants revenge against both Peter and Spider-Man due to his knowledge of the secret. Now as the “New Goblin”, he goes after Peter, but then hits his head and gains amnesia, his knowledge of Peter’s secret now gone. Then we are introduced to Flint Marko, aka The Sandman, who turns out to be the real murderer of Uncle Ben. Later, the symboite attaches to Peter’s suit, and he wakes in the middle of the night wearing a new black version of his costume. His emotions are amplified to a point where he personally hunts down The Sandman to take revenge. The suit now bonded with Peter, his personality begins to change drastically, causing Mary Jane to become detached from him and finding solace in the still-amnesiac Harry. However, Harry recovers his memories, and plots to separate Peter and Mary Jane permanently, sparking a feud between the two, and leading Peter to confront Harry and disfigure his face. Peter’s personality continues to deteriorate to a point where he takes his acquaintance Gwen Stacy to the nightclub where Mary Jane works to make her jealous. After a violent quarrel, Peter realizes what the suit is doing to him and manages to free himself from the symboite in a nearby church. In that same church is Eddie Brock, a rival photographer from the Daily Bugle and who had garnered a hatred for Peter, who the symboite reaches out to next, where he becomes “Venom”. Venom seeks the help of The Sandman to kidnap Mary Jane and finish off Spider-Man once and for all. Upon realizing this, Peter goes to Harry for help, but he refuses. He then goes alone to confront Venom and Sandman. He battles with Sandman, with assistance from Harry who has forgiven Peter after learning the truth about the death of Norman Osborn. Peter then personally confronts Venom and realizes that he is Eddie Brock underneath. He tries to destroy the symbiote once and for all, but Eddie refuses to let go, and is killed alongside it. Meanwhile, Harry is fatally wounded, and passes away. As Peter and Mary grieve, The Sandman reveals the truth behind the murder of Ben Parker, and Peter forgives him, leaving The Sandman to flee for parts unknown. We are then left with a scene back at the nightclub where Mary Jane works where she and Peter dance together, seemingly giving their relationship one more try.

 

Got all that? … Neither do I. What the hell is the plot of this movie?!

 

And that, my friends, is problem number one: there is too much on going in this film, and you know, it wouldn’t be as much as a problem if it was better paced, but unfortunately, it drags on instead. There are scenes that don’t need to be shown, things we don’t need to know. Hell, the infamous sequence/montage of Peter dancing around and acting like a jerkass could have been skipped entirely and we would still know that he’s a jerkass. Not to mention the fact that we have not one, not two, but three motherf*cking main villains: Harry, Sandman, and Venom. None of them are even enjoyable either, but I’ll get to that.

 

Now, as for Peter Parker and his personality… holy crap. When I said we know that he turns into a jerkass when the symbiote attaches, we know. Even before that, he shows shades of his now slightly-assholeish nature that he developed in the last film, but oh-ho, thanks to the suit, it just gets turned up to eleven.

 

Again, for those of who don’t know, there is an entire sequence in the movie where Peter dances around, pointin’ his fingers, showing off to women… it-it’s just the dumbest thing. It’s not helped by the dance sequence in the nightclub, which looks like it might as well be from a damn musical. Not even the actual Spider-Man musical would have this shit.

 

It gets worse with his relationship with Mary Jane. Their entire arc together might as well be the plot of a soap opera. Not helped by Kirsten Dunst’s still wooden acting and Toby MacGuire’s over excessive crying bits, something that has always been a weakness in his portrayal of Peter. In fact, his entire format for Peter is just not even in the ballpark at this point. He doesn’t feel like the admirable nerd he started out as, he just feels like a huge drama-obsessed prick. The drama over the romance of Peter and Mary Jane is just bad overall. It’s your classic case of literally “making up” drama for characters, who if handled properly, wouldn’t even go through more than half of the crap we see them endure.

 

Oh yeah, and they drag Gwen Stacy into it… because… this is basically her entire role in the movie. And it only lasts, like, a couple of minutes… and other than that, she’s pretty much a non-entity… can’t even get the side love-interest right. Not that she should even be a side love-interest, but whatever.

