Spiderman 3 Movie Review

Note: Possible spoiler alert though I tried to avoid that as much as possible.

As a forewarning this review is going to be quite opinionated, and what was my opinion of this movie? In a word: I was most displeased.

I'll start with the more technical side before I get in geek mode and discuss how they brutally murdered the concept for one of my favorite characters. The writing was not impressive. The movie had a runtime of 2 hours and 36 minutes and the majority of those minutes were slow moving and grueling. The plot seemed to be all over the place and it brought up old issues from past movies that had been resolved and made them unresolved again. That was quite frustrating since it was already covered ground and it felt tedious to have to go through it again. The film felt like it was trying to do too much and as a result seemed discombobulated.

Also, staying on the technical side of things, the villains seemed rather boring. We learn early on that the Sandman, one of the key villains, is motivated by trying to gather enough money to save his sick daughter. I thought that this had a lot of power and I was really interested in seeing it developed but unfortunately it never really does. Besides the Sandman trying to rob a few banks that story arc doesn't develop any further. The Sandman, who visits his daughter in the beginning, isn't even shown visiting his daughter again. His character, who starts of as very interesting, seems to fade into a two dimensional cardboard cutout.

Then we have Venom. I'm going to try to keep this part as geek free as possible and save that to the end. He starts off as Eddie Brock, a rival photographer of Peter. The actor playing Eddie is Topher Grace, star of that 70s Show. I thought that the characters were very similar, seeming both whiny and bratty. In the 70s Show it can be funny, but in this movie, along with the shallowness of development for his character, it was just annoying. He was not enjoyable to watch onscreen at all. Then as Venom, he was still whiny and bratty and inspired absolutely no fear or interest. As a lot of you know Venom is one of my favorite Marvel characters and the difference between him from the comics and the movie is like night and day. They both had black suits, big teeth and shot webbing but that is where the similarities end. I don't think there was much reason to even include him in this movie. It seemed very forced and unnecessary.

The Green Goblin made another appearance as the son, Harry Osborn. I'm not going to talk in length about this since there is a lot of spoiler material. He was interesting at times though we do go through a lot of different emotions as the character's emotions change a lot, perhaps too much. I think they could have improved on his character quite a bit and especially on some of the scenes involving Spiderman.

So let's get to Spiderman himself. As I'm sure many of you have seen from the commercials, his "darker" side comes out at one point. This is a result of his dark suit (which is a whole other issue in the geek out section). I found it so hilarious and ridiculous that when he was Peter, it was shown that he was "dark" by having his hair down almost over his eye. It was such a silly hair _style_ and a poor way to show that his evil side was out. Also somehow him having his dark suit attracted all sorts of women. Instead of various scenes of showing women wanting him, I rather see more of him acting evil. It really made no sense to me and it was completely silly. I think that they definitely didn't show enough of his evil side. Wild dancing and showing girls wanting him just doesn't do it for me. Also I don't think as a character Spiderman developed much in this movie. Tobey Maguire, the actor who plays Spiderman, also seemed way too unemotional when there were some very emotionally charged scenes. I didn't find Spiderman fun to watch in this movie and also I couldn't get myself to care about him or what was happening around him.

Okay now I get to geek out. Let's start with my biggest peeve, the total butchering of Venom. First, there was no need to have him in this movie. He didn't add any interest or level of excitement. He could have been replaced by any number of minor villains. In the comics and even in the cartoon Venom is a major reoccurring villain, why not give him his own movie? And then we have the issue of Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom. Why they would take the scrawniest kid ever from a comedy TV show to play as one of the largest, most muscular, vicious, evil and sadistic villains is well beyond me. Venom is pure unrelenting hate and viciousness, is a comedy actor really the right choice? And as I mentioned, Eddie Brock in the comics is massive, he's a body builder. Topher Grace is not. The annoying thing too is that Topher Grace has the perfect body type to play Venom's man villain rival, Carnage. Why not save Topher for that role? I still don't think, as a comedy actor, Topher Grace could pull it off, but at least he'd look the part. Also a lot of Venom's trademarks from the comics weren't there. He had the teeth but he also has long tongue that hands out of his mouth and is dripping with saliva. Also in the comics he often refers to himself as "we" and "us" to show how attached he is to the symbiote but that is missing in the movie. In the comics it was much more fun watching him pound on people with his huge muscles and ripping them apart than in the movie where he is just "really fast". I really didn't see much similarity, or really any between comic Venom and movie Venom and that is a huge letdown and it makes no sense to me.

I'll talk briefly on the dark Spiderman suit as well. Why was it just a regular suit for him for totally consumed Venom? In the comics and cartoon it was a living part of Spiderman, not a suit. And he never had the option whether to wear it or not. It seems really silly, especially to imagine this evil alien symbiote that rode a comet to earth is going to just chill in Spiderman's underwear and wait until he gets game time.

Overall I thought that Spiderman 3 was a letdown and that they could have done a lot to improve it. I think that the core problem was the casting (with Venom) and bad _script_ writing. I think that Sam Raimi was perhaps trying to outdo Spiderman 2 and make this one "more epic" but it was unnecessary and didn't work. If you have any questions or comments about my review please feel free to post them. Take care.
-mike