Mini-Review: "Spider-Man 3"

Review by Fat Jack
My Rating: 2 stars out of 5
Rated PG-13

Rotten Tomatoes: 61% Fresh
Netflix: 4.7 stars out of 5
IMDb: 7.9 stars out of 10

Spider-man 3 was not as bad as the critics make it out to be. It was a fun action movie and it had some cool moments. Some of the criticism was warranted. Here’s what I noticed:

1. There was entirely too much crying by everybody.
2. Sand cannot fly.
3. It was a bit too long.
4. There were too many villains.
5. What was up with the Uncle Ben reinvention?

Everyone had their crying moment in this film and some, like Peter Parker, cried through the whole thing. That really doesn’t bother me unless it is overused and this was overused. There are other ways to show pain and emotion besides crying. The water works were really flowing in this.

I do not care what kind of particle accelerating, neuralizing-what-you-call-it you put it in, sand cannot fly. Merge sand and man, and sand still cannot fly. It just can’t Why on God’s green earth Raimi thought it necessary to have Sandman turn into a cloud of particles and fly around the city is beyond me. What good could come of that except … and here it goes … you just want to have it look cool.

And now we know why Spider-Man 3 is getting poor reviews. Director Sam Raimi made the big no-no of comic book movies, the great failing of the genre. He focused on looking cool rather than being great. Whether pressure from the studio, or internal pressure to make the next one great, Raimi slipped and fell. Not all the way to the bottom mind you. This is an Oscar winner compared to other comic flicks like [shudder] Daredevil or Electra. But the pressure to one-up himself too its toll. The script was long, too long, and the characters were jumbled. Script not there. No problem. Add another villain or two and you can distract the audience with cool special effects. Oh, except that really doesn’t work.

Just in case all of that doesn’t work, then you can reinvent a character and his past. That will get them. Yeah, that gets them fighting mad. In a move of pure movie making genius, Raimi decided to change who killed Uncle Ben and work that whole thing into the Sandman plot. It sucked. Sucked big time. Hot steaming cup of sucked. Suck big donkey … okay I need to stop right there. [Breath] There was absolutely no sense in that. That is a big failing of fantasy and sci-fi writing. If you write yourself into a corner, rather than reworking the script and creating good writing, we just use magic to save the day or just make you think something happened one way when it really didn’t. Daytime soap operas employ this tactic all the time. That should tell you something.

The more I think about it, the longer I ponder these strikes, the more I dislike the movie. The madder I get. There was no sense in making these mistakes and someone of Raimi’s talent should have known better. Do these people not use editors? What the Hell?

For a flick it was fine. Plenty of action to keep things going. I liked what they did with Harry. Venom was fine, but they should have stopped there and made a movie around that. Would have been plenty for a good writer.

And by the way, does anyone really go to a church and ask God to kill someone for them? Do people really do that? I mean those people who do not have serious mental illnesses. That was about poor writing again. Seems I’m seeing a trend here. By the way, I really wanted to love this movie.

Mary Jane Watson: What's happened to you?
Peter Parker: I don't know... But I have to stop it.

[I wish someone had stopped this script a long time ago.]