Oh Well...

With great power, comes great responsibility.

Sam Raimi should have remembered this mantra of the webslinger in the making of the third Spider-Man movie. He obviously has great power as the helmsman behind the largest, most popular superhero franchise in existence right now, but he shirked his responsibility and let down millions of Spider-Man fans around the world.

I am a Spider-Man fan. I have been a Spider-Man fan for a long time. But I was OH so disappointed with Spider-Man 3.

What follows are pretty much non-stop spoilers that probably won't be too interesting to read, so you may want to stop now. I'm mainly writing this because it makes me feel better after seeing my favorite web-slinger get dumped by his director so badly.

The movie opens up pretty promising. There are hiccups, to be sure, but this is Spider-Man, and it's based off comic books, so it's going to be a little silly. We start out with Peter and Mary Jane very much in love, and Peter wanting to propose to MJ. This is fine. Even when a meteor with interstellar galactic symbiote goop just HAPPENS to crash-land next to the ONLY superhero in Central Park, I was still willing to go along for the ride. We then get a TERRIFIC aerial battle between Spidey in his street-clothes, and a vengeful Harry Osbourn on a revamped goblin glider which was easily the best scene of the movie. We also get the creation of Sandman, which very cool as he struggles to form together out of sand molecules.
Parker and MJ then start having relationship trouble, and I was still buying it. When Parker rescues gorgeous Gwen Stacy from an out-of-control crane, I was still having fun. When he plants a kiss (as Spider-Man) on Gwen Stacy, causing MJ to get jealous, I'm still good.

But then I started to get worried. Spider-Man has his first showdown with Sandman, and it's not all that dynamic or exciting. It feels like a skirmish, not a fight. But that's OK...maybe it will get better.
We then get what was probably the second best scene in the movie, where Parker tries to propose to MJ in a restaurant but it all goes sour. I really felt bad for MJ, as she grew jealous of Parker and Gwen. And the irony of how GOOD Parker feels about his life, while MJ feels left behind and rotten, was nice. Plus, Bruce Campbell steals the show here as a French Maitre'De. We then learn that Uncle Ben's killer was in fact Flint Marko/Sandman, and Peter starts to get angry. GREAT. I'm still doing OK. Spidey isn't letting me down yet, and I'm confident the best is yet to come.
Spidey goes home and falls asleep, full of angry, conflicted feelings about MJ and Uncle Ben's killer. At this point, it is the perfect time for the black goo to take over, and I am still loving it. And about here we hit the hour mark. And everything, like the Sandman, starts to crumble away to dust.

Black, evil Spidey goes on a revenge spree to take out Sandman. Again, the fight is interesting, but not all that dynamic, and it is too short-lived. Again, I'm a tad worried, but doing OK.
However, then things start to go to heck. I liked the stuff that happened between Harry and MJ, as he gets his goblin memory back and tricks MJ into breaking up with Peter against her wishes (he had amnesia before after the first aerial fight, another highly improbable circumstance that I could still afford to swallow).
However, when Peter starts enjoying the "single life" as a John Travolta swingin' emo hipster, my heart starts to sink. Dancing Peter Parker is about the corniest, most awful thing I've ever seen (or so I thought, until later in the movie). A similar scene in "Spider-Man 2," where nerdy Peter Parker walks down the street to "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" was charming and totally worked, but this sequence of disco Spidey fell flat on its face, and the cutaways of Parker on the street pointing ridiculously at girls felt like they were shot on an afternoon when the filmmakers were bored. When Parker takes Gwen Stacy to a jazz club simply to make Mary Jane jealous, it's a sequence that is just plain ridiculous and doesn't work at all. And the entire time, Eddie Brock's growing jealousy of Spider-Man seems tacked on and useless.
There is a fun sequence when Harry and Peter have another fight in Harry's mansion. Peter TOTALLY owns Harry, exploding a bomb in his face, scoffing, "Look at little goblin junior" and telling him, "You were an embarrassment to your father." I quite liked this stuff, but it was over too quick and, like the other action sequences, lacked dynamics and an ability to care (something the aerial battle had).

