Spiderman 3 Review

Before we get into this, I apologize to anyone that hasn't seen Spider-Man 3 yet. But it's been out 2 weeks, and after hitting the cinema last night (when the wife suggests going to a comic-book movie, a massive rarity, you have to take advantage of the situation, even if you postpone writing a paper due the next day), this film deserves a review. Unfortunately, it's for all the wrong reasons.

First off, I have to premise the fact that Spider-Man is one of my favorite comic-book characters. I used to collect the comic as a teenager, and know the villains & story lines very well. In addition, I loved the first two films of the Spidey Series. But Spider-Man 3 is overall a terrible movie.

The film is written so poorly, I couldn't even really enjoy it. I'm not going to get into details of what scenes are so bad (and not in the so-bad-its-good camp either), for those that haven't seen it yet. But the script was extremely slow, the dialogue was campy and poor, and the action was missing. It's so bad that I think X-Men 3 was a better third installment. And that's saying something. Walking out of the theater, I lamented to Jenny that you could have edited down the good scenes in the 140 minute running time down to a 30 minute serial, with 20 minutes of those scenes being in the last 20 minutes of the film. Jenny agreed, but added that she'd, "only give it a 0.5 out of 5 stars." Ouch.

For those who are not familiar, Spider-Man switched to the black suit in the standard continuity after Secret Wars. This was short lived, leading to one of the most successful Marvel villains of all time, Venom. I assume this introduction of the black suit sets up Spider-Man 4 to be centered around Venom as the primary villain.


On some podcasts I've listened to, critics of the film believe that 2 villains is one too many. I disagree. The villains are the best thing about this film. Topher Grace is an outstanding Venom. And Thomas Haden Church plays a solid Sandman. Also, the always classic Bruce Campbell is amazing in a brief Maître d’ cameo.


The bottom line is that the cheesy and campy script plays to the average American so much it's sad. And it must have worked too, because on the opening weekend of Spider-Man 3, they made 2 new world records. These include biggest opening day and opening weekend. Going dark is always better for comic-book films (see Batman Begins), as the best comic books have a sinister bent and wary outlook on the world.

I truly wish I had enjoyed the movie, but my cynical nature prevailed in the end... an ending sequence that should have come at the 80 minute mark instead of the 120 minute mark. It will be interesting to see what our resident comic-book geeks, Casey and Devo, have to say about the film. But as an ex-comic-book geek, I'm disappointed. I'll be going to Spider-Man 4, but I'll now be gun-shy when entering the theater. I think I'm going to go watch a true work of genius to get this bad taste out of my mouth.