Spider-Man 3

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Summary:
Peter Parker is trying to find the proper way to propose to MJ, while Flint Marko becomes Sandman, who is like the desert storm threat in THE MUMMY. Eddie Brock tries to take Parker's photography job with better Spidey photos, and Harry Osborn is still pissed at Peter. Peter needs to keep the love of MJ while defending the city against a slew of new predators. Most of whom just want to kill Peter.

Review:
In the first few minutes or so, one of Parker's fellow classmates answers a complex question and the teacher says, "Thank you, Ms. Stacy." I had no idea Gwen Stacy was going to be in this movie, and was hoping that would be the chance for MJ to get killed off and perhaps Peter would fall in love with Stacy. I had no idea Gwen Stacy was an albino! She has white hair, and even whiter skin. It was a miracle of special effects! Her eyes weren't pink, though. So, that kinda freaked me out.
Sad to say, Spider-Man 3 was bad on almost every level. For the first 20 minutes, I was not nearly as impressed as I was with the first two, but still going along with it. Harry's scowling face made me laugh a lot. It's a miracle how he seems to live every second of his life scowling. I wonder how many ulcers he has. When he attacks Peter, he ends up severely injured and loses his short term memory. He went from a super-angry demeanor to one of ungraciously-sycophantic-child-like glee. Yes, this is a dangerously cheap plot device that's overused, especially in DAYS OF OUR LIVES and any slew of comic book storylines. Life is "normal" with Harry and Peter again, until of course the movie calls for otherwise. Meanwhile, we have to sit through a good half hour of MJ slowly drifting away from Parker and gravitating towards Harry. Harry keeps smiling and smiling, seeming to burst at the seams with good-natured charm. When it came time for Harry's returned memories and sweet revenge... it was ripe with hearty laughter. I was laughing for all the wrong reasons. "How's the pie?" a waitress asks Harry. "Reeeally gooood," he replies. I laughed and laughed. That was so over the top it was great. Unlike the rest of this movie.

I don't know what the fuck Raimi and friends were thinking while writing and making Spider-Man 3. While the first two entries weren't perfect, they were still extremely good. Somehow, this third installment turns into a mess of a movie, where the magic word is "EXCESS"! Too many villians, too much whining and preening by the characters, cheap humorous montages that overstay their welcome and keep going like an overcharged Energizer Bunny. Too much of everything, and very little of it is good.
MJ finally gets her big break on Broadway, but falls to bad reviews. She reads ONE REVIEW in the paper and starts bitching and moaning to Peter about "You don't understand how I feel!" and shit. Within a few scenes - out of NOWHERE - Peter starts gloating and relishing the public spotlight, and I think, "WHAT the FUCK is going on here?" The logic behind his mysterious love of the public is a complete mystery to me. (Well, it might have been after the symbiotes get into him a bit, but like this movie does, more on that later. MUCH later.)
I then noticed that his gloating happened for the exact same reason Harry had to lose his memory. It is merely a cheap ploy to get the characters into an emotional condition which benefits the story arcs, without even attempting subtlety or respect to the moviegoer's intelligence. Sure enough, these far-fetched emotional u-turns brings storyline "benefit" in the near future, and once again... Parker overreacts and more immature relationship retardedness ensues.
All of these useless emotional outbursts are amidst a slew of uninteresting bad guys. There's the obligatory vengeful Harry, and then there's the cosmic ooze that shoots out of a meteor near the very beginning of the movie. It latches on to Parker's scooter, then sludges its way into his room unbeknownst to Peter. There it stays, to be forgotten by the audience if it wasn't for the occassional five second moment of the sludge hiding behind a desk drawer every so often. Then there's Sandman. All Thomas Hayden Church needs to do in his role is never smile, and make a look of hurtness in his eyes, like some emo reject. He falls into a wide open, easily accessable pit, that has a high-tech machine amidst some sand. The scientists even read that there's "more silicon in the levels than before", but a man says it's probably a bird. Continue the test anyway! Then, he magically forms into a nicely CGI-rendered sand creature. When he attacks later on, he looks just like the Mummy face in the storm in THE MUMMY. Complete with the roar. And when he gets shot and splatters sand off him, it hurts him. Eh?
So then I finally get to the symbiote ooze. Much like the movie, this comes much later in my review. There was no reason to have the ooze in the BEGINNING of the movie, when it could just as easily have shown up say, FIVE MINUTES BEFORE being utilized in the movie's storyline. What happens to Parker when it attaches to him is, Parker has an emo haircut, wears all black and reacts almost exactly like Clark Kent does in Smallville when he's around red kryptonite. He is more aggressive, isn't afraid to oggle the ladies and hurt MJ's feelings. The problem with all of this is, the first time he purposefully uses the suit like one would drink to avoid their sorrows, it shows him strutting. LITERALLY STRUTTING down the street like fucking John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. It doesn't stop there, it turns into an endless montage sequence of Peter strutting, hitting on women, flipping his hair, doing MORE strutting, getting new digs and posing like an early 80's JC Penney commercial, STRUT AGAIN... I thought it was amusing for the first 30 seconds or so, but then, four minutes later, my head is about to explode.

