Spider-man 3

Let's, again, rewind to a time when Spider-man 3 was the most anticipated Superhero film coming out. It was a year prior to Iron Man's premiere and all my friends and I were interested in seeing, was the next chapter in the Spider-man trilogy.

And the result? As a kid, I really enjoyed it.

Spider-man 3 not only presented another installation of the franchise that could do no wrong in my mind, but it was introducing not one, not two, but three villains. It was the Revenge of the Sith of Superhero films (that being a good thing when I was a kid) as it brought full circle the fall to the dark side of Harry Osborn. It brought forth two totally new villains in Venom and Sandman.

Not only that, but it put Spider-man in a new suit. How could this not be anything but great?

To my surprise, a lot of people, even my friends who went with me were very disappointed with the film. As a 15-16 year old kid, I don't think I really understood why they were so disappointed. It was a Spider-man film. It had the action never seen before, it had the villains never seen before. What else could you ask for?

But the more and more I watch Spider-man 3... the more and more I realize why my friends were so critical.

Spider-man 3 essentially starts out in the exact opposite way Spider-man 2 did. In 2, everything was going to shit for Peter Parker. In 3, things are looking very up. Don't ask me how it magically turned fantastic but a lot of it has to do with the fact that Peter and Mary Jane are together now.

Mary Jane now knows that Peter is Spider-man and things seem to be going well for both of them.

So much that Peter feels its time to move the relationship to the next level and ask MJ to marry him.

While this is happening, a meteor hits the earth and a symbiotic organism crawls out of the crater and attaches its way back with Peter to his home.

Also, Harry has emerged from the cave of his father's old equipment and looks as though he's about to start doing some Spidey murdering.

On top of that, a convict by the name of Flint Marko (played by Thomas Haden Church) has escaped prison and is looking for a way to help his sick daughter.

After a conversation with Aunt May about the moral Peter will have to learn about himself and his relationships, Peter is on his way home and is attacked by the New Goblin, Harry.

Peter defeats him though and Harry is wounded. When he comes to... he has amnesia...

Sigh...

Along the way there is trouble between Peter and Mary Jane due a lot of instances of miscommunication and really badly written drama.

All the while, Eddy Brock (played by Topher Grace) is a new face to the Daily Bugle and works to oust Peter of a staff position he's been working for for a while.

And then they figure out that Flint Marko was the man who actually killed Uncle Ben.

And then the symbiotic organism melds its way onto Peter, creating a black suit that increases Spider-man's skills but amplifies the emotions and feelings Peter has towards his problems in the world.

I think I've pretty much covered the major plot points in this film, and by god, there are a lot of them.

I saw a Confused Matthew review of this film that really summed it up nicely. There are so many plot points in this film that its written in a way that the writers write one plot point into a corner and only come back to it when it is convenient to the script. And unfortunately its very true.

The best example of this is when Harry gets amnesia.

Harry geting amnesia doesn't serve the plot in any way. It doesn't serve as a moral dilemma that Peter faces, it doesn't put any conflict into Harry when he comes out of it. The only reason Harry gets amnesia is because they needed to find a way to suppress the New Goblin until they introduced all the other plot points and they had time to deal with it.

So if there were so many plot points that they needed to put others aside until they could get to them, why didn't they get rid of some of those plot points.

I know I've said in the last few reviews that I think Harry is probably the best cast character and the development they have him go through finally reaching this point was very good. But the way that it was executed in Spider-man 3 was just horrible. And therefore the real conflict of having Peter Parker's best friend turn against him is so completely rushed.

The movie itself is just a mess.

I would start talking about Marko Flint... but there's not really that much to talk about with him. He's bland, he's boring, he really didn't need to be in the film. Making him the guy who actually killed Uncle Ben was dumb and it just added to the bullshit that muddled this movie.

I will say however...

This scene was good. For about 30 seconds you see an actually heartfelt moment and not a word is spoken. Its very effective... but short lived.

The effects for the sandman are actually pretty good considering, but the character is so bland and so boring that when you take away all the action sequences and special effects, it really falls short. I have to give the movie credit for trying to squeeze in 3 villains in a movie because that is quite a feat, but I think this movie would have been at least a little bit better, and a lot less crowded if the entire storyline following Flint Marko and the fact he killed Ben Parker just... went away.

And that leads me to the black suit stuff that falls from space.

The black suit created a very interesting concept for Spider-man. What if he took that great power and fulfilled his great responsibility through bad means. Spider-man has always been the straight laced hero but what if he suddenly became an anti-hero.

Unfortunately, they do not get even close to that. Everything that Peter does that is considered "bad things" is something he would have done as regular Spider-man. The only difference is he tries to kill Flint Marko and I'm sorry, spraying him with water isn't exactly a great way to say, I'm a badass now.

The black suit is suppose to exacerbate the anger and rage within Spider-man but all it does is turn him into a doofus jerk. He turns in Eddie Brock. Yeah he's an asshole about it but Eddie Brock was forging photographs, he was wrong. There wasn't anything good about what he was doing.

He goes and beats up Harry. Harry was being a dick and was trying to kill Peter. Before Peter throws a grenade at his face, its obvious that Harry has picked up the mantle as the goblin again so taking him out is just another thing Spider-man would do if he had his regular suit. Yeah sure he pulled out this line.

But beyond that, this is nothing Peter Parker wouldn't do, black suit or not.

And while we're on the Black suit.

Why is Emo the look they decided to go with to make Peter Parker look all badass. Tobey Macguire looks stupid. And it'd be one thing if he actually was doing "bad things" with this new haircut but he doesn't.

I guess they were trying to go with a darker tone with Spider-man 3 but it instead just comes off as silly.

I mean, look at this and try, just try and tell me that this is the best they could do to make Peter Parker become the anti-hero... just try.

I still to this day have no idea what happened here. Somebody had to have been looking at this and said, "Sure, its kind of silly that Tobey Macguire is humping the air, but aren't we trying to make Peter Parker somewhat of an anti-hero, maybe a bad guy. And we're doing this by having him dance?"

Tobey Macguire had to have been reading through the script and just asked the director, "So when you say I come out of the store and hump the air, you mean... I actually hump the air?"And its not just this scene.