Spiderman 3 (SPOILERS!)

[Jedi007]

Just watched it! Just highlight the following lines for my short review. But be warned... there are spoilers lurking!


I was doubtful at first if the movie could handle the Quadruple Threat (Symbiote, Venom, Sandman, Goblin) but the plot was well written and it was able to develop the huge number of characters even the story was limited in a two-hour format. It was the perfect ending for the Spiderman Trilogy, it tops all the other movie trilogies I've watched. At first I thought the issue between Harry and the Sandman would be just that easily ended (Harry having an amnesia and Sandman dissolved in the water), but they return at the final act to resolve the issues that goes way back to the first film. Harry would sacrifice his life for Peter after learning the truth behind his father's death, and the Sandman reveals the truth behind Uncle Ben's death. The symbiote made his move late in the film but the story calls for it. The overall feel of the movie would be like TESB, as it was able to retain the comedy, especially with J.J. Jameson's scenes, even though the plot moves into the serious and dark territory. Overall rating would be 9.9 out of 10!

[Dr. No]

Just watched it! Just highlight the following lines for my short review. But be warned... there are spoilers lurking!


I was doubtful at first if the movie could handle the Quadruple Threat (Symbiote, Venom, Sandman, Goblin) but the plot was well written and it was able to develop the huge number of characters even the story was limited in a two-hour format. It was the perfect ending for the Spiderman Trilogy, it tops all the other movie trilogies I've watched. At first I thought the issue between Harry and the Sandman would be just that easily ended (Harry having an amnesia and Sandman dissolved in the water), but they return at the final act to resolve the issues that goes way back to the first film. Harry would sacrifice his life for Peter after learning the truth behind his father's death, and the Sandman reveals the truth behind Uncle Ben's death. The symbiote made his move late in the film but the story calls for it. The overall feel of the movie would be like TESB, as it was able to retain the comedy, especially with J.J. Jameson's scenes, even though the plot moves into the serious and dark territory. Overall rating would be 9.9 out of 10!

Great review Jedi007!! We are really looking forward to Spidy this Friday, I'll post my review this weekend.
Maybe the mods will put up a poll for the movie and the Spidy trilogy. (hint, hint , say no more! )

[Captain Nash]

Does this site not have spoiler tags?

[Dr. No]

Does this site not have spoiler tags?

doesn't look like it . must not of come with the "do it yourself" forum kit

[Blowfeld]

Okey Doctor, What sort of poll questions should there be?

[Dr. No]

a trilogy vote (best, good, bad sort of deal) and a how you like Spiderman3 compared to the last 2

[stockslivevan]

Spider-Man 3

Plot: A strange black entity from another world bonds with Peter Parker and causes inner turmoil as he contends with new villains, temptations, and revenge.

Review: Well… What the hell was that? Don't get me wrong, I liked Spider-Man 3, but this was just disappointing. It's not on the same level X-Men 3 was but still, it could have been much better. The film had WAY too much going on for it. Too many sub-plots, villains, love triangles, ect. It's like they tried to make two films in one all mixed; things were just too d**n rushed, especially in the first hour. There's so much to say about this one that I have decided to do one of my rare MEGA REVIEWS for the third time. You'd probably remember my long X-Men 3 review from last year which was my first. My second one was for Superman Returns but it went unfinished. Anyway, here's my third one for the film that kicks off the Summer Blockbuster.

Already in ten minutes Harry is using that super human enhancing stuff his dad used in the first movie to kill Peter, just like that. After that we suddenly see meteorite crashing RIGHT NEXT to Pete and Mary-Jane, yet instead of sounding like a large boom when it hits, it makes a soft little "plop" and no one notices. So they happily ride on his cheap little motor bike and the black goo attaches itself onto the bike to follow Pete. Okay, well that's just a little odd and unbelievable that they don't notice a d**n thing, not to mention the black symbiote was very rushed.

So after a visit at Aunt May's receiving her old ring he'll use to propose for Mary-Jane we're thrown into a fight between Peter and Harry, who is now called "New Goblin" complete with pumpkin explosives, a glider and a mask that comes off mechanically. At the end of the fight Harry trips on one of Peter's webs in a comic fashion, with cricket noises after he falls to the ground and received amnesia. From this point Harry acts like a total dweeb; grinning all the time, not knowing s**t. Har Har.

Special effects in movie should generally improve as the years pass. They looked very impressive in Spider-Man 2, but here it just looks sloppy and unfinished. Special effects evolution shouldn't go backwards, otherwise it's just devolution. However, the Sandman special effects were VERY impressive and I'm willing to bed that's where most of the budget went and all the other effects were leftovers.