Then, Ms. Stacy comes more heavily into play in a scene at a jazz bar that had me crying at the crushed hopes of this movie redeeming itself. It went from not-so-good to totally and irrevocably bad. From here on out, I can't think of anything worth mentioning to bring this movie merit.

I would not complain if Spider-Man wasn't too heavy on action and played more with drama if the drama was DONE WELL. The first fight scene made no fucking sense to me at all, and it was done with horribly rendered CGI effects. Each subsequent fight scene was underpar of excellence and looked nowhere near as good as the second one. Nor were they choreographed as well. If the drama held up on its own, then the sadder action would deflate my cheeriness a little bit, but wouldn't ruin my enjoyment. The sappy and badly written drama was worse than the action scenes. The only part I thought was truly funny for the right reasons was Bruce Campbell's fucking awesome cameo as a French Maître d’ at a restaurant. Holy fuck that was some funny shit.

Having three major villains for this third installment isn't a truly bad idea. The way it was done is the bad idea part of it. I could easily have seen this movie being cut down by a good hour with only having a few sentences of dialogue where there were pages of whining and moping. That would have made shit more emotionally impacting, and less annoying to watch. This time could have been spent spicing up the motives of the villains. If Sandman wasn't in this movie at all, it wouldn't have changed the essence of the movie. What a damned shame. Plus, the tie-in with him killing Peter's uncle was fucking moronic.
Without saying more about this movie's ending and/or providing spoilers, the movie's biggest flaws will go unmentioned. But, where the FUCK was this old man Alfred the butler at for the last five years, eh? He's no Alfred. Alfred wouldn't have let Harry be a shithead for that long, and then out of nowhere lose his senility long enough to ONCE AGAIN move the movie's emotional arc into a new direction.
The final act and the last action scene is full of lovey-dubbey bullshit which concludes certain issues from the series way too easily and obviously. Then, Sandman's final scene is Bad bad bad bad BAD. So is every single second afterwards. I think the last chapter of the movie should be called "River of Tears". It suffers a massive case of Return of the King-itus with multiple fade out, fade-ins and plenty of chances to end the fucking flick, but decides to keep going.

I really wonder how Raimi feels about this movie inside his heart. Does he think that the C-grade, afternoon soap opera drama strikes a chord? Does he think the tossed together and badly rendered action scenes are necessary and engaging? Most of all, is this a movie that he deems worthy of the first two, and concludes the trilogy in a satisfactory manner? I have tons and tons of hard-hitting questions for Sam, and if I met him, I wouldn't be afraid to inject him with sodium pentothal and ask for his honest opinion.

Spider-Man 3 sucked ass. I laughed a lot, sure, but most of the time those laughs were for the wrong reasons. I was laughing to hide my disgust, or laughing AT Parker and friends instead of the scenarios they were caught in. I didn't go to Spidey 3 to laugh at people who I took seriously the first two times around. This is a big fucking punch in the gut, and I'm pissed that this shit has been released in theaters. Straight after the movie, I went home and masturbated bitterly - tears streaming down my cheeks, wailing like a baby - just for SOME kind of satisfaction after this fiasco. BOO! BOO! BOOOOOOO!

GRADE: D-

Reviewed 5/5/07