Then, towards the end of Act Two, when Spidey decides to rid himself of the black suit, things really take a huge nose-dive. Again, Parker just happens to lose the black goo at the EXACT same church in New York where Eddie Brock is praying for Parker's demise. I can suspend my disbelief once (the suit's arrival), twice (Harry's amnesia), but this was one coincidence too many. Of course, as all the fanboys have been dying for, we then get VENOM. On a technical level, Venom is very impressive. He is menacing and scary, with a toothy mouth and tongue, just as we hoped he would be. We can buy the way he looks and moves. But Raimi's heart isn't in the character. He exists in the movie only to satisfy the geeks and the producers, and not to serve the story, which is rapidly diminishing into nothing.
MJ is then kidnapped by the Sandman and Venom (who team up for no real reason) in the "climactic battle," and thus Spider-Man must enlist Harry's help in order to stop the villainous duo. Now, this scene COULD have been great. If Harry forgave Parker on his own, setting aside his hatred of Spidey to rescue Mary Jane, I would have loved his arc as a character, not only in this movie, but in the movies as a whole. The theme of Spider-Man 3 is supposed to be forgiveness, and Harry coming-to-terms with what it means to do good on his own would have been a wonderful moment for him. Instead, as I mentioned before, we get something that is a thousand times worse than even disco Spidey. In the worst, most tacked-on speech I have ever seen, Harry's FREAKING BUTLER comes out of NOWHERE to tell Harry that he knew all along that Norman Osbourne was killed by his own hand. OK...let me ask the butler something. Where were you the last TWO YEARS (in the movie's timeline) while you watched Harry spiral into madness and drugs, obsessing over catching the Spider-Man??? Shouldn't you have spoken up before NOW???
At this point, I stopped caring, and just enjoyed the final brawl with Harry, Spidey, Venom and Sandman for what it was. Useless special effects with no story, no heart, no characters behind them. And the battle, despite costing oodles of dollars to make, really wasn't that impressive. I never was on the edge of my seat, worried that Parker or MJ might not make it. I just yawned and waited for either Venom or Sandman to inevitably take out Harry (Venom does it). Brock is then killed, and Sandman forgiven in a cheesy moment. A few more embarrassing scenes later, and the movie is over.

Major disappointment. Every summer, there is a blockbuster or two that fails to live up to expectations, but why did it have to be Spidey this time? I could live with "Harry Potter" or "Pirates" or "Die Hard" being sub-par, but not Spidey. I was hoping that, coming out of theater, I would say, "Well, I hope they don't make any more, because they completed the trilogy well and the story is over," but now I just hope they don't make any more because they'll just turn out bigger and bigger stinkers.
In fact, can that...I hope they DO make more. And why don't they do the really BAD stories even the comic book fans try to forget about. Let's do Ben Reilly and the clones! Let's do the Secret Wars! Let's do Madame Webb, Man-Wolf, six-armed Spidey, and mutant human-spider Spidey! It can't be THAT much of a step-down from this one, can it?

The fact is, I think the third Spidey outing got over-produced. It's clear Raimi wanted to tell the story of Spidey and Sandman, but was forced to fit Venom in despite his wishes. As a result, both stories lost their power. And Gwen Stacy was a sorry waste. I liked Bryce Dallas Howard; I thought she did a decent job acting, and she looked absolutely stunning, but she did nothing to the story. If some elements of the movie had been lost, and Raimi had been allowed to take more times with the ones he wanted (thus, not rushing the half-assed action scenes), I think this could have been a great movie. Imagine, a three hour Spidey movie, fully developed and realized, fitting in all these pieces so that they make sense. I know most people dislike long movies, but I love 'em, and the main reason why is because, when done right, they can afford to hold the weight these lengthy mythology narratives need. What if Raimi hadn't been rushed, and he was given another year to perfect the movie, so that we'd be seeing a far better Spidey 3 in 2008 instead? God knows he must have been exhausted after Spider-Man 2. They shouldn't have rushed him into this one so fast. His exhaustion and lack of commitment shows. Big time.

Either way, I had an OK time, and the first hour was really fun, but the Spider-Man franchise, like so many other ones, was swallowed up by the greedy pits of Hollywood. And that's something I hoped a nice, good-natured character like Peter Parker would never do.

I was wrong.