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Well in the last few weeks I've posted reviews for both Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 so it's time to complete the Raimi trilogy. In fact I've now reviewed all 4 Spidey flicks that have so far hit the big screen. Oh and apologies to anyone who doesn't feel this measures up to my normal standards. I had made a bit of a mistake with this one. I was sure I was finished with it and have had it just sitting about for ages. It was only when I just went to post it that I realised it wasn't done so I had to do a lot of last minute fixes and additions
Plot - Oh come on this is the third one of these I've done of late. You should know the story by now! Geeky guy dresses up in the red and blue tights, adopts the name Spider-Man, fights the bad guys while going through angsty problems in his personal life. The end!
“Ambition destroys its possessor” is an old Hebrew proverb (well apparently it is anyway, I only just discovered it through google like two minutes ago) and one that I think certainly applies here. Spider-Man 3 just tries to do way too much, throwing too many ingredients at the screen that rarely gel and just create a clustered mess. The film has got three villains, two personal conflicts for Peter, a professional conflict and it resurrects the Uncle Ben storyline to further mine emotion from it. All that in just a little over two hours. They were never going to be able to tackle all of it in a sufficient and satisfying manner. To do so you'd need a film that clocked in at something approaching three or four hours. It's intriguing to see just how similar a path that both the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises took. Both started off with very fun little films before graduating onto something bigger and better with the sequels. Flushed with that success however the third film in both series tried to take things to even greater heights and just buckled under the weight. X-Men 3 had two storylines (the Phoenix and the mutant cure) which both could have made fine films on their own, but by trying to tackle both of them the film failed to fulfil either thread satisfactorily. That was particularly disappointing in the case of the Dark Phoenix story, one of the all time classic tales in the X-Men canon. And it's a similar case with Spider-Man 3 which tried to squash at least two film's worth of material into a single outing, and completely squandered one of Spidey's classic villains and storylines; the Venom saga. The resulting package is a bit of a mess.
A suitable alternate title for Spider-Man 3 could easily have been Dues Ex Machina: The Movie. The amount of happy coincidences on show is staggering. So an alien symbiote falls from the sky and just happens to land beside Spider-Man. Harry Osborn just happens to suffer from that old chestnut, amnesia, which allows him to become friends with Peter again. Spider-Man just happens to save the life of Peter's lab partner Gwen Stacey, who just happens to be the love of interest of Eddie Brock, who just happens to be Peter's rival at the Daily Bugle. When Peter gets rid of the symbiote it just happens to go to the one person who really hates him, Eddie Brock. It turns out that the killer of Uncle Ben was not who it was once believed. It's Flint Marco, who just happens to have become Sandman before this knowledge was revealed. And who just happens to have fought Peter just previous to Peter finding out. And all of a sudden to get Harry back on Peter's side, his butler just happens to know that Spider-Man was not at fault for Norman's death. The makers of the film would apparently have us believe that there are only about 6 people in the whole world, and that every important event happens to one of those individuals. Talk about your six degrees of separation. It really is a small world after all.
Before this film came about Sam Raimi had gone on record as stating that he was not a fan of the Venom character, only including him for the fans and at the suggestion of the higher-ups. And his feelings are pretty evident for all to see up on the screen. To call his work with Venom half-assed would be a compliment. It's a complete trashing of the character, undermining him to the absolute utmost. I mean you don't even see the character until the film only has about half an hour remaining. You get the feeling that Raimi really wasn't happy about the situation and just threw the toys out of his pram. He may have had to include him but he did it with barely an ounce of effort, and for that I lost a lot of respect for him. Had the character been handled correctly he could have been the basis for a great film. Hopefully if the current Webb/Garfield collaboration decides to tackle the character once again at some point they will be able to do a much better job with it. And it's not just with the Venom angle that the film drops the ball. Too many of the story's threads are left too vague and unresolved. For example we never find out exactly what is wrong with Flint's daughter, or what he needs the money for. Nor are we given any resolution. You feel the film should end with Spidey helping his daughter in some way to the great gratitude of Flint, who then willingly gives himself up. And I also wasn't happy with them going back and retroactively altering the Uncle Ben element of Peter's origin story.
The characters of Mary Jane and Peter, and their romance, hadn't exactly always been a rousing success through the first two films, but they are taken to drastic depths here. MJ is immensely irritating in this one, she's just so needy and mopey throughout. While the awakening of Peter's emo side has already gone down in superhero movie infamy. It's just so stupid and cringeworthy. So you've been taken over by an evil alien symbiote; how does it manifest itself? You comb your hair slightly differently, start wearing black and do some ridiculous dancing. Just brutal! The movie disappears up its own backside at this point, and more resembles a spoof of the genre like Superhero Movie rather than a genuine entry in the genre The most intriguing character and performance this time out actually comes from James Franco, with his Harry Osborn going on a real rollercoaster of a character arc. Starting out as a psychotic villain it's not long before he becomes a amnesia-stricken friend once more to Peter, before once again becoming a slimy bad guy, before finally becoming a hero. Franco seems to have a great deal of fun with the role and all its nuances, particularly during the character's villainous streaks. For me he went from becoming the weakest character in the first film, to the most interesting character in this third outing.
