SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007)

SHORT REVIEW: Its good...except all of the parts they screwed up beyond repair. When you have Peter Parker breaking out into a jazz dance routine in the middle of your narrative, you know someone is making bad decisions. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, yes, Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man breaks out into dance. No, it doesn’t really make sense. It’s one step away from a recreation of the parade scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day off where he leads a mob through a song and dance routine to the tune of Twist and Shout. How is it that no one – NO ONE – said anything when this idea was pitched? “Hey maybe instead of having Peter Parker dancing and maybe we should spend more time on SPIDER-MAN FIGHTING BAD GUYS AND DOING SPIDER-MANNISH STUFF?” I have a great appreciation for the first two Spider-Man films. They are wonderfully made, simple movies and they do nearly everything right. It is clear that director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, The Quick and the Dead, The Gift) has a strong affection for his subject matter and his talents as a director are on full display. I believe the problem this film runs into is that Raimi also co-wrote the script this time around with his brother (with some help from real screenwriter Alvin Sargent (who penned Spider-Man 2). It is clear that Raimi and his brother Ivan were given way too much control of the original narrative. They made some seriously bad decisions that threaten (and some will say succeed at) destroying their franchise. Again, Peter Parker breaks out into dance – at a jazz club. The story is really the culprit here. Where the first two films were studies in structure and restraint, this outing is a haphazard stew of a half of dozen themes, subplots and ideas. The piece moves in so many directions that it goes nowhere. To make things worse, the story has a tendency to break away from building itself to rest on the boring interactions between Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and his continual love interest Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). Any tension the couple may have had (which wasn’t much in the first place) is completely gone and the scenes of conflict in their relationship this time around rings hollow and weighs the picture down. Like with the previous films, there are a number of strong moral and pro-Christian messages in the film (which I always applaud) but these are muddled by the botched plot and they lose their punch. By the time the film ends, none of the themes or morals shine through since everything has to be watered down to make room for all of the bells and whistles Raimi needs to attend to. An example of how there are too man cooks in the narrative kitchen, Spider-Man has to contend with three villains, Sandman, Venom, and New Goblin. Raimi’s script is so crammed with villains and their own individual storylines that he has to rush through their development to get everything into his movie. None of these villains are allowed to develop naturally, their conflicts with Spider-Man seem compulsory and inorganic (even New Goblin, which is just Harry Osborn with a flying skateboard). Furthermore, Raini is on the hook to bring in all of the remaining characters from the previous movies and he has to showcase their various traits. This leads to pregnant moments where, for example, the film cuts away from the climactic scene to spend a minute with paper editor J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons) while he argues with a girl about borrowing her camera. The character of Sandman is complete unneeded and the film should have concentrated on the lingering conflict between Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Harry Osborn/New Goblin along with the addition of Venom as a subplot. This would have provided a simple, straight forward narrative that would have inherent themes of revenge and forgiveness. With the addition of Sandman and the focus on Mary Jane, this film unfortunately fails. I wanted to like it, I wanted to recommend it – but I don’t and I can’t.