My Review of "Spider-Man 3"

Spider-Man 3 was the conclusion of the Sam Raimi trilogy. It came out back in 2007. I know what happened. They had to strike while the iron was hot. At that time the public was eagerly anticipating this movie because the last two movies were so darn good. The problem is that they didn't come out with a very consistent finale.

The movie starts off after the events of the second movie. Peter is now with the love of his life Mary Jane. Mary Jane is now a Broadway star. They are quite happily together despite the fact that Peter has to live his second life as Spider-Man.

One of the lingering issues is that Harry also realizes who Peter is as well and he's still hell bent on avenging his father. He's discovered his father's secret Green Goblin stuff and he's going to go insane just like his father. This could have been the whole movie and it would have been fine.

Instead we add not one but two more villains. The first villain could have been great and that's the Sandman. His backstory is quite good. It felt like it could have been a movie on its own but they crammed it into this movie. Cutting into runtime they obviously had to decrease the amount of face time that Sandman has on the screen. With less time focused on him, there is less time to develop his character. It's too bad because I saw very good potential in that storyline.

Then it gets even crazier when they add yet another villain with Venom. His addition feels more like an afterthought than anything. The circumstances of all of the Venom storyline are very conveniently placed into the movie to try to make sense of it to the audience. Just everyone constantly being at the right place at the right time. It didn't feel right.

There were some very idiotic situations happening in this movie. The most glaring issue with this movie was Peter thinking it would be okay to ask Gwen Stacy to kiss him in front of the public. He knew Mary Jane was watching and he thought this was alright? I understand how some people can fall into the moment but this took me totally outside of the movie because it's so inconsistent to how we know Peter. They had an out by blaming it on the Venom suit but they didn't even think of that.

Another thing that didn't feel right is the pacing and tone of the movie. It felt totally out of whack. There were weird moments that were very cartoonish and comical contrasting the serious tone of the the rest of the movie. This felt like it was made by different people than the last two movies. Camera angles and transitions are much more generic this time around.

There was a focus on CGI and having the costumed heroes to show their faces. This didn't lend itself well in this movie. At times it looks like a superimposed picture of the actors faces stuck on CGI at times. I think this was a terrible decision. Yes we all know who the characters are now but this feels very inconsistent with the rest of the series.

I had to really stop myself from thinking too much with this movie because there was so much wrong with it. There has to be have been outside interference with the people that were actually making the movie. All of the weird and idiotic ideas felt like they were from different people. It seemed like they were just chucking ideas at the wall and for some reason all of these ideas were okayed. Maybe the filmmakers wanted to see if they could accept the challenge? Technically the movie makes sense but it doesn't mean we like how it got pieced together.

Overall, I cringed at a lot of the things that I saw in this movie. I was really looking forward to this when it first came out and I remember being so devastated at how bad it was. Unfortunately years later I still think it's horrible. This is not the way I wanted to see the trilogy ended but it is what it is. I have to give this movie a 4 out of 10. Shame on them for doing this.