In fact I felt that it was amongst all the villainous characters that the best performances were to be found this time out. Even if they don't perhaps have the characters to back them up, I actually felt that there were a couple of decent performances to be found amongst the film's other villains. I thought that Thomas Haden Church was a very solid choice for the role of Flint Marco, a nice fit for the character's more bumbling, hapless nature. Just Sandman is not a particularly evil villain, in fact in the comics he actually reformed himself and become a hero for a short term, even becoming a reserve member of the Avengers. Apparently Church based his performance on the likes of Frankenstein's monster and King Kong; classic misunderstood monsters, and that proved to be a nice choice. And while the character may not lend itself to Venom I thought that Topher Grace did a nice job with Eddie Brock when he was just playing the mirror version of Peter, very slimy and sleezy he was.
The action this time out I felt was rather underwhelming and on occasion a bit of a mess. The only sequence that I felt really worked was the initial confrontation between Spider-Man and Sandman in the back of an armoured truck. The massive smackdown at the film's conclusion that pits Spider-Man and the New Goblin against Sandman and Venom has its moments but overall felt a bit of a chaotic jumble. Not helped by some wild camera work that I found to be rather irritating. The effects I felt were a bit of a mixed bag. Sandman was well crafted for the most part, although the giant version of him at the end felt rather fake. And I imagine that this time out in the moments where Spider-Man and the Night Goblin are flying through the air, the effects had taken a bit of a step back into a more cartoonish vibe.
However for all of its many, many flaws I have to admit that I do still find this film to be kind of enjoyable, largely just because it's a Spider-Man film. Where it any other hero the rating would likely be a good bit lower but Spidey is my favourite superhero character. Of the 700 issues of Amazing Spider-Man I must own at least 400 of them, along with many graphic novels and issues of many other series – Ultimate Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man etc. Plus I also love some of the character's animated shows, namely the classic 90s cartoon and The Spectacular Spider-Man. I just adore the character.
Conclusion - After two highly successful steps forward there's no doubt that this was a considerable stumble for the Spider-Man series. It's a film which tries to tackle way too much material and ends up sacrificing any semblance of a satisfying story. Were this story built around any other character it would be a complete flop; what saves it for me is the Spidey factor.
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Year of release
2007
2007
Directed by
Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi
Written by
Sam Raimi
Ivan Raimi
Alvin Sargent
Sam Raimi
Ivan Raimi
Alvin Sargent
Starring
Tobey Maguire
Kirsten Dunst
James Franco
Thomas Haden Church
Topher Grace
Tobey Maguire
Kirsten Dunst
James Franco
Thomas Haden Church
Topher Grace
Spider-Man 3
Plot - Oh come on this is the third one of these I've done of late. You should know the story by now! Geeky guy dresses up in the red and blue tights, adopts the name Spider-Man, fights the bad guys while going through angsty problems in his personal life. The end!
“Ambition destroys its possessor” is an old Hebrew proverb (well apparently it is anyway, I only just discovered it through google like two minutes ago
) and one that I think certainly applies here. Spider-Man 3 just tries to do way too much, throwing too many ingredients at the screen that rarely gel and just create a clustered mess. The film has got three villains, two personal conflicts for Peter, a professional conflict and it resurrects the Uncle Ben storyline to further mine emotion from it. All that in just a little over two hours. They were never going to be able to tackle all of it in a sufficient and satisfying manner. To do so you'd need a film that clocked in at something approaching three or four hours. It's intriguing to see just how similar a path that both the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises took. Both started off with very fun little films before graduating onto something bigger and better with the sequels. Flushed with that success however the third film in both series tried to take things to even greater heights and just buckled under the weight. X-Men 3 had two storylines (the Phoenix and the mutant cure) which both could have made fine films on their own, but by trying to tackle both of them the film failed to fulfil either thread satisfactorily. That was particularly disappointing in the case of the Dark Phoenix story, one of the all time classic tales in the X-Men canon. And it's a similar case with Spider-Man 3 which tried to squash at least two film's worth of material into a single outing, and completely squandered one of Spidey's classic villains and storylines; the Venom saga. The resulting package is a bit of a mess.A suitable alternate title for Spider-Man 3 could easily have been Dues Ex Machina: The Movie. The amount of happy coincidences on show is staggering. So an alien symbiote falls from the sky and just happens to land beside Spider-Man. Harry Osborn just happens to suffer from that old chestnut, amnesia, which allows him to become friends with Peter again. Spider-Man just happens to save the life of Peter's lab partner Gwen Stacey, who just happens to be the love of interest of Eddie Brock, who just happens to be Peter's rival at the Daily Bugle. When Peter gets rid of the symbiote it just happens to go to the one person who really hates him, Eddie Brock. It turns out that the killer of Uncle Ben was not who it was once believed. It's Flint Marco, who just happens to have become Sandman before this knowledge was revealed. And who just happens to have fought Peter just previous to Peter finding out. And all of a sudden to get Harry back on Peter's side, his butler just happens to know that Spider-Man was not at fault for Norman's death. The makers of the film would apparently have us believe that there are only about 6 people in the whole world, and that every important event happens to one of those individuals. Talk about your six degrees of separation. It really is a small world after all.
