Spider-Man 3 (’07 review)

4 out of 5

The original Spider-Man film is pretty good: a dramatic and stirring adaptation of Spidey’s origin for the 1st half of the movie, then it goes on autopilot for the 2nd half with somewhat bland superheroics.  Its sequel, Spider-Man 2, is fantastic.  The amount of abuse shoveled onto Peter Parker is inspired, and its direct focus on his life, problems, and self-doubt makess it probably the best superhero adaptation ever.  This leads us to Spider-Man 3, a highly anticipated sequel, possibly the last outing for director Sam Raimi and his stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, and the most expensive movie ever made. 

This film is not the piece of pop-culture superheroic genius that was Spider-Man 2: however, Spider-Man 3 has a go-for-broke attitude that makes it a winner.  Its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to the Spider-Man mythos, strip-mining huge chunks of the character’s backstory for a single movie, has to be admired.  There is a lot of unrealized potential in this film, and a the myriad of subplots probably would have deserved a their own movie instead of being blended together, but the pieces do, strangely, fit.  Even though the multiple plots could have used fleshing out, scenes work on their own as small, herky-jerky vignettes of character and action.  For a movie that’s over two and a half hours long, its surprising how rushed the thing feels. 

The multi-pronged plot is about Spider-Man’s (Maguire) life finally going right when he proposes to his girlfriend, Mary Jane (Dunst). After fending off a deadly attack from his longtime friend Harry Osborn (James Franco), Spidey web-slings after the potential “real” killer of his Uncle Ben, Flint Marko (Thomas Hayden Church), as Peter Parker conflicts with a new photographer at the Daily Bugle, Eddie Brock Jr. (Topher Grace). But when Spidey merges with an alien symbiote that amplifies his aggression, things start to spiral out of control towards darker territory and vengeance.

All of the actors are fairly decent: Dunst may throw people off with her style, but she is nicely heartbreaking.  Maguire can plumb emotional depth moreso than most action heroes. Franco has to endure a soap-opera-ish twist of severe memory loss, but seeing him alternate between nice and then evil makes for compelling watching.  Newcomers Church and Grace acquit themselves well.  Church adds a remarkable amount of sadness to what could have been a goof character.  Grace, by contrast, is a completely amoral jerk, but he’s so good at being wimpy and petulant, that when he gets his Evil Alien Venom suit on, you believe him when he says “I like being bad.”   Having been a huge fan of the Venom character since I was a kid, its really fun to see him adapted on the big screen.   Unfortunately, he’s only in it for, like, 10 minutes at the end. 

But the main core of the film, Peter Parker using the alien symbiote has stillborn dramatic possibility.  In the comics, Paker’s merger with the alien sent him on a hellishly introspective living nightmare where he was genuinely afraid of losing his identity to this alien. In Spider-Man 3, the symbiote turns Peter into kind of a douche with an emo haircut who likes jazz music.

In a sequence that is intentionally funny but wildly out of place, Parker dances down the street, making googly eyes at the ladies.  Even later on, Parker goes to a jazz club and suddenly starts be-boppin-and-scattin’ all over the place, displaying previously unknown musical ability.  It veers the film’s tone wildly towards self-parody, and reminds one of the “Yazz Flute” sequence from Anchorman.  But all this goofy stuff is entertaining in an unhinged way.  What other movie would have enough chutzpah to try a stunt like that?

There is some drama here: when Peter first uses the alien suit to see bloody revenge on Sandman, his anger has a nicely dark tone.  And, even better, when Peter throws down with Harry Osborn, he deliberately pushes his buttons, doing something genuinely shocking at the end of their confrontation.  However, after all those sci-fi dramatics stuff involving Evil Parker, it turns into the dance/jazz movie.  And, even sillier, its not the potentially deadly acts that forces Peter to loose the alien goo suit, its his dancing at a jazz club that clinches it!  You know something is off-kilter when Spidey comes off as more menacing and dangerous under the influence of the alien symbiote in the Official Game Adaptation moreso than the film that inspired it.

Another loss to the film is the storyline of Osborn’s revenge on Spider-Man for his belief that Parker killed his father.  This is a storyline that could have been served up as its own film: a twisted three-character drama between Harry, Peter, and Mary Jane involving vengeance and superpowers.  While there are hints of what it could have been, and the scenes do play extremely well for fans of the franchise, the movie is jumping from one plot to the next that it never fully gets its due.  One of the movie’s biggest storylines that has been building up since the first film sadly comes off as an afterthought in Spider-Man 3.

Visually, Spider-Man 3 may not be as inspired as Raimi’s last Spider-flick.  That film had nice directorial touches of his old-school indie background merged with a big budget sensibility.  This one is a bit more rote directorially, but Raimi is too good a director to not make us notice.  Check out the horrific delicacy of the “birth” of the Sandman, or the violence of Eddie Brock’s merger with the alien symbiote.  And the action sequences in this film are numerous and as good as any big-budget movie you’ll see.  The multiple fights with Sandman are visual FX extravaganzas (even if he does go out like a punk near the end), there are some really cool web-slinging acrobatics that almost surpass the previous outings, and the 3^rd act brouhaha of multiple heroes, villains, and hostages is pretty freakin nuts.  

So, while Spider-Man 3 isn’t the best capper to a film franchise (and not even the last, Sony has confirmed they’re going to make parts 4-6), it is still an entertaining flick.  Since Raimi and Co. ran up a 300 million dollar pricetag, it may be their last.  If Spider-Man 2 was a defining superhero film, Spider-Man 3 is an enjoyable piece of somewhat bloated summer popcorn. Its loud, big, somewhat dumb, yet fun.  Are you not entertained?