“Spider-Man 3”
Rating: ★★
The tagline for Spider-Man 3 reads, “The greatest battle lies within.” That statement applies not only to its titular hero, but unfortunately to the movie itself as well. After compellingly adapting Spider-Man onto the big screen in two films in a row, director Sam Raimi seemed like he could do no wrong with this franchise, until now.
The brilliance of the first two movies was that it treated its hero and his alter-ego, Peter Parker with distinctly human qualities, warts and all. Sure, they had sly humor, too, but their treatment of Peter’s personal issues played as effective drama. This third one suffers from creativity and plot overload and does not know whether it wants to be taken seriously or as completely farcical.
I guess it was too much to expect lightning in a bottle once again. After all, the '90s “Batman” movies descended in quality ever so quickly once it got too silly with its own flamboyance and became a traffic jam of stock villains. I never thought these flaws would catch up with the Spider-Man franchise. Now has it ever…
The film starts out well enough as it begins where the second film left off. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) has got the love of his life, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) and is about to propose to her, and Spider-Man is loved for all of his heroic efforts by all of
So it sounds like a good premise on paper with a nice contrast in Peter Parker to his more modest character in the previous second film. The film initially maintains the tone of the second film and plays as effective human drama between Mary Jane and Peter for the first half of the film where the former is consistently heartbroken by the latter’s utter ignorance of her emotions. Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) is once again the sound voice of moral reason, particularly in a heartfelt moment when she explains to Peter why she rejected Uncle Ben's first marriage proposal ("I didn't want to rush into something with nothing but love to sustain us."). The action sequences, of course, are impressive and thrilling to behold and handsomely show the hefty $250 million budget on the screen. J.K. Simmons is also back to add some welcome humor as the curmudgeonly Daily Bugle editor. Best of all, the brief cameo by perennial Raimi favorite, Bruce Campbell is absolutely priceless.
The film near completely unravels, however, once the alien symbiote gets on his suit and Peter goes over to the dark side. Peter Parker dons a ridiculous emo hairdo, flicks his hips in front of ladies passing by and tries to act “bad” as only a true nerd like him can do. This leads to an abysmal interlude where Peter takes his class lab partner in college, Gwen Stacey (Bryce Dallas Howard, who is criminally underused here) and uses her to spite Mary Jane at the jazz nightclub she starts singing at, after she has broken up with him. He literally starts dirty dancing with her, plays the piano and acts as “bad” as he can. This scene, I guess, is supposed to play as comedy but after the first hour of attempted drama, it completely defuses the tone of the entire film, ever more so because from a plot standpoint, Peter is acting like a complete jerk.
The treatment of the various villains doesn’t fare much better. The first two films only had one villain each and were able to give full dimension to their conflicted evil natures in parallel contrast to Peter’s troubled love story. To be sure, Spider-Man’s villains are far and away more interesting than Batman’s archenemies. This film unfortunately has too much of a good thing and its attempt to lend weight to all three villains only leads to abrupt and unconvincing characterizations. We have Harry, of course, aka the new Green Goblin who has it out for Peter once he has figured out he is Spider-Man and may be responsible for his father’s death. There is Flint Marko aka Sandman, a robber who steals money to help his dying daughter and turns out to have been the real killer of Uncle Ben from the carjacking in the first film. Then there is Venom, who has a personal vendetta against Peter. Despite its 140-minute some running time, the film still lacks depth in all of these characters and Spidey’s ultimate resolutions with some of the villains feels like something out of Lifetime.
That schmaltzy sentiment pervades the entire narrative with a lot of people crying, particularly on the part of Peter Parker. Forgiveness and redemption are some of the major themes that the film tries to explore but the emotions here all feel completely forced and turn the film into a made-for-TV, round-pegged message movie. The key difference between heartfelt and gooey, pretentious sentiment is in its level of personal focus and honesty and the film’s inability to find a consistent tone and its cramming of too much plot severely cripples the emotional investment that should be given to all these characters.
I can almost imagine the troubled debate that must have happened at the screenwriting stage, as written by Alvin Sargent and Sam Raimi, who only directed the first two films. They kept Alvin Sargent from the success of the second film to keep the emotional content but Raimi stepped in to add some completely nonsensical comedy, hearkening back to his slapstick "Evil Dead" movies. All the more disappointing considering that the first two films effortlessly sprinkled in light comic-book style humor that never detracted from the dimensional drama.
There is already talk of a fourth Spider-Man movie and considering the huge success of this third film, it seems inevitable. One can hope for things to improve should there ever be another Spider-Man film. Spider-Man still has much growing up to do and perhaps Sam Raimi will resolve his own creative battle to deliver a more focused and mature film to depict just that.
Also read reviews for Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2.
1 comments:
I think you nailed it on the head, John. I wish you were wrong, but you aren't... :(
Ben W.
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