Do you know how much
this film reportedly cost to make? $258 million. That makes "Spider-Man
3" one of the most expensive movies ever, only lagging behind
"Tangled" and the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" film.
There is even speculation that it cost more than this and could be THE most
expensive movie ever. Let those facts and figures sink in and then consider the
finished product. How is it possible that a film with this high a budget could
fail on so many levels? The main glaring problem is the overabundance of
villains.
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| Sam Raimi clearly wasn't flexing his film-making muscles as Spider-Man shows off his real ones. |
Sandman, a relatively minor villain from the comics, has, for some
unknown reason, been upgraded to having a hand in Uncle Ben's death, purely so
that the villain can have a connection to the hero. Why was this necessary?
Harry Osborn, who has had three films worth of character development, makes
more sense as a villain and has fair motivations and a link to Tobey Maguire's
Peter Parker. However, James Franco's performance is so devoid of emotion and
personality that none of that matters! The biggest offence, however, goes to
the shoehorning of fan favourite Venom into the movie. Now, I actually feel
sorry for director Sam Raimi here as he was actually under pressure from Sony
executives to put the character in but that does not stop my anger at the
casting of Topher Grace as Eddie Brock AKA Venom ( who, guess what, also has a
connection to Peter!). Grace is so skinny and weak that it is hard to imagine
him as the hulking bodybuilder character from the comics. The only saving grace
( sorry for the pun there) of Venom and the other villains is that they look
fantastic. These effects cost a fair bit to put into practice and, for once, it
was not for nothing.
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| Looks intimidating here, right? As far from it as you can get in the movie itself. |
The casting in the movie as a whole is weak, never mind
just the villains. I have always thought that Tobey Maguire was a terrible
Peter Parker and Spider-Man, losing Spider-Man's cocky attitude and humour from
the comic books, although he did pull of the short time as a geek in the first
one well (if you want a good Spider-Man, go and watch Andrew Garfield's
performance in the new reboot films). Kirsten Dunst brings absolutely no
personality to the Mary-Jane character and she just comes across as plain
annoying. JK Simmons is the only good actor in the production in his
hilariously over the top performance as newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson,
bringing all of the anger and humour of the character to the big screen. As I
said before, the effects are one of the only good things about the film but
that cannot carry the whole movie and sometimes the fighting does not even look
as good.
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| Oh no, not another rubbish romantic subplot! Now featuring terrible acting! |
The plot is just stupid as well, with a lazy script relying almost
entirely on coincidence and downright ridiculous decisions. Where did the Venom
symbiote come from? Why did the scientists not check the test site Sandman fell
into? Oh, Harry got amnesia and forgets Peter is Spider-Man. That was lucky!
These are just a couple of examples of the stupid decisions and plot
conveniences present throughout the entirety of it's 2 hour running time (which
they showed you all of in the trailer by the way). Trust me, it feels even
longer. This is a bad movie, plain and simple. The lazy script, terrible acting
and pointless villains all make the two hours you would spend watching this
feel even longer as you wish it would just end. It was good of Sony to end this
now and not let it continue to get worse in order to reboot the franchise and
do Spider-Man some justice.
Rating : 3/10
Original Release Date : April 17th, 2007
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Topher Grace,
JK Simmons, Thomas Haden Church
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