Spider-Man 3 (Raimi, 2007) - 6.5/10
When I walked out of Spider-Man 2 (all 4 times!) 3 years ago, I was absolutely floored. Not only was that film my favorite superhero movie ever (it still is, and by a landslide), but it left me so excited for the final movie in the trilogy, and the greatness it would hold. I mean, how could they mess this up? The cast and crew was largely the same, as was the writing team, and this was the epic finale to the series. So Spider-Man 3 would be the comic book movie to end all comic book movies, right?
Unfortunately, no, it is not. Irrelevant, inconsequential and unengaging are the three words I would use to describe Spider-Man 3. It is not a bad movie but any stretch, but it simply fails on every level that the original, and especially the sequel, excelled on. Whereas Spider-Man 2 had me hooked from the outset and took me on an epic roller-coaster of emotion and thrills, Spider-Man 3 seemed to just plod around for 2.5 hours, merely existing, occasionally hitting the right note, but mostly just plowing ahead.
What went wrong? Well, there are two big issues with the film. First, let's blame Marvel boss Avi Arad for making director Sam Raimi shoehorn Venom into the film. The movie was already at content overload without his entrance, and with him in the film, there are about five subplots being juggled, and none of them are fully developed or satisfactorily concluded. Had the film been without Venom, his storyline plus the symbiote storyline could have been cut completely, and we would be left with a much leaner film, which could be much more fleshed out. The second issue is the writing. The film is totally bipolar, and has more plot threads that could ever be given room to breathe in 2.5 hours. Alvin Sargeant, who did a re-write of the first film to make it passable, and wrote the excellent screenplay for the second film, seems to have been inexplicably made an outcast, serving only to polish off the Raimi brothers' script, instead of being an integral part of the writing staff from day one. Most of the great touches in Spider-Man 2, which I fully attribute to Sargeant, are sadly missing here.
Up to this point, you may think I hated the film. But the truth is, amongst all the elements I hated about the film, there is still a lot to love here. The cast is in top form here, with the real notable performance coming unexpectedly from James Franco, who I felt excelled as the conflicted Harry Osborn. Tobey Maguire was also as enjoyable as ever in the Peter Parker role. Bruce Campbell's trademark cameo is his best one yet, and totally hilarious. I enjoyed Christopher Young's work on the score, especially his new themes for Sandman and Venom. The main titles once again were excellent, and totally succeeded in ramping up my excitement. The special effects and the action scenes in the film didn't disappoint, and there are several breath-taking set pieces littered throughout the film. Another great element remaining from the previous films is the humour. Spider-Man 3 in particular seems to go for even more laughs than its predecessors, and most of the time the gags work. Finally, I cannot conclude this review without making mention of easily the best scenes in the entire film, the "Saturday Night Fever" montage. Yes, this film features a scene which makes the "Raindrops" scene in Spider-Man 2 look downright tame. Kudos to Sam Raimi for having the balls to put such an extended scene in a major studio motion picture, and even bigger kudos to Tobey Maguire for taking that scene and running with it. I haven't laughed as much in ages as I did last night at Peter Parker strutting his stuff and gyrating his pelvis in downtown New York.
Spider-Man 3 is totally entertaining, if wholly unengaging and vastly inferior to its predecessor. The film simply tries to be too much, and accomplish too much in 2.5 hour running time. It saddens me to see a trilogy I love dearly, one that hit such highs, go out on such a middle-of-the-road note, but such is the case. We'll always have Spider-Man 2.