I should have also mentioned that the humor has almost taken half of the film, more or less, intentionally and unintentionally. Unintentional moments are when bad acting is displayed such as Peter Parker crying in a few scenes, horribly. In fact, there's a lot of crying going on and they just overdo it which made the whole theater I was with, laugh their asses off. It's just so cringe worthy and funny, I couldn't help myself and neither could the audience. It's just that bad. There's even a few gags such as the broken door at Peter's apartment everyone has a hard time getting through. A serious scene would happen and as they walk out they have trouble opening the door for a few seconds. It's like something out of a spoof, just very awkward.

So after a whole hour of Mary-Jane acting jealous of Peter's new found fame and appreciation as Spider-Man, the symbiote plot FINALLY returns when it spreads on Spider-Man's suit. He wakes up hanging on a web near a skyscraper completely confused of the situation he is in wearing a dark suit. He feels the suit giving him a kind of energy; only it energizes his negative emotions, which later becomes a joke when he's Peter Parker.

In the trailer you might remember it showing the film as something epic, dark, serious; the best Spider-Man movie. Well, there wasn't much darkness on Peter Parker influenced by the symbiote. Instead he turns into a jerk who dances like John Travolta with emo haircut and eyeliner. Speaking of the emo look, every time Peter had it everyone in the audience laughed, even at the unintentionally moments. Like when Peter looks at Harry at the mansion with his "serious" look with the emo make up and hair, nobody is taking this seriously. They're just laughing because it looks so ridiculous and it spoils the moment the film tries to achieve. Meaning, it didn't work. Instead of coming off as menacing, scary and a force to be reckoned with, he just looks silly.

Now after Harry remembers everything, he comes up with something so sinister and EEEEVIL. He kidnaps Mary-Jane and tells her to break up with Peter at a bridge and tell him she's been cheating with someone, so Harry can come up to Pete and tell him he is the guy. Why she doing all this for Harry, we're never told. I'm pretty sure it is blackmail, but what? Would he kill Pete if she didn't do it? Kill her? We're never told what really happened. She could have simply warned Peter about what Harry is doing and then we could have avoided all this BS soap opera and matters would have been settled.

Man, what a vicious villain. Sure he was "ordered" by his father to harm Peter's heart but what else after that? Just kill him? He could have done that anyway without the triangle crap and gotten to the point. Villains, never f**k around with the heroes and just try to kill them when you have all the time. You're just giving the heroes enough time to plot a death for you.

Speaking of villains, we're given another. Marko Flint, AKA: Sandman. A character who is suppose to be good but does questionable actions so he could get enough money to cure his sick daughter. Simple shades of gray, although he keeps crossing the line at points, especially in the ending. Remember in the first movie with the thug shooting down Peter's uncle? It was Sandman all along! DUN DUN DUNNN!! Kind of a tacky twist, but no matter anyway. Spider-Man goes on a vendetta in the dark suit and "kills" Sandman, which he later comes back.

Wanna know how he became Sandman? He's running in a field from cops and gets past a fence. While running he isn't looking and falls into a giant soupbowl of sand. Above the soupbowl are stirring machines, an experiment is being made. The scientists are a bunch of hot chicks and a few geezers in the control room and don't have the project monitored. They notice that the wieght has increased and one of them just assumes it's a bird. What the hell are they trying to do? Stir sand? Wow. How productive. As I said, all this is just rushed. I'm going to assume that the old geezer scientists want more hot women scientists and believe they'll make an army of sand babes to have for their own. Why else would they go "d**n the birds, let's start the project now I want some pussaaayyy!" Because we all need an army of sandy vaginas don't we? Well, whatever. The project turns Marko into Sandman and I must say when he first forms it is very impressive special effects but that's it.

But wait, there's more! Eddie Brock is in the house, who is known as Peter Parker's rival and Spider-Man's nemesis Venom. Topher Grace is good in the role but he suffers from lack of material. Brock really does nothing other than snap photos, photoshops and then finally becomes Venom. That's another problem with this movie: there are too many villains and Venom is the one that has to stay on the sidelines most of the time. One of the most famous villains for Spider-Man is nothing but an afterthought and that's not going to make everyone happy. If the movie was better done, we'd have Eddie Brock for the whole movie without Venom. At the end of the film, Eddie encounters the symbiote and they merge becoming Venom as a cliffhanger for Spider-Man 4. Instead, like I said above, it's like they tried to throw two movies in one package.