 

James Franco’s Harry Osborn, meanwhile, just loses all dignity. Not only is this stupid and obvious amnesia plot used for him, but also when he comes too, he starts acting exactly like a villain from a soap opera. Give him a mustache to twiddle and it’ll all make sense. His motivations in general are pretty crap, but again, we’ll get to that. As far as the “New Goblin” goes… it-it’s just a low rent version of Green Goblin. Seriously, it’s like a poorly made, not-even-close cosplay of the Goblin Suit. There is literally nothing to comment on further.

 

Oh yeah, and in that plot, there’s also a gratuitous scene where Harry and Mary Jane cook food together and dance to “The Twist”. What is this film’s obsession with dance sequences? What, did one of the screenwriters watch “Footlose” before writing the script?

 

Oh boy, and then there’s Sandman… just like Doctor Octopus in the last film, Sandman is made to be a sympathetic character, an escaped convict who only wants to pay for an operation for his daughter and blah blah blah, gag me. Look, I’m not saying a villain can’t be complex, but come on, The Sandman is just a thug, plain and simple. He’s not supposed to be sympathetic and it’s clear that this element was forced in just as much as the elements that were supposed to make Doc Ock sympathetic were forced in as well. It’s even worse when the story tries to shoe-horn a connection between him and Peter by making him the real murderer of Uncle Ben… only to bullshit some more contrived sympathy but saying “oh no, it was a just an accident, I’m not really a bad guy, I just make a mistake and-” No. Noooo. You can’t do that. The connection itself is so f*cking obvious that it’s insulting, and seriously, he’s clearly a bad guy. Everything he does in the film is bad. The background is supposed to be a crutch to hold up his motivations because the film fails to show him as sympathetic in any other way.

 

Now, for the most part, the symbiote concept is actually handled very decently… well, except for how it gets to Earth, as that’s just a total ass-pull. But otherwise, how it connects with Peter and then later Eddie Brock is okay. It does what it needs to. Peter under the influence of the symbiote while agonizing still makes some sense in context, and Brock… let’s talk about Brock himself first.

 

Brock is… a placeholder, a glorified plot point, and without that aspect, he would be as much as a non-entity as Gwen Stacy is. He’s introduced as a one-dimensional douchebag, not even better while competing with Peter’s douchebagginess, and his only motivation is that he gets fired from his job at the Daily Bugle. Now, yes, this is done out of spite by Peter and he didn’t really deserve the harshness of his treatment, but uh… you know how I mentioned he was at the church? Yeah, well, before Peter gets rid of the symbiote we see Brock praying in the church and… seriously… he prays to God and asks him… to kill Peter Parker… just, straight up, no exaggeration. Eddie Brock, in a church, prays to God, and asks Him to kill Peter… do I even have to explain how stupid and wrong this is? Do I have explain how this flimsy-ass antagonist, regardless of past transgressions, can have the damn audacity to ask a higher entity to kill one of his fellow man, just because he got him fired from a newspaper job? My goodness, man, it’s not like he burned down your house and drowned your mom. Chill out!

 

As for how he is as Venom… well… the design is too easy of a target to pick on, so I’ll just reconfirm that it sucks and is not faithful to anything remotely similar to the source material and move on. Everything else: well for one, he has his face showing constantly, and we barely get to see the “Venom” face at all in the film, which is just annoying. Personality wise… again, it just highlights the pure stupidity of his motivation and his overall character. He’s just a prick that got screwed over by another prick, but is being unjustifiably mad about it. Oh, and to make matters worse, I guess he actually falls in love with the suit or something. Well geez, Brock, if you love you suit so much, why don’t you sacrifice yourself for it by taking a pumpkin bomb to the-oh wait.

