[Movie] Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 was complete garbage!

I knew it wouldn't be as good at the first two when they revealed the casting choices and character selections for the movie in Jan 2006. And boy was I right but never did I think that it would be this bad.

To be quite honest I don't know where to begin, Okay they crammed three bad guys into this movie: Harry Osbourne who of course takes up the mantle of the Green Goblin to exact revenge on Peter Parker / Spider-Man for the death of his father. Then we have an angst ridden version of the Sandman another of Spider-Man's staple villains from the comic-book. Finally there was the much hyped Venom, who is a great character in the book but on screen is a load of crap; Amateurish CGI and a ridiculous "origin" plot cement the big-screen Venom as the worst move ever made by Raimi. With that lot there I was half-expecting Hobgoblin, Kraven, Vulture, Scorpion, Shocker and Rhino to turn up as well.

The plot of this movie veered so far off course from the comic-book that it didn't seem like a Spidey flick at all. The obvious love that Raimi had for Spider-Man's established lore showed in the care care and attention to the characters of the first 2 films, but this was in no-way evident on screen. Gwen Stacy shouldn't have been here at all, Eddie Brock should be a 6-foot football jock not a Daily Bugle photographer, and the whole Uncle-Ben-was-actually-killed-by-Marko was quite frankly insane and detracted from the whole "With great power..." lesson that Peter learned as the guy that escaped now didn't likk Ben!!! The origin of Venom I may have lived with if it had sped up the film and they hadn't introduced the astronaut John Jameson in Spider-Man 2 who should have brought the Venom symbiont to Earth thus ruining a perfect already established plot device.

The movie was far too long by about 25 mins, Raimi tried to pile too much on here. He had two new villains who needed origins, motivations and alter-ego's. One villain too many I say, either Sandman or Venom should have been chucked during the editing of the script especially if they were intent on exploring Harry Osbourne/Green Goblin, thus eliminating their origins and alter ego storyline as well. Gwen Stacy/Captain Stacy had no business really in the film they could have been cut too. There wasn't enough Daily Bugle/J. Jonah Jameson scenes and the snappy dialogue crafted for J.K. Simmons in the previous movies was absent here, it was like a character trying to be J.J. but not hitting the mark, it would have made more sense to have a J.J. hell-bent on tracking down the new black-suited-wall-crawling menace. All those changes may have made the movie less of a mess and less disjointed as opposed to watching Peter, Mary Jane, Harry, Sandman and Venom's mediocre storylines converge in a climax that while spectacular- I had lost interest about 45 minutes earlier and just didn't give a shit at that stage.

James Franco seemed to be the only person even trying to act on screen, how fitting it is then for in a film like this that he dies. Another major problem is that they cast Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy who unfortunately is a superior actress (with a superior bod) to Kirsten Dunst, it's unbelievable for Peter not to dump Mary Jane for Gwen. Dunst carried it off well for the previous two movies but her on-screen charisma is nothing in comparison to Howard. Thomas Hayden Church has come a long way from the village-idiot Lowell on the sit-com Wings but fails to impact as this over-dramatized Sandman. Topher Grace is an excellent comedy actor and his performance here should remind him to stay with the comedy genre. The best thing about this film wasn't even J.K. Simmons this time round, it was the amazing Bruce Campbell in a 2 minute cameo as a "French" waiter who easily stole the show.

Final word: Sam Raimi has turned what should have been an awesome trilogy to rank up there with Indy, LOTR and Terminator but has soiled the franchise with this excrement even worse then Brett Ratner did with X:3.

Jam it back in, in the dark.