Spider-Man 3

Spider-man 3 will always hold a special place in my heart because my first night working at the movie theatre was the opening night for this movie. Of course this isn't the special place in your heart where you store away your pleasant memories. No this is the special place in your heart where you store away those memories that you would love nothing more than to just Eternal Sunshine right out of your head. The ones that haunt you and physically anger you whenever you remember them. For friends that was a terrible, terrible evening of incompetence and fear.

What didn't help matters was that I had already seen the movie earlier that day and was very let down by it. So the fact it was causing me this much stress, and was not that great a movie, well that made me fucking hate Spider-man 3. Now that it's almost two years later it felt like a good time to re-visit the movie. After spending all of this time knowing I was disappointed with it, along with most of the world, maybe a second viewing would help and I would be able to accept it as a better movie. No...no it's still not very good.

Coming right after the second movie, which I thought was fantastic, especially doesn't help this one. But there really is no denying that it's ridiculously flawed in many ways. It had potential to be a really good story and an amazing closure to the series (although now I guess we have at least two more on the way) but instead it just made things sort of fizzle out.

The absolute biggest problem with this movie is the humour. None of it works. Some of it is actually just painful. When Peter Parker goes dark/emo and just walks around pointing at women and dancing for 15 minutes, it's almost as though you are watching a completely different movie. I know Spider-man has always been one of the lighter comic book characters but come the fuck on! That dance he does in the nightclub?! That's one of the most painful things I have ever witnessed. This scene, as well as most attempts at being funny, simply don't work.

The other huge problem is how crammed this movie feels. They are simply trying to tell too much story here. I know Sam Raimi was almost forced to put Venom in there, and you can tell. Venom never feels like a natural part of the story. He's not even really a villain when he finally shows up, more of an obstacle. I would definitely consider myself a Venom fan and he really deserved his own movie to do him justice. 

Sandman is an awesome villain but I never realized just how little he has to do here. Throw in Harry as the new Green Goblin and it's just way too much. They should have just focused on one villain, maybe two. Everything feels rushed along. I don't even want to think about how the conflict between Harry and Peter is resolved. It is shockingly lazy. 

That being said, I still don't hate the movie. There are some effective sequences, the standout being Sandman's transformation. Really good stuff. Plus some of the action is well-done, in fact I would say most of it. Most of the cast is good, although I'm getting a little sick of Tobey at this point and Kirsten Dunst never quite felt appropriate in the role anyway.

Spider-man 3 was disappointing at first, and now it's simply a not very good movie. Too many characters, too much lame humour, too much emo pointing, and not enough....good. It's saved by some good action and some effective sequences scattered throughout.

6.5/10