Spider-Man 3 (2007)

This movie is a mess. There are still enjoyable parts, but there's too much going on and none of it is properly developed. Also, the weakest characters of the trilogy (MJ and Harry) have much more prominent roles in this film, to its detriment. I was going to say "important roles", but no. They're not. They just get too much screen time.

I'm not even sure if Peter and MJ actually like each other.

MJ's story is threaded throughout the entire movie, but doesn't really connect to anything. She's got a role (I think the lead?) in a musical, but then there's a bad review so she's replaced. I'm pretty sure she's offered a different role instead, but doesn't take it, although I don't know why not. She later gets a job singing in a jazz bar, and I think she's still working there at the end of the film, but it's not clear if she's happy with that or if she has other options or anything. But by that point Peter has resolved his own issues so the movie's over and it's clear that MJ's problems only existed to repeatedly make the point that Peter is self-absorbed and not listening to her.

Harry's plot is possibly handled even worse. At the start of the film, he becomes the new Green Goblin and fights Spider-Man, but hits his head and gets amnesia. So then he spends a while being friends with Peter and MJ because he can't remember that he hates Spider-Man (or that Peter is Spider-Man). And then he gets his memory back and hates Peter again. But then at the last minute his valet tells him that actually Spider-Man didn't kill his father. Apparently this guy knew that the whole time but just let Harry go on being wrong for this entire time.

When I grow up, I'm gonna have so much amnesia.

They clearly wanted a fight between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, and they wanted the Goblin to come help Peter at the end, but the way they achieved that was somehow both unnecessarily circuitous and half-arsed. The amnesia, for example, was completely unnecessary. Harry being friends with Peter again before he gets his memory back adds nothing to the movie. I guess they wanted an explanation for why Harry doesn't make another attempt to kill Peter, but they could have just had him break a leg or need to repair his glider or even just said he was plotting his revenge that whole time and it would have been fine.

Gwen Stacy is also in this film. Sort of. There's a character named Gwen Stacy. And Peter kisses her at one point (in a very dumb scene) and then later takes her on a date after MJ breaks up with him, but just to make MJ jealous. She's never actually Peter's girlfriend, and she doesn't die. Her having that name is basically an easter egg - just like the inclusion of "Robbie" Robertson in all three films and "Flash" Thompson in the first.

The scene where he turns to sand actually isn't bad.

The next problem is Flint Marko (Sandman). Retconning the first film so that Marko is the one who killed Ben is weird. It really doesn't seem like there was any need to give him that personal connection to Peter - or for him to be in the movie at all, for that matter. You've already got Venom and Green Goblin Jr, and that would have been enough. It also doesn't help that the Sandman animation hasn't aged as well as anything else in the entire trilogy. Doc Ock, as I mentioned, looked amazing. Green Goblin and Venom look fine. Sandman looks like he's from a video game.

But there is one good villain in this movie. It's Eddie Brock! Topher Grace is consistently fantastic in this movie (and even gets the absolute best line of the entire trilogy). I don't really know what Eddie's like in other versions of the story, but in this one he's basically the evil Peter Parker and it's great. The only misstep in the entire Eddie Brock plot is the bit where Peter exposes him for faking a picture (picture of Spider-Man!) and it's framed as a bad thing, just because Peter's kind of a dick about it. He totally did it though and Peter was right to call him out.

Is that Tobey Maguire or Carrie-Anne Moss?

The biggest surprise, for me, was that the bit everyone made fun of when this film came out actually turned out to be the best part. I get that the whole "emo Peter" thing (which is a weird thing to call him as he's not "emo", he's an arsehole) looked kind of dumb in the trailers, but did no one watch the actual movie? Because it's meant to look bad and dumb. It's Peter being dumb and bad. Because he's being influenced by the Venom symbiote. And he is such an incredible arsehole. He is the worst. And I loved every second of it.

Then, of course, Peter realises what's happening and gets rid of the symbiote (carelessly throws it away and pays no attention to what happens to it afterwards - some all-time top-tier Spider-dumb) and it's picked up by Eddie. Then there's a big fight scene involving all the major players, and you'd think the movie's over but it drags on for a while longer for no reason. Nothing really gets resolved satisfactorily, it's just a waste of time.

Landlord and daughter still great. Their story gets no resolution though.

I also want to mention that this film is less funny than the previous one, and I'm guessing there was some kind of backlash to the tone of that one that they over-corrected for, because Aunt May also seems to have been rolled back to her characterisation from the first movie. It's disappointing - much like a lot of other things about this movie, including the fact that Peter basically has to learn the same lesson as in the previous two films again. The symbiote complicates it a little bit this time, but it's the same formula and it's stale.

Over all, I can see why there was no Spider-Man 4, but this wasn't the worst movie I've seen. Honestly, it was better than Guardians of the Galaxy or Infinity War/Endgame, and people love those. The narrative was a mess, there were too many characters and most of them didn't get any kind of satisfying conclusion to their stories, and it had become clear that Raimi really only had an idea for one Spider-Man movie that he was just going to reuse until they made him stop. But the action scenes were cool and there were some laughs, and despite the ending dragging a bit, it wasn't too long.

How else would you communicate with a spider (man)?

It was an ok movie. I give it 5/7.

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