Now I know why Spider-Man didn’t follow, the oft abused, convention of putting titles after the movie name. They didn’t need to. 1, 2 and 3 are all part of the story of Peter Parker, Mary Jane and Harry Osborn. Spider-Man 3 brings to end a story arc that began with Spider-Man. It is still about people, relationships and love - not so thinly disguised as an action movie.
The story begins where everything is going perfect for Peter. He is doing well in College, his relationship with MJ is progressing and everyone loves Spider-Man. That lasted for all of 10 or 15 minutes into the movie; then things begin to happen, new friends and foes are introduced and the relationship with MJ begings to unravel.
We are rapidly - for lack of a better word - introduced to Gwen Stacy, Captain Stacy, Eddie Brock and Flint Marko. Of course we are not forgetting the Symbiote either.
Things kick off with a bang when the New Goblin attacks Spidy and what a fight it was - and Spidy ended up being clobbered most of the time by an even more powerful New Goblin. The fight scenes dizzying and most of the time too fast to follow as a lot of things are happening visually. This is true of most of the action scenes in the movie.
Then Peter “discovers” the black suit and things begin to change for him. It is really cool when Peter is in the black suit, he moves around menacingly, he is more powerful and much more aggressive. As the suit amplifies the aggressiveness in Peter, he begins to make mistakes - in his relationship with MJ, in his work and in seeking revenge for the death of Uncle Ben.
In someways this movie is as much about Harry Osborn as much as it it about Peter Parker and Mary Jane. While the New Goblin costume looks somewhat hokey, James Franco played the role really well and at certain points, you cannot help but like him. There is a powerful story here about the conflict between two best friends, however it was overshadowed by the addition of Sandman and to some extent Venom (although that was pretty cool).
The rest of the movie is to show the relationship with MJ going down the tubes, his best-friend is trying to kill him and two of his enemies getting together to get “rid,” of the spider, and we wait to see how Peter figures his way out of it all.
The action scenes are great - Spidy Vs. New Goblin, Spidy Vs. Sandman, Spidy (now in black) Vs. Sandman, Peter (also in black) Vs. Harry and the finale four way showdown. We also got to see Stan Lee, now in a speaking capacity, Bruce Campbell as a French Maître d’ and of course some really hilarious scenes with JJ.
Then there is the long awaited Gwen Stacy. I was a bit concerned that she would just be “tacked on,” but somehow she fits in quite well to both Spidy’s and Peter’s lives. Early in the movie, she gets to kiss Spider-Man in the same way that MJ got to kiss him in Spider-Man, which of course leads to all kinds of trouble for Peter.
There are few quibbles, one is why we need Sandman at all, the story could have worked fine without the character, the other is that the screen time of the awesome black spidy suit is really short, the Venom scenes are equally short as well. What happened was too many new characters, story-lines were introduced and took away the focus from the story.
The ending was a bit unexpected, but made sense in the context. In someways Spider-Man 3 feels like a middle act, I mean Spider-Man is a standalone, but Spider-Man 2 & 3 are almost continuations.
Overall I liked the movie and it is definitely recommended. With the story-arc wrapped up nicely, I hope that Raimi and the studios quit while they are ahead. However a few threads are left dangling (not many, but important ones) so most likely they will proceed with 4.
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