Review of Spider-Man 3 (2007) by Stevenf — 03 Aug 2013

Seeing this for the first time in the cinema, I must admit I was impressed, but I also left the feeling with a problem that I couldn't quite put my finger on, and when I watched it again, an again, the problems threw themselves at me to the point where I felt so disappointed, I didn't hate Spider-Man 3, but after such a strong and excellent second outing for our hero, the third tried to go bigger and bigger to the point where they seemed to lose track of characters, plot lines and an overall sense of enjoyment.

A relatively unknown and unexplained symbiote crash lands on earth, and this makes for some very interesting changes in the personality of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), who continues to date the woman he loves, albeit with plenty of speed bumps along the way. Peter also has to deal with his estranged friend Harry, who now has a very ruthless side and his very own alter-ego, someone who causes problems for Spider-Man, but not alone. The film paves the way for not one, not two, but three villains. Just as can be imagined, it becomes messy and confusing with a bewildering and awkward love triangle, a very powerful villain who has a quick backstory and thats it, we have a villain in the form of Venom who could be touted as one of the most famous of foes, but the most underused and wrongly portrayed characters in film, rushed and overblown are a few choice words.

Its just difficult to heighten any sense of character in these new foes, with a weak script which doesn't explore them with enough depth or gratifying belief that they could even contend with Doc Ock of the second film. They seem more like plot devices to move the story along, and Venom seemed to be used as a oh no, we forgot we had Venom shown earlier, stick him into that scene" type scenario. With this comes the vastly different main characters, who now seem like the kids they should have portrayed in the first film but are coming up late, with the lack of humour definitely apparent.

But the action and visuals continue to come up top marks, with the birth of Sandman being a particularly impressive scene which one of the limited marvels of the film, some of the action sequences were excellent, many just seemed to help knock up the budget with no relevance at all to the story. There is certainly a different, darker and much more gritty attitude in the third and final instalment of the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire era, but it moves too fast and leaves too many characters out in the cold, adding up to a disappointing and ultimately messy affair.