Saw Spider-Man 3 last night…

May 5, 2007 0 By Chris Lawton

All three of us hit up the theaters last night. Personally, I thought it was just alright. Let’s go down the list:

MAJOR Spoiler Alert. Seriously. Huge spoilers!

The Good:

-The action sequences were incredible. I thought each one of them were just done phenomonally. I would say the action in this one is the best in the series.

-The effects on the Sandman. There is this scene near the beginning, right after the Sandman gets his powers, where he’s trying to get up, but he can’t control his form yet. As he’s raising and forming his arm, the sand on his face starts to slide off. Then his fingers go. And he keeps just sliding into this pile of sand. All in all, it’s a really cool visual.
-Peter’s descent into darkness. I’ve read a lot of people say that Pete didn’t get dark enough, I thought they did what they could and still keep the movie PG-13. I’ve seen how dark Sam Raimi can get and I thought they did a pretty good job.
-Harry. He was phenomonal in this movie. And at the end, when he teamed up with Spider-Man…awesome!

-Peter’s dance. I can’t explain it. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about. A lot of people are complaining because it was cheesy and tacky. I think it was supposed to be that way. The symbiote is supposed to amplify your natural characteristics. At his essence, Peter is a nerd. He doesn’t know how to be cool. That’s how I took the scene anyway.
-Sandman as the trigger man. I know people are up in arms about this. I thought they did it pretty well. I would always prefer that they don’t mess with origins, but at least they tried to make it fit. Marko was going to drop the gun, but his buddy surprised him. I liked the fact that it led to some cool parallel construction with Harry.

The Bad:

-Emo-Peter. I’m sorry. When your character stops in front of a mirror and purposefully pulls his hair in front of his face, just to show how bad he is…that’s stupid. Of course, I suppose you could chalk this one up to the point above about his dance. I guess.
-Venom just felt tacked on. You only saw him for the last twenty minutes of the movie. He looked cool and the fights were cool, but I just didn’t feel it.
-The story was slow slow slow! Now, that, in itself, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lots of good movies are slow. Citizen Kane. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Unbreakable. However, those were slow movies that actually told stories that we care about. Spider-Man 3 was slow because they tried to cram too much in and it came off as a jumpy movie, in which nothing seemed to happen too fast.
-The over-the-top drama. Again, this is a device that, if used correctly, can really add to the picture. In every instance this was used, that didn’t include James Franco, it seemed forced and unintentional. And that’s a problem.

The Interesting: