Spidey 3

Darrell was right...sort of.

Before we go any further, I should point out that the following review may contain some SPOILERS regarding Spider-man 3. I won't get into anything big, like who lives, who dies, who flies, or who cries, but even general allusions may be more than some people want to read before seeing the movie for themselves.

In Darrell's own words: "If Spidey 3 doesn't suck, it'll be a success. It doesn't have to be great, it just has to not suck. If I'm able to enjoy it in spite of all the things that bug me about it, it'll be a huge success in my mind." I would say that sums up my feelings perfectly. The film was quite good, the characters were the ones we've come to love over the course of two prior movies, and Sam Raimi turned out a fitting conclusion to the trilogy, though Spider-man 4 is now a strong possibility.

One of Darrell's concerns was the budget, but for any things that people could criticize in this movie, the money was well spent. The effects needed to bring characters like Sandman or Venom to life didn't exist at the level they do now. Watching individual grains of sand animated during Sandman's origin sequence was worth the price of admission alone. Visually, this was a beautiful movie.

Did the film suffer from having too many characters? Besides the two villains I mentioned already, Harry takes on the Goblin identity, and Gwen Stacy is thrown in as well. The film does an excellent job of juggling the new characters with the returning ones, and giving everyone the spotlight at one point or another. The previous films proved that Raimi knows how to successfully cut between a hero and a villain's parallel stories until they inevitably cross paths, and he ambitiously does that here. At times it's fine, but occasionally I'd forget one of the characters was in this film until he or she showed up again. I liked what I saw of each and every one of them; I just wanted to see more. Thomas Haden Church does an excellent job of portraying Sandman as both a monster and a tortured soul, and the script adds a nice layer of motivation that elevates him above the petty thief he is in the comics. I would like to have seen more of that. Equally, Topher Grace captures the arrogant jerk in Eddie Brock as well as the vengeful side upon being humiliated. The film necessarily had to condense all the elements of his origin, and while they're all there, they are a little rushed at times. I'm genuinely hoping for a three hour director's cut when the film makes it to DVD.

Tobey Maguire is solid once more as Peter Parker, though reviews have been critical of certain story elements. One scene in particular that's a darker parallel to one in Spider-man 2 had me laughing. He's so perfect at playing a complete geek, even when he embraces his dark side. He starts out extremely happy in this movie, corny even, but it's all contrast to set up that sooner or later, when things are going that good for Spider-man, he's inevitably going to fall and lose everything, forcing him to make a hero's journey once more. The odds have never been stacked against him so greatly, and at one point I wondered if he’d been written into an unwinnable situation.

Joel Schumacher, were he still directing superhero sequels, could take a page from Raimi's book. If you're going to cram this much into a movie and remain faithful to its predecessors, this is the way to do it. The juggling for screen time between all these great characters, especially James Franco's Harry who owns this film as much as Maguire's Peter, is the only thing that really hurts it. At the very least, it's as good as Spider-man 2, and visually from the opening credits to the insane final battles, it's the best-looking of the three. And Kirsten Dunst can sing to me any time, although given a choice between her and Gwen, I probably would have gone for Peter's cute, geeky neighbor.

I definitely had the fun time I was expecting, and spent most of my Friday counting down the hours until the movie began. B13 caught me practicing the webslinging gesture at lunch, and after the film caught me with displays for other movies I'm looking forward to this year. Fortunately, between a camera phone and bad lighting, I'm hardly recognizable in these shots...




Seriously, why don't I have more votes for Best Geek Blog?