"Spider-Man 3" (2007) - Movie Review

Seeing a third part of a movie automatically puts up lot more expectations for the viewers. I did not have any kind of expectations for “Spider-Man 3”. With that, it should have been easily entertaining and in depth view of Spider-Man’s dark side, but it fails. It is the phase of super hero again finding himself in the midst of all hell breaking loose including his relationship in turmoil. It is happy day in life of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) who is having fun balancing his two worlds with understanding girl friend Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). So things starts to get bad and getting bad with lot of villains to tackle and sort out his relation ship problems.

Peter in his all elated mood forgets to associate the reality Mary Jane is going through with her career. He feels everything is fine and reacts with positive energy to her. Mary Jane on the other hand expects a relation ship wherein her other half reacts with reality. Adding to this, Peter is slowly gets into the celebrity mode. At this very bad moment come three villains to cause more trouble in his Spidey World. There is clear indication that there are lots and lots of sub plots. The film is not able to concentrate properly on one to bring in the necessary element it thought it brought. And with all that there are some very bad uncommitted performances which are horrific factor for some one to be so easy going on an important film the audience expects. It seems surprising how come they did not notice those in their editing or the first run of the picture. Or maybe they expected it to be fun and accommodate the humour scenes of Spidey. The sequences which goes bad (and there are many apart from this) is when Peter/Spidey gets the new suit of a black creature getting into him and turns into this negative character. Tobey Maguire is the perfect candidate for playing the young and innocent kid but being in the shoes of negativity is not his territory. It is totally weird and sad to see those sequences. It is the perfect opportunity for some one to live that deepest fantasy of being bad and nothing more than the super hero turning totally into a new outlook. Here it looks like a kid aspiring to be that character and supposedly exhibits “style” and “wicked humour” which looks like a funny game of stupidity.

Apart from that, there seems to be lot of confusion in the characters. The character of Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) has nothing to it. There is no proper justification of emotional change towards Spider-Man. He does not seem evil from the start and the “humiliation” he mentions is not been shown at all. If he is taking revenge on Peter for his career demise, then it does not fit the screen properly. And the character of Flint Marco/SandMan (Thomas Haden Church) seems to show some depth into him but comes unexplainable in the end. If all he needed is to talk with Peter, then why did he attack him with Eddie? The only clean and lucid performance as well as a character is from James Franco as Harry Osborn/New Goblin. He is the one which gives the right attitude for the movie.

While the characterization department failing miserably and which forms the crux of the movie, the screenplay and the content is disappointing in different angles. The plot required for this third part had lot of solid content to it, but as said earlier, there seems to be confusion in it. Peter still dealing with the event of his Uncle’s death is the key. This is the chance of his complete cleanse of his soul. And it comes in the character of Flint Marco. The vengeance he has for him is the same what Harry is having against him. This is the area the film should have concentrated or in right terms, produced interesting frames from this. It is understandable that the personality exploration and the shift of Peter to his next step in life need to be added with the action sequences. But it should not be a baggage bringing down the main plot. Here, the idea of bringing in the black material which brings in the dark side of Peter is to make him feel the opposite side of his values and principles. A chance to tell that every one gets to ride close with the evil and gets the proposition to join it, and yet decide to go the hardest path, the good ness. This is the bottom line the movie wanted to bring out but gets lost in the story telling and the unnecessary action sequences.

It is surprising how “Batman Begins” handled the vengeance clearly and how “Spider-Man 3” faltered in it. Bruce Wayne goes through the same phase of revenge and learns a valuable lesson. Spider-Man has a basic flaw in it. He does not get help at the right time in the screen. There should have been a solid incident or a character which should have directly connected his anger with Harry’s against him. With the heart of the story not getting the attention and with sloppy performances, this film suffers the consequence in the eyes of audiences. In the end, they wanted to put in all the speeches in to a window of ten minutes and at that moment I got bored already.