Review of Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, J.K. Simmons

Time: 140 min.

Rating:

Watching cement harden into concrete is a lot more exciting that sitting through the painfully tedious Spider-Man 3. The 140 minutes seem more like 240. Worse, it’s like sitting through a bad Bollywood film with only one horribly embarrassing song-and-dance (yes, it really contains a song-and-dance sequence).

This third Spider-Man film opens with Spidey being hailed as a hero, even though Peter Parker (Maguire) remains his nerdish self; with Mary Jane (Dunst) starring in a Broadway musical; and with Harry Osborn (Franco) seething with hate for Spidey, who he believes killed his father. Of course, Peter’s perfect world quickly implodes when he discovers who really murdered his Uncle Ben and when he fails to close his marriage proposal with Mary Jane.

After several sleep-inducing scenes, Peter transforms from complete narcissist to revenge riddled vigilante to angry rampaging bastard. While Peter battles his personal demons, Spidey battles three foes—the Goblin, the Sandman (Church), and Venom (Grace). Throughout, Peter periodically chats with Aunt May, who dispenses outdated 50s morals and values, such as “A husband puts his wife before himself.”

Near the end of Spider-Man 3, Peter and Harry blather on about choices and how your choices make you good or bad. Sam Raimi, who takes credit for directing and writing this rubbish, should’ve paid more attention to what he was doing because his choices, directorially and scripting-wise, have made this one bad film.

The first awful plotting choice was to include three villains. Not only would one have been manageable, as in Spider-Man 2, but it would’ve allowed for greater character and story development. With three baddies to juggle, Raimi rushes them all across the screen so he can squeeze them into the film. As a result, their interactions with Spidey are hurried, trivial, and unengaging.

Strangely enough, the overload of villains and their hasty fights with Spidey creates an action film completely lacking in action. Raimi obsesses so much about Peter’s inner turmoil that he spends most of the film exploring Peter’s personal struggles. (The movie would’ve actually worked better had it been a melodrama about Peter, Mary Jane, and Harry, with the superhero costumes left in the closet.)

The action seems to be thrown in occasionally so the film can claim to be a summer blockbuster. (If you’ve seen the trailer for this film, you’ve already seen most of the action.) Even then, the pacing of the seemingly endless dramatic moments between the scant action scenes is so tediously slow any bit of action, however brief, is a welcome respite.

Making the slow pacing even more unbearable is the excruciatingly wretched dialog. Aside from Aunt May’s many aphorisms of misguided 50s moral certitude, the verbal exchanges between characters are flat, uninspired, and bad writing. Perhaps the dialogs would’ve been more interesting if the characters weren’t spouting simplistic ideas that reduced life to black-and-white clichés of love, friendship, and inner strength.

The scrimping on dialog is nearly criminal considering that Spidey’s trademark has always been his witty repartee with his foes. But unlike the second movie, Spider-Man 3 strips Spidey of everything he is in the comics. He no longer possesses his spider sense (he gets ambushed twice). He no longer web-slings through Manhattan searching for crime (he sits in studio apartment listening to a police scanner). He no longer remembers how to use his powers (he struggles to reach for something before remembering he can retrieve it with his web.)

To compound these flaws, Raimi makes the terrible choice of not pushing his actors. Maguire and Dunst express no emotions whatsoever. They speak their lines, they throw themselves about the screen, but their faces fail to show any sign of emotion. Only J.K. Simmons (as J. Jonah Jameson) brings life to the film, but his role merely adds lame comic relief to this otherwise barren emotional landscape.

The only positive thing about Spider-Man 3 is its visual appearance. It looks fairly polished on the screen, and some of the special effects are incredible—at least the effects that turn Church into the Sandman.

Sadly, the effects during the action sequences are substandard. Most of the scenes are dark, occurring either at night or in poorly lit locations—which makes the action difficult to follow (and which makes me wonder if they were intentionally set in low light so the effects could be done sloppily). Also, Raimi chooses to use a roaming camera for many of the action scenes—which is technically challenging but causes the action to be even tougher to follow.

Spider-Man 3 is by far the most disappointing episode of the Spidey films. It could’ve been better had Raimi made different choices, but his decisions seem to have been based on earning quick, easy money rather than creating an intelligent, quality product. If you happen across this spider, don’t waste your time watching it, just smash it with a flyswatter.