 

One last bit, and this really gets my goat: the reason why Harry changes his mind about helping Peter fight Venom and Sandman. You see, after their meeting, Harry’s butler goes to Harry and tells him that Norman Osborn died because his glider struck him, not because Spider-Man killed him. This pretty much allows Harry to forgive Peter entirely… once again… do I have to explain this mediocrity? Do I have to point out that a) literally none of Peter’s previous actions, especially that harsh fight scene, even matter any more and b) his entire role in the movie could have been changed if the damn butler told him this sooner? Why did he keep it a secret all this time? Why was there all this now-unnecessary strain on the relationships between not just Peter and Harry but Mary Jane as well when the butler could have just flat-out told the truth? Didn’t he care that his supposed friend Harry was deeply affected by the death of Norman and was spirally down a dark path? I’ll tell you the answer: no. Because if he did, we wouldn’t have a plot. Plain and simple.

 

Okay, now I must ask the burning question: are they any good parts of this film? Uh… kinda? Production is still pretty solid… well, except when CGI is over-used to animate a chase/fight sequence between Peter and Harry. But other than that, still pretty good. The actors from previous films, sans some obvious exceptions, are back and do their roles fine, and I even enjoyed the performance of newcomer Thomas Haden Church as Sandman sans his shitty material. But, that’s pretty much it.

 

Overall, this is just a wash of a movie. Sam Raimi’s previous use of cheese is completely lost for a depressing tale of love, heartbreak, tragedy, and dance numbers. And, look, I get it: the symbiote storyline is very personal to Peter’s character, it’s a very mature story that doesn’t provide a lot of room for comedy… but there is a difference between telling a mature story and telling an uncomfortable drama-fest. But even then, there is still comedy in this movie too, most of it being unnecessary and just as cheesy, so seriously, what the f*ck? It’s like the relationship between Peter and the suit: you have Peter, i.e. the cheesiness of the last two films and the suit, i.e. the drama of the new film, colliding with each other in a back-and-forth struggle to see what will dominate the tone of the film. What follows is a complete mess of subplots that crowd into each other and don’t flow well both together or even in their own right.

 

I don’t even know if I would want the cheese back considering my previous distaste for it, but then again, I don’t know if I would want the entire movie to have even more drama either. Oh no… I, myself, the viewer, have become conflicted with the tone of the movie which is also conflicted with itself which is also an account of the duality of Peter Parker’s good and dark sides as a person and as the persona Spider-Man… the parallels… this film just got so much deeper… and maybe, just maybe, this was the true intention of Sam Raimi… maybe all this time I’ve just been too harsh on his vision for the series--

 

*Remembers how he wanted to not only finally debut The Lizard way too late but also make Felicia Hardy turn into “The Vultress” for a fourth film*

 

… or maybe he should have just stopped after the first film. Eh, seems legit.

 

“Spider-Man 3” gets a 3 out of 10, btw, and finally, I have rid myself of all the re-reviews... well except for "Will of Fire" but honestly, my thoughts haven't changed much since then so eh, I'll wait a little longer. Either way, my next review is definitely going to be something new. What it will be, well, you'll just have to find out. See you then!

Edited December 31, 2015 by Firaga Sensei

[The 13th Kenpachi 4,279]

I thought it was great! Spider Man 1 and 2 are actually some of my favourite films, ever. 

[Firaga 5,947]

I thought it was great! Spider Man 1 and 2 are actually some of my favourite films, ever. 

 

Are you trying to make me hate you?

 

(it's a joke)

[The 13th Kenpachi 4,279]

Are you trying to make me hate you?

 

(it's a joke)

I genuinely love Spiderman 1 and 2.

[Firaga 5,947]

I genuinely love Spiderman 1 and 2.

 

I've already reviewed them, just read those and come back, I don't know if I can bear to go further into this shitty franchise anymore.

[The 13th Kenpachi 4,279]

I've already reviewed them, just read those and come back, I don't know if I can bear to go further into this shitty franchise anymore.

Language mr firaga! Could you link me the reviews please?

[Firaga 5,947]

Language mr firaga! Could you link me the reviews please?

 

I WILL NOT BE CENSORED! ...

 

and uh, here they are: "Spider Man" and "Spider-Man 2"