As Peter wears the dark suit on a daily basis he's ruining his life and others'. Out of anger he tries to get Mary-Jane feeling jealous by taking Gwen Stacey out for dinner, where MJ works. It ends up with Peter fighting off guards then punching MJ to the ground accidentally. That's when he realizes things have gone too far and he must get rid of the suit before it gets worse.

So where does he decide to get rid of it? On top of a church. Why? Who knows. It was done in the comics and TV show as far as I can remember, but he was there for a good reason. Here he just chooses the place that Eddie Brock happens to be in continently. Eddie hears Peter's screams and follows them to find him above ripping off the suit. As the suit comes off it drops on Eddie and engulfs him. He is now Venom.

Sandman is walking down the alleys and somehow Venom finds him. He tells Sandman "Hey, we hate Spidy so let's get him!" and he agrees and joins Venom. Why? I mean we know why Sandman would want to take down Spider-Man so he could rob banks. But why does he suddenly trust some random creep? He could have just walked away, threw sand in Venom's face and told him to piss off. And so we're given an action set piece, the finale, that's good yet has hints of Batman and Robin cheese added such as the reporters and a webbed message "Spider-Man, come and get us!" that's like something you'd see in the old cheesy Batman TV show from the 60s.

Spider-Man knows he can't do this alone and so goes to Harry to beg for help. He tells him everything about his father, asks to help save MJ and Harry turns him down. After he takes off, suddenly Harry's butler appears out of the blue to say something.

Longtime Butler: "Hi Harry, I'm your longtime butler and pal like Batman and Alfred. Remember? Way back in the first movie I checked the wounds of your father and I could conveniently tell that he was stabbed by his own glider blades despite the fact that I have no f**king way of proving that, I just know. Anyway, I waited all these years after you wrongly accused Spider-Man of your father's death, got amnesia after attempting to kill Peter and got into a fight that ended up f**king your face up all scarred, I've finally decided to tell you the truth now. I love you and your father. Please go help your friend."

Harry: "Coo, okay."

The real dialogue was just silly and it made all this into yet another moment everyone seemed to laugh at, especially when the butler said "I loved your father very much". You know that line would have worked if we even knew who this butler was in the first place; it just comes off as if he is coming out of the closest. So now Harry decides to join Peter to fight against Sandman and Venom, filled with the usual tag team dialogue "Harry I need help!", "I'm a little busy at the moment!", "Power Rangers, HYYA!"

During the fight Sandman has explosives thrown at him and so he falls down and turns into flat sand. Now they have Venom left to take care of. This gets pretty creepy once its silent and we can hear Venom laughing around. Very eerie. Venom starts kicking Spidy's ass and prepares to stab him. Harry jumps in front of Spidy and sacrifices himself by taking it in the chest. There were a few instances where Spider-Man would try to reach for something but couldn't grab. Finally the writes remember that he has webs and so uses them to grab a pole and smash Venom's face. He drops the pole onto the ground and loud noises really mess up the symbiote. Peter remembers at the church, the bells made the creature react painfully and so he finds more poles to form a jail around Venom while using a pole to hit every one of them. Spidy then uses his webs to get Eddie out of the suit and succeeds. Now he throws one of Harry's pumpkin bombs to the symbiote to kill it for good. However, Eddie jumps to it with a slo-mo "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and the pumpkin incinerates both the creature and Eddie Brock. Venom is now dead.

So what can I say about Venom at this point? Needed better development, more screen time, and finally a better death. Such an underused character and now they've killed it and there's no chance of him coming back unless it magically does somehow, which I doubt. This film could have just been about the suit and the conflict between Peter and Harry without the love triangle to give Sandman more screen time and development.

Speaking of him, after Spidy kills Venom he appears in front of him as if he just snapped and decided to stop fighting. Spidy isn't alarmed, isn't worried that Sandman can see his face and just stands there. Sandman tells him the truth about Uncle Ben and Spider-Man forgives him. After that Sandman just dusts off into the city and now the city is probably going to hate Spidy for letting the criminal go.

Peter and MJ are with Harry who is dying. More bad acting is happening with Peter crying once again and what sucks is that the audience laughed at that. Such a dramatic moment ruined by overdone acting and nobody feels the moment. In the first film when Peter cried seeing his uncle die, it was believable, sad and we could see everything going in his head. Here it's as if he decided to flip a switch that said "Cry" and performs.

