It’s Evansville Review: Spider-Man 3

Spoiler Alert: Some plot points discussed.

It’s a rare occasion that I go see a movie in theaters anymore. The cost of an evening ticket is exorbitant and that is before the soda and popcorn. The fact is that I have a pretty nice home setup for watching movies. There are some movies, though, that need to be seen in a theater. Big action movies with awesome CGI and great sound need to be experienced more than seen. I think most comic book movies are of that ilk. With that in mind, I took Friday afternoon off and headed out to Stadium 16 on the West side of town and bought a ticket for the 3:20 showing of Spider-Man 3.

The second sequel to 2002’s Spider-Man, Spider-Man 3 starts off with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and romantic interest Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) in good spirits and with Parker planning to pop the question to Mary Jane. The city is even overjoyed with Spider-Man and his heroism. The happiness ends when Parker’s former best friend Harry Osborn tries to avenge his father’s death in a great action sequence between the two. Unfortunately, this scene was probably the highlight of the movie, and it was in the first thirty minutes.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh, but I looked at Spider-Man 3 as a three act play. The first act was great. It got everyone up to speed on the previous two films, introduced new characters such as Flint Marko/Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and had some of the best directed action sequences I’ve seen in a while. The second act, was far too over-the-top and I found myself cringing in the theater from how corny it was. Bad dialog, bad acting and a scene in a jazz theater that didn’t make me feel anything for the characters; only a queasy feeling in my stomach from how I wished I had the previous 10 minutes back.

My other issue with Spider-Man 3 was that it suffered from ADD with three villains. The first film focused on the Green Goblin who was excellently portrayed by Willem Dafoe. The second film had the equally great Alfred Molina as Dr. Octavius. This incarnation of the franchise had Harry Osborn, Sandman and Venom (Topher Grace). Unfortunately the only one of these characters that was developed enough for me to care about was Osborn. His internal struggle with the dark side and extracting revenge was interesting. Sandman was not developed at all and springing Venom towards the end of the movie was such a waste of a classic character from the comic book series.

Luckily, the last 20 minutes of the movie save it for me with the obligatory battle between good and evil.

I’d recommend going to see it if you’re a fan of the franchise and comic book movies. If you know nothing of Spider-Man or aren’t a fan of big budget films like this, stay home and watch one of the first two films as they are far superior. Spider-Man 2 was one of my all-time favorite comic book films.