Before this film came about Sam Raimi had gone on record as stating that he was not a fan of the Venom character, only including him for the fans and at the suggestion of the higher-ups. And his feelings are pretty evident for all to see up on the screen. To call his work with Venom half-assed would be a compliment. It's a complete trashing of the character, undermining him to the absolute utmost. I mean you don't even see the character until the film only has about half an hour remaining. You get the feeling that Raimi really wasn't happy about the situation and just threw the toys out of his pram. He may have had to include him but he did it with barely an ounce of effort, and for that I lost a lot of respect for him. Had the character been handled correctly he could have been the basis for a great film. Hopefully if the current Webb/Garfield collaboration decides to tackle the character once again at some point they will be able to do a much better job with it. And it's not just with the Venom angle that the film drops the ball. Too many of the story's threads are left too vague and unresolved. For example we never find out exactly what is wrong with Flint's daughter, or what he needs the money for. Nor are we given any resolution. You feel the film should end with Spidey helping his daughter in some way to the great gratitude of Flint, who then willingly gives himself up. And I also wasn't happy with them going back and retroactively altering the Uncle Ben element of Peter's origin story.
Film Trivia Snippets - During one of the Sandman's fight sequences Thomas Hayden Church broke three knuckles when he punches a brick wall. A fake foam brick was meant to be placed in the wall for Church to aim at. A crew error meant that didn't happen however and on the first take Church punched the real brick with all his force. Ouch! /// For the role of Gwen Stacy both Elisha Cuthbert and Scarlett Johansson were considered before it eventually went to Bryce Dallas Howard. This led to a unique situation where Howard, a natural redhead, played the blonde Gwen Stacy, while Kirsten Dunst, a natural blonde, played the redheaded Mary Jane. /// During the early stages of production the original plan was to have the Vulture feature as the villain, with Ben Kingsley involved in negotiations to play him before the character's storyline was replaced by Venom. /// Both Thomas Haden Church and Topher Grace put in a great deal of work to prepare for their roles as Sandman and Venom respectively. Church worked out for 16 months, losing ten pounds of fat and gaining 28 pounds of muscle. While Topher Grace worked out for six months, gaining 24 pounds of muscle. Grace based his performance as Eddie Brock on alcoholics and drug addicts. /// Creating the character of Sandman was a truly mammoth task. It took three years for the company to create the visual effects that were required to portray Sandman and his powers. To understand the dynamics of sand various experiments were conducted - launching sand at stuntmen, splashing sand around and pouring it over ledges etc. Expert sand sculptors were also consulted for their advice. And it took roughly six months to create the first shot of the Sandman forming. /// In fact in general the amount of work that went into this film was quite colossal. Over 1000 people worked on the film, some of them putting in the 8000 hours required to construct the 40 Spider-Man suits and others writing complicated CGI software.
In fact I felt that it was amongst all the villainous characters that the best performances were to be found this time out. Even if they don't perhaps have the characters to back them up, I actually felt that there were a couple of decent performances to be found amongst the film's other villains. I thought that Thomas Haden Church was a very solid choice for the role of Flint Marco, a nice fit for the character's more bumbling, hapless nature. Just Sandman is not a particularly evil villain, in fact in the comics he actually reformed himself and become a hero for a short term, even becoming a reserve member of the Avengers. Apparently Church based his performance on the likes of Frankenstein's monster and King Kong; classic misunderstood monsters, and that proved to be a nice choice. And while the character may not lend itself to Venom I thought that Topher Grace did a nice job with Eddie Brock when he was just playing the mirror version of Peter, very slimy and sleezy he was.
The action this time out I felt was rather underwhelming and on occasion a bit of a mess. The only sequence that I felt really worked was the initial confrontation between Spider-Man and Sandman in the back of an armoured truck. The massive smackdown at the film's conclusion that pits Spider-Man and the New Goblin against Sandman and Venom has its moments but overall felt a bit of a chaotic jumble. Not helped by some wild camera work that I found to be rather irritating. The effects I felt were a bit of a mixed bag. Sandman was well crafted for the most part, although the giant version of him at the end felt rather fake. And I imagine that this time out in the moments where Spider-Man and the Night Goblin are flying through the air, the effects had taken a bit of a step back into a more cartoonish vibe.
However for all of its many, many flaws I have to admit that I do still find this film to be kind of enjoyable, largely just because it's a Spider-Man film. Where it any other hero the rating would likely be a good bit lower but Spidey is my favourite superhero character. Of the 700 issues of Amazing Spider-Man I must own at least 400 of them, along with many graphic novels and issues of many other series – Ultimate Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man etc. Plus I also love some of the character's animated shows, namely the classic 90s cartoon and The Spectacular Spider-Man. I just adore the character.
Conclusion - After two highly successful steps forward there's no doubt that this was a considerable stumble for the Spider-Man series. It's a film which tries to tackle way too much material and ends up sacrificing any semblance of a satisfying story. Were this story built around any other character it would be a complete flop; what saves it for me is the Spidey factor.