Spider-Man 3 (2007) May 12, 2007
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , trackbackDirected by: Sam Raimi
So here it is. The first of the big-budget summer blockbusters and (arguably) the most anticipated of the bunch - which is really saying something given that 2007 will mark the third outing for both the Pirates and Shrek franchises, as well as the fourth Die Hard movie. It’s a summer of sequels, but what does it take to follow two of the best superhero movies of modern times? Can it even be done?
The story picks up a little after the events of Spider-man 2, where Peter Parker has finally begun to deal with his dual life alongside his relationship with Mary Jane. The city loves him too, or they love Spider-man at least, even staging a parade in his honour. Things don’t stay pleasant for long though, when police reveal the real killer of Peter’s Uncle Ben, a man named Flint Marko, has escaped from prison. To make matters worse, Marko stumbles into a particle physics experiment during his escape which changes his molecular structure and turns him into the Sandman.
Meanwhile, Parker’s old friend Harry Osborn returns as the New Goblin, and he’s hell-bent on taking revenge for his father’s death – which means bringing an end to Spider-man. Amongst all this, a mysterious black substance crash-lands on earth, attaching itself to the Spider-man costume. Peter feels energised by it, giving him the confidence boost he has always lacked as Parker. But it soon starts to put a strain on his personal relationships, especially with Mary Jane, as Peter starts to show traits of the dark side of human nature that he has committed himself to fighting against.
I’m going to get this out of the way now: I’m a huge Spider-man fan. Whether that should have any bearing on the rest of the review, I don’t know, but I understand that my affinity for the character puts me in a more biased position than usual when it comes to judging this particular flick. I’d like to be able to somehow use my expertise to at least give a unique insight into the film, but therein lies the problem:
Having been on release a week, it’s already hard to write anything about this film that hasn’t been said a thousand times. My plot summary alone should give you an idea how the eternal pressure to be bigger and better has clearly gotten to the filmmakers this time – and I didn’t even mention the introduction of Eddie Brock, his feud with Peter, the Gwen Stacy romance angle, or any of the Mary Jane / Harry subplot. It’s a complicated movie because it adds so much to a story already dragging two films worth of baggage.
On the plus side, there’s an inherent likeability to these characters which means that the movie doesn’t fall apart completely under the strain of its elements. While director Sam Raimi continues to impress me, dropping some wonderfully quirky styles into the film the likes of which would never appear in your average summer blockbuster. Some have criticised these sequences as out-of-place, but it is scenes like Parker in the jazz club that give the film a sense of uniqueness. Without them, it’s just ticking the boxes.
This is also the longest Spidey flick yet at 140-minutes, although I didn’t feel the length at all, since, given the amount of stories, you can rest assured that the whole affair keeps moving at a brisk pace. The regular cast return to their roles with equally strong performances to those in previous outings, and the script hasn’t lost any of the humour either, although it’s maybe a little more explicit this time around.
Looking deeper, we start to see where the criticisms lie. Harry’s storyline is clearly a quick way of sidelining him until needed, because there’s no way the film could hold another straight ‘bad guy’ with everything else that is going on. Venom too, becomes almost an afterthought in a story thread that is too long to be properly serviced by one film. The heart of evil that resides within Venom is never truly conveyed to the audience; his actual screen time squeezed in towards the end – and this is a character whose appearance should have marked a high point for the series.
The worst part of it all is that, given Raimi’s previous work on these movies, I know that this story clearly wants to tell you more; it just never quite gets the time. I can’t say that the narrative is really bad, more that it just doesn’t give itself enough breathing space to grow into a fully satisfying tale. It’s because of this that the wonderful ‘journey’ aspect of the first two films is lost here; stepping off point A in ten directions, but never truly reaching point B from any of them.
This is one for the fans I think - the people who’ll follow the web-slinger to the moon if it means they get to see him live and breathe through Toby Maguire and under the direction of Raimi. It’s infuriating for me because, unlike some lesser examples from the comic-book genre, I still see the potential in this film. There’s a great trilogy-rounding story about vengeance and forgiveness in there; but it involves the human relationship between Peter and Harry; the superhero relationship between Spider-man and the Sandman; and most importantly of all: time to explore those elements. The thing that genuinely saddens me is that if this is the last time we see Raimi’s Spider-man then it really deserved to go out on a high. Instead, we settle for merely okay.
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