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By EdwardHavens
May 2nd, 2007
To be completely honest, I've been extremely apathetic about writing this critique of the film. While "Spider-Man 3" is not even remotely close to the title of The Worst Movie Ever Made, it's schizophrenic pacing and apathy towards its audience's acceptance means the film never needs to be seen more than once, if that.
By the third part of any film series, we already know everything we need to know about the main hero, what he or she is capable of and what things (emotional, mental, physical or some combination of the three) are holding them back from their full potential. James Bond serves Queen and Country. Superman fights for truth, justice and the American way. Batman fights crime to honor the memory of his murdered parents.
The things we know about these characters is even more amplified when they are adapted from another medium, like Peter Parker, whose every thought and move has been chronicles over the past forty-five years in innumerable comic books, television shows and now movies. Even if you had never read a Spider-Man comic book or seen any of the Spidey shows before the first film opened in 2002, most people were familiar with the basic tenets of the character: bitten by a radioactive spider, a high school student uses his newly-gained superpowers (which include the ability to climb walls and swing around on a synthetic webbing) to help protect the citizens of his city from a variety of super-villains. With a superb mix of action and genuine emotion, the first two Spidey movies became worldwide sensations and helped make the series the biggest comic-crossover in the history of cinema, and the misbalance of these two major factors is why this third entry is such a disappointment.
Like all the “Batman” movies that came after Tim Burton’s masterful 1989 series starter, “Spider-Man 3” suffers from Too Many Bad Guys Syndrome, the thought being that, the more evil guys around, the more action there will be and thus the better the film will be. But, honestly, when has this ever worked? I can only think of one time, in “Superman 2,” when it was a trio of baddies working in tandem towards a singular unified goal. Here, we have Flint Marko, aka Sandman, who isn’t out to get Spider-Man so much as try to find a way to save his terminally-ill child; an unidentified alien symbiotic being, who again isn’t so much out to get Spider-Man as it is just wanting a host body to snuggle up against and survive in a new environment with; Eddie Brock, who isn’t out to get Spider-Man either but a rival photographer at the Daily Bugle who is out to get Peter Parker for “ruining” his life (even though everything that happens to Brock is mostly his own fault) and becomes the supposedly-feared mega-baddie Venom; and Harry Osborn, Peter’s one-time friend who is very much out to get Spider-Man for causing the death of his father, going so far as to adopt and adapt his dad’s evil alter-ego for his own use. My own personal rule is, if you have a really great villain, like a Lex Luthor or a Joker, you have enough to sustain an entire film without the need to load up on the baddies, and if there is any reason to add more, they should be a part of a team that works together and should never exceed three in numbers. Four baddies means the writers (director Raimi and his brother Ivan, plus two-time Oscar winner Alvin Sargent, who just happens to be married to one of the producers of the film) never really had a strong grasp of a coherent storyline and just threw everything against the wall to see what stuck.
Unfortunately, several of these laborious sequences are meant to show Peter’s untapped id breaking out when he becomes joined with the symbiote, which lapse into painful, second-rate homages to movie musicals including, inexplicably, the opening credits to “Saturday Night Fever.” Toby Maguire may be a good actor, when he wants to be, but no one would ever confuse his “macho bravado” with the true audacity of the young Travolta as he swaggered down the street. Whatever you think of Travolta today, thirty years ago he became a major sex symbol within three minutes of the start of that scene, and there is no way Maguire could ever come close to equaling it.
In a nutshell, this is indicative of the entire film. It so much wants to be more MORE MORE that it ends up being far less than it could have been. Sure, the effects are just as good as the previous entries, but without that careful balance between the effects and the emotion, it becomes a meaningless visual orgasm. Rosemary Harris does her best to inject some much needed life into the film, and her scenes with Maguire make up what little heart the film has. Otherwise, everything else is calculated and precise and extremely lifeless. When you become restless waiting for the battle sequences to end, you know trouble is afoot.
For a series that willingly messes with its origin’s canon, “Spider-Man 3” is strangely devoted to keeping Mary Jane at the center of Peter’s heart, even with the entry of Gwen Stacy (the girl who Mary Jane replaced in the comics). The film had a golden opportunity to give itself some real gravitas by offing a major character while keeping some of the basic storyline intact, and certainly Bryce Dallas Howard has never been more appealing as she is here with Gwen’s blond locks, yet here we are with a worthwhile character wasted on a hollow moment that never pays off.
If there should end up being a fourth film, and Raimi and his team do come back, hopefully they will see the dramatic possibilities in putting one of their major characters in true mortal danger, much as Marvel recently did with Captain America (although we all know Cap will be back in some form in the very near future), and not at the end of the movie either, reaffirming for Parker the reasons he is doing what he is doing. It certainly would be better than what happens this time around.
And, for goodness sake, do whatever you have to do to bring Danny Elfman back into the fold. Christopher Young’s score is as common as Elfman’s scores were unique and iconic. It’s the musical equivalent of trading in a Maserati for a Yugo, or playing Wagner on a kazoo.
My rating: D+