Dir. Sam Raimi
Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace
If the makers of comic book movies don’t study history, then they’re doomed to repeat it. Such is the case with Spider-Man 3, which finds itself trapped in the same murkiness as the subpar Batman sequels. After the success of the original Batman, the series made a mistake by trying to shove as many villains as possible into each film. This culminated in the franchise nadir Batman and Robin, which contained three separate villains. Sam Raimi’s Spider-man 3 runs into the very same problem, and while not as awful as that entry into the Batman franchise, it is certainly beneath the level of quality in the first two Spider-Man films.
The 3rd film in the series picks up by exploring two major developments from the previous installment. Mary Jane now has knowledge of Peter’s dual identity and their newfound romance suffers as Peter struggles handling Spider-man’s fame. Peter’s friend Harry is also aware of the dual identity and is now out to get revenge for his father. Both of these stories would be enough to cover an entire film, and probably demanded such treatment to fully work. Unfortunately, Raimi decides to fill the film with two more villains for Spider-man to deal with, Venom and Sandman. Even at an extended running time of two hours and twenty minutes, there isn’t nearly enough screen time to cover all of these story threads.
The budding romance between Peter and Mary Jane was a strong asset to the first two outing. At the end of the 2nd film they finally ended up together, promising interesting potential story developments for Spider-?Man 3. Unfortunately, Raimi’s idea of developing this romance is making Peter into a complete jerk (with the help of Venom of course), causing conflict for the young couple. The problem with this is we barely get a handful of scenes that show the two of them actually enjoying each other’s company. After spending two films watching them get to this point, Raimi spends the third outing having them fight and bicker for nearly the entire running time. It’s hard to care about a failing romance when there isn’t much romance to begin with.
The direct fault of this is the decision to pack the film with so many villains. Without so much wasted screen time, the Peter-Mary Jane story would have had a complete arc, providing us a happy couple to care about when things went sour. This also impacts the character development for the individual villains. Just like in the Batman series, packing extra villains into one film makes the backstories for each villain feel rushed. Sandman is a particularly great character and is well played by Thomas Haden Church. Unfortunately, his lack of screen time prevents us from really getting to understand his inner turmoil and family background.
At least we finally get a resolution to the Harry Osborne storyline. It was handled fairly well in the first two films, but by this outing it started to drag. Part of the problem is James Franco’s performance His mumbling, sometimes incomprehensible line delivery has been a nuisance from the very beginning, and despite slight improvements here, it robs this important character of the proper emotional impact. However, it’s not just Franco’s fault this time around. The plot developments for this subplot are absolutely ridiculous. A crucial scene where Harry learns a very important piece of information from his butler (no explanation is given for why the butler chose to wait so long to deliver this news) is so contrived that I had to check the end credits just to make sure that this was the same director who had made the intricately plotted thriller A Simple Plan.
Spider-Man 3 is not a complete disaster. The FX work is still outstanding, perhaps even surpassing the excellence of part 2. There is an abundance of CGI used, particularly for Sandman, but none of it looks like fake digital images plastered on to film like you get with lesser CGI work. Raimi shows flashes of his old self with a nifty musical detour where Peter attempts to make Mary Jane jealous. It would also be unfair to ignore the stunning moment at the end between Peter and Mary Jane, which is so well acted by Maguire and Dunst that it almost makes up for incessant bickering that plagued the rest of the film. At least that gives them something to build on for the fourth outing.
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