Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) has finally managed to piece together the once-broken parts of his life, maintaining a balance between his relationship with Mary Jane (MJ) Watson (Kirsten Dunst) and his responsibility as Spider-Man. But more challenges arise for our young hero. Hilarity ensues when Peter's old friend Harry Obsourne (James Franco) sets out for revenge against Peter, taking up the mantle of his late father's persona to become The New Goblin, and Peter must also capture Uncle Ben's real killer, Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), who has been transformed into his toughest foe yet, the indestructible Sandman. All hope seems lost when suddenly Peter's suit turns jet-black (with the help of an alien substance that hitched a ride to Earth on a meteorite) and greatly amplifies his powers. But it also begins to greatly amplify the much darker qualities of Peter's personality and he begins to lose himself in the power. Meanwhile MJ's life takes a tumble and she may lose Peter to the lovely Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), Peter's lab partner and Spider-man's recscuee. Peter has to reach deep inside himself to free the compassionate hero he used to be if he is to ever conquer the darkness within and face not only his greatest enemies, but also...himself. But wait, in all the commotion a new villain, Venom (Topher Grace), emerges to add to Peter's woes.

Trivia: The release date for the film was set before Spider-Man 2 (2004) was even released. At the San Diego Comic-Con, on 22 July 2006, director Sam Raimi admitted that to keep the inclusion of the Venom character in this film secret, during casting and pre-production he went so far as to claim he hated the character, and had no intention of including the character in this film, or any subsequent sequels. To make amends, he then treated the audience to the first public images of Venom in the film, albeit with unfinished special effects. The over 600 latex "web" balloons in the celebration scene had to be hand-painted with a Sharpie marker. Both Topher Grace and Thomas Haden Church confessed that when they were unceremoniously invited to meetings at Sony, they had no idea they would be auditioning for this film. Thomas Haden Church worked out for 16 months to build up his physique to portray Sandman. In a fight scene where Spider-Man punches through Sandman's chest, congenital amputee boxer Baxter Humby took Tobey Maguire’s place in filming the scene. Humby, who was born without his right hand, helped deliver the intended effect of punching through Sandman's chest. Kirsten Dunst dyed her natural blond hair red for the role of Mary Jane Watson. Bryce Dallas Howard dyed her natural red hair blond for the role of Gwen Stacy.

What a mess, entertaining? Yes, but still a mess. Since this is such a new film and a lot of people will want to watch it, there may be plenty of spoilerific statements to follow so if this paragraph looks like a newspaper with all the coupons cut out, I apologize. This movie suffers. It suffers from the huge shadow that is Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. It suffers from a disjointed story line. It suffers from sentimentality (I think every main character cries at some point). It suffers from the producers going back and changing what we thought we knew about the first Spider-Man. It suffered from the hype. But mostly it suffers from Toomanius Villianous. Let's take then in order, shall we? The New Goblin, Harry Osborn, fights Peter at the beginning of the movie, probably the best fight in the movie, then conveniently loses his memory, then gets it back, then schemes to cause MJ to break up with Peter, then finds out Peter didn't actually kill his father, all is forgiven. The Sandman, Flint Marko, breaks out of prison to see he ailing girl and to help her by stealing money. While escaping he falls into a vat of sand and gets turned into living sand, indestructible living sand. Now, knowing that he can change his body to different looks and objects, does he change his appearance to hide from the cops? Nope. Peter later learns that Marko is the actual killer of his uncle, despite what Spider-Man told you. So Peter goes out and Kills him, and he is gone for most of the middle of the movie, but shows up at the end to team up with Venom, but after Venom is defeated, he has a change of heart and apologizes to Peter so Peter doesn't have to defeat the indestructible guy anymore. Venom, Eddie Brock, is a professional rival to Peter's photography gig with the Daily Bugle. He cheats to get a photo so that he can get the staff job and Peter exposes the fraudulent photo in, like, 2 second. Brock now hates Peter, but then Peter steals his girl, Gwen. So Brock goes to church and preys for Peter's death, conveniently, Peter is in the same church fighting off the black gooey stuff that is making him so bad and Brock readily replaces Peter as the host body for the black stuff and becomes Venom. After MJ breaks up with Peter, he allows the black presence to start to over take him, and in the funniest part of the movie, he becomes emo and struts down the street. He takes Gwen out on a date, only to end up at the jazz bar MJ is working at where he tries to embarrass MJ by using Gwen, who sees right through it. So what is wrong with all of this? All of this, it was way too much to put into one movie, even at 2 and a half hours. Nothing really got explored and developed that much. The Sandman to pretty much irrelevant to the story, he is just shoehorned in to get a cool villain. The love triangle between Peter, MJ, and Gwen could have been cool, but Gwen was too smart and figured out was happening. The love triangle between Peter, MJ, and Harry could have been interesting with Harry playing Peter and MJ against each other, but after he gets MJ to break up with Peter, it is pretty much forgotten. The love triangle between Peter, Gwen, and Eddie could have been interesting, but that would have meant getting rid of MJ completely and they were not about to do that considering that the main part of the movie deals more with MJ's troubles then Peter's. And that reveals another point, there are three potential love triangles in this movie, that's two too many. I am probably disappointed the most considering how good 2 was and I was hoping 3 was just as good. The hype surrounding the movie is so great that I wonder if any movie would be able to handle it. Which doesn't bode well for the other blockbuster sequels coming out this summer. The point is this movie showed you a lot of things, but left you wanting more of everything. I think they could easily have developed the story into 3 different movies, each of which could have made them tons of money. So, is it entertaining? Yes. Will people rave about it? Yes. Should you watch it? Yes, unless you want to be the only person on the planet who hasn't, it is still on it's own a good action movie, just know what you are getting into, don't expect Shakespeare.