Spider-Man 3

I saw Spider-Man 3 Friday night. It was . . . uh, how can I put this? Pretty bad. Spoilers ahead.

Being a huge Spider-Man fan (I still have boxes full of Spidey comics) and having thoroughly enjoyed the first two movies, I was pretty excited going in. I did have one concern though. Ever since this franchise started I preached that it should always stick to introducing one villain at a time. The old Batman franchise started off fine until they began cramming 3 villains into each movie. When I heard this 3rd Spidey movie was going to feature The Sandman, Green Goblin and Venom, I was worried. First, because that is three villains that need to share screen time, how can you devote enough time to develop them properly? And 2nd, VENOM CANNOT SHARE SCREENTIME WITH ANYONE!!!!! Venom is Spidey's greatest villain. His arch-rival. He needs his own movie!!! Not to mention that in order to even get to Venom, you need to set up his story properly, since it is not just a matter of a person getting hit with radioactive, uh, something. Venom's origins are a little more complex. If they wanted to do things right, they should have introduced Venom's story in this movie, set it up, and saved him for the next one.

Anyway, back to the flick. Why did I not enjoy it? Well, aside from the aforementioned Villain problem, I also did not like Tobey McGuire as Peter Parker. His character was just too damn goofy. That was fine in the first movie. But after two flicks, I would like to see Peter begin to develop a bit more and not come off as such a damn dork all the time. Where is his character arch? He's basically the same character he was in the first movie. A few years of being Spider-Man should have toughen the kid up a bit. He was never this pathetic in the comic book.

The main fault with the film though is that it takes a turn to Cheeseville and doesn't look bad. It is almost like Sam Raimi was purposely trying to go for really bad, melodramatic, B-movie qualities. Every time they show scenes of a crowd staring up at some dramatic event (mostly Mary Jane or some person in peril), the acting is so bad is looks like they just pulled people off the street and asked them if they wanted to be in the movie. It looks as if something someone filmed these scenes with their camcorder, not footage from a $250+ million dollar production. Terrible, terrible, terrible! The Stan Lee cameo was awful. There were so many scenes that made me roll my eyes that I lost count. But the worst offender, by far, was the portrayal of Peter Parker succumbing to the "dark side". Watching a goth-up'd, Emo-like Peter Parker patrolling the streets, flirting with women and pulling of a "John Travolta" was bad, but watching him perform a full dance routine in a night club, in which he starts off by playing piano and ends with a tango, was the most perplexing, surreal, and bizarre moment I think I have ever experienced in a theater. I thought I was in the twilight zone. Was that scene really in the movie? You mean to tell me that scene went from a script, to being filmed, to having effects done for it, and at no point did anyone stop and say, "Wait a minute, what the fuck is this?!" Really, it was that bad.

The theater erupted in laughter many times . . . in scenes that were not supposed to be funny. The death of Harry Osborne was particularly bad. His Butler, was a joke. The movie was flawed on so many levels it is hard to come up with many positives. The special effects were well done for the most part I guess. The Sandman effects were great, although I can't say I was a fan of the building-sized Sandman towards the end. Venom, who I was super siked to see, ended up disappointing as well. He screeched like a Velocirator, looked pretty silly when talking, and just wasn't as big or menacing as I would have hoped. Didn't help that he probably had about 10 minutes of screentime. What a waste of a great Villain. Like I said, they should have saved him for the next movie.

I always thought this franchise was in good hands with Sam at the helm. I felt the first two movies succeeded because of his talents and in another director's hands they might have been terrible. Now, I desperately want him to move on to something else. I want Tobey to move on. Kristin . . . uh, I never wanted you there to begin with. Sorry. If there is going to be another movie, I want a whole new direction. Something serious, something without the cheese, something that will make me sit there with a smile on my face (like in the first movie), rather than me grimacing and shaking my head in disbelief.