Spider-Man 3 – Recap and Review

It’s been approximately three weeks since seeing Spider-Man 3 in theatres, and I figure by this time either you’ve seen the movie, or you don’t plan on seeing it. And now, with Pirates of the Caribbean 3 having come out this past Thursday and my own plans doing an eventual review of that, I should probably get to my previous priority of sharing my take of this movie. I’ve premeditated this more than I should have.

So of course, I had been wanting to see Spider-Man 3 for the longest damn time. As soon as I heard that that they were going to do the black costume story arc, and there was going to be at least an introduction of Venom into the scene, I got about as giddy as I possible could, which says a lot for me. Even after hearing that they were also going to be throwing Sandman in as a villain as well, I was deterred at all, because as I’m sure the rest figured as well, I was hoping this would just be and introduction into Venom story, and they’d actually debut him at the very end of the movie as a teaser, or they’d simply lead up to him showing up fully in a 4^th movie. Everything was going to be fine, I assured myself.

Yeeeeeeah….not so much.

The first half of the movie was decent, I’ll give it that. We have the events that lead up to the bulk of the main story, such as the introduction of Sandman and how he got his powers, as well as Peter wanting to propose to Mary Jane, and the “tension” brought in by Eddie Brock and Gwen Stacy’s screen time. Yeah, ok, I can deal with it. The symbiote comes to town, on a meteor of all things, which completely negates including John Jameson into the second movie as a lead-up to his going to outer space and unknowing bringing back the symbiote instead, and kinds belittles the character as nothing more than a romantic tension filler, much like was the only purpose of Gwen Stacy in this movie.

This is where things start to really go downhill.

After finding out that Flint Marko, aka: Sandman, was apparently the one who’d killed Uncle Ben and not the guy from the first movie, and having a run-in with Harry Osborn as “New Goblin” (I won’t even touch on that one, as it speaks for its own silliness), the symbiote attaches itself to Parker, and he goes on the beat the shyte outta Sandman. Fearing the suit’s powers, he takes it off and puts it away. He *takes it off*, as if it were a pair of yesterday’s gym shorts. That right there was the beginning of what started to turn me off. But after Harry goes Goblin Jr. again after a stint of amnesia, which of course is meant to create tension with Mary Jane which he uses as blackmail against her to break up with Peter, Peter dons the black suit again, and precedes to hand Harry his ass. Harry’s regaining of his memory also gives him the power of the lazy eye, it seems. Peter then tracks down Brock, who had swiped an executive position at the Bugle from Peter, and publicly exposes the photos he’d used to get the job as fakes, earning Brock’s resentment. Then, as the coup ‘de grace, he decides to take fashion tips from My Chemical Romance, does some dancing that would make Michael Jackson cringe, hook up with Gwen Stacy (which Brock sees, making him think Parker stole *his girl* as well), and goes to the restaurant where MJ was forced into working at in desperation, and proves just how much of a dick the symbiote makes him.

Parker realizes the black suit is making him a prick, and decides to get rid of in via a church bell, even though he hadn’t paid attention to Dr.Conners when he told Peter that the symbiote was weak to sonic sounds, so riddle me that. Brock, who’d gone to the church to do his own emo stint and beg god to kill Peter for causing his woes, witnesses Parker’s battle with removing the symbiote, which then falls on Eddie, and the obvious occurs. Now as Venom, which he doesn’t refer to himself as once during the movie mind you nor refers to himself as “We”, tracks down Sandman and proposes a truce to make Spider-Man pay for causing them grief. Why Venom needs a lackey is anyone’s guess. They shanghai MJ, and proceed to call Spider-Man out. Peter goes to Harry, pleading for assistance for Mary Jane’s sake. After a sappy moment with his butler, which conveniently reveals he’d known all along that Spider-Man hadn’t killed Norman Osborn and had just contracted selective senility for the past 2 movies, Harry decides to not be angsty anymore, team up with Peter to do the tag-team method of taking on Venom and Sandman, who were ripping Spider-Man apart.

As Harry takes on Sandman, Peter battles Venom, who still manages to kick his wall-crawling arse, until Harry interjects and sacrifices himself to save Peter from a deadly blow from Venom. Peter goes all “Spider-Angst”, and comes up with the bright idea to use the meter struts laying around the construction site their at to produce sound waves that cause the symbiote pain and allows Peter to rip the symbiote off of Brock. Peter then throws a remaining one of Harry’s pumpkin bombs at the symbiote, as Brock tries to re-bond, which supposedly incinerates them both and ends the threat of Venom. Sandman then comes in and has his heart-to-heart about how he hadn’t meant to kill Uncle Ben, and Spidey forgive him, after which Marko blows away all epic-like leaving you to wonder what the hell just happened. Then there are the customary sad scenes involving Harry dying and the two friends making up before he passes, which is followed by the Peter & MJ makeup scene as a closer. The End.

I could go on a rant about everything I thought was wrong about this movie, but I’ll spare you all. The first half of it was decent, and there were some genuinely funny parts, but the rest was just silly. I’ll touch upon the two that really got to me. Of course, the first is portrayal of Venom. Here’s one of Spider-Man’s most dangerous villains, and he gets maybe a half-hour’s worth of screen time at the very end of the movie. Even if you aren’t a big Venom fan, you gotta give the character his due. I’ve already touched upon a couple other little quips that irritated me, but the kicked had to be the fact that they killed him off. I mean, you see Brock’s skeleton as its being blown up. If they can explain that off as easily as explaining the remaining sample of the symbiote being in Dr.Connor’s lab, then I’ll be much happier. Otherwise, I’m incredibly disappointed if the writers decide to keep him dead. At least Green Goblin and Doc Ock got full movies to themselves before they were killed off. The other thing about the movie as a whole that turned me off was the fact it just irradiated EMO!! Seriously, the majority of the characters were, at one point or another, being whiney bitches. The symbiote must have caused everyone around to be self-important attention seekers, with the exception of Mary Jane because she was like that to begin with. I serious laughed out loud in the theatre when Peter slapped her, because I’d wanted to since the first 10 minutes into the flick. Mary Jane’s supposed to be this tougher woman with a lot of inner strength just due to being a part of Peter’s life, and in the movies she just ends up being the typical villain fodder.

So in closing, I’d have to give this movie a 35% satisfactory rating, and most of that is for the special effects, which were very awesome but not enough to save the film in my opinion.