So the ending of the film has Peter and MJ holding hands and hugging each other. That's it. We're pretty much left open for a fourth film, something Tobey Maguire isn't sure of coming back for. Raimi might also not return and therefore Kirsten Dunst won't since she said she'd refuse to do the film without either the two, Maguire especially. Sony should either just end it right here or get back the team for a fourth film because having a new cast and crew after three films is just not going to work. Spider-Man 3 is no doubt going to be so successful that I probably wouldn't be surprised if Sony decided to do a fourth movie without the main cast and director.

On the whole, the film is not as terrible as I say. I actually liked it, I just found it very disappointing and you can tell that by my attitude in this review. The film simply just had too much going for it. It would have been better with a few things thrown out, which would have been used for the fourth film. However, it is worth watching. Unlike X3, I'd probably go watch this one for a second time just to sort out how I feel. Its good entertainment and I recommend watching it for good summer popcorn fun. But don't expect seeing exactly what you saw on the trailer or expect it to be better or at least just as good as the first two, otherwise you'd feel like me.

Rating: 3.5 of 5 – A bit above average but not great.

[Captain Nash]

Excellent review there stocks.
Very well written, and after seeing the turd entry in the Spiderman series I have to agree with you.
A watchable and entertaining film, with some great special effects, but on the whole a big...huge let down.
If they don't make anymore I wont loose any sleep, and if they do, well do we really need another Batman and Robin?

[Skywalker]

I'll read your exceedingly long review next week Stock after I've been to see the Spider.

[Dr. No]

Spider-man 3
I’m a spider-man fan from way back (before the movies and before the 1990’s cartoon series), but in good conscience can not give Spidy 3 better than 3 (out of 5).

We went on the new Spider-man roller coaster ride over 5 times since the opening weekend.

Great action. Amazing special effects. I was surprised how well they did venom, really capturing the look.
3 had a Decent story (I felt it tried to combined to much).
over all a good continuation of the previous story lines that leaves the door open for the 4th movie.

What went wrong? Topher Grace
Topher Grace should be forcibly retired from acting. Because, well, he can't act. He did the same song and dance he does in "that 70's Show". If you saw him the Oceans movies he does the same thing here. Its OK on TV but reeks on the big screen. I almost expected Kelso when he ripped off Spider’s mask.
I saw a review in the paper talking about how brilliant Topher was as Brock and how he could be Spider-man in his own right. Must have been written by his Mom.

Sandman, making him Uncle Bens killer was cheap. The sandman was not a good guy with bad luck and sick daughter. The cool thing about Spider-man’s villains is they were not always so 2 dimensional.
Sandman did eventually become a good guy, Sort of.

The symbiote/Spider-man needs more. It evolved over time and eventually Parker understood what the sybiote was doing to him. Parker also understood how this alien reacted to sound before he had to remove it

They missed out on the coolest feature of the symbiote, it was Peter’s cloths. It could morph in to the coolest 80's fashions.
Adolph Parker (Peter Parker under the influence of the black suit) was over the top.
And then teary eyed Peter Parker is over used. Not really exploring Pete's personality.

Venom/Brock needs more story too, some good separation anxiety stories were missed out on.

James Franco would have been a great Anakin Skywalker. He did a good job as Harry but like the rest needed more to work with.
If I remember right Harry was redeemed and good friends with Peter before reverting to Goblin. Oh and he had a son, maybe that's why Gwen was at the funeral.

Over all Spidy 3 included good elements from the comics, but was too condensed. All of the villains have longer stories, which would have been great to see on the big screen.
Gwen Stacy has a very special place in the history of Spiderman. She died for the Spider's sins.

But the movies are engineered for a quick fix, so the bad guy dies and preproduction for the sequel begins. Its the circle of life.

Spidy 3 is a decent popcorn flick But doesn't live up to the previous Spidies or the hype. But Still a fun night at the movies.

[stockslivevan]

Same page with you Dr. No. Entertaining film yet underwelming compared to the first two. I think the train scene in SM2 just ruined the third film's chances at making a great fight scene.

[Dr. No]

Same page with you Dr. No. Entertaining film yet underwelming compared to the first two. I think the train scene in SM2 just ruined the third film's chances at making a great fight scene.

you right the train fight was great, nothing like it in Spidy 3.
For me what made the train fight work was the action, which was great, and then the end, where the passangers save him from falling.
Also Sir Anthony's (Hopkins) cameo

[stockslivevan]

What? Hopkins in Spidy 2? When? What the hell?

[Blowfeld]

What? Hopkins in Spidy 2? When? What the hell?

wasn't that when Doc Ock was on the tram to grab Spider-man and the passengers step forward and said "you have to go through me first"?