Love it - then hate it critics.
As part of May 2007's threequel "series," Spider-Man 3 was poised for a huge audience attendance. It was a huge hit that weekend, with lukewarm but not bad reviews from newspaper critics.
Then comes what I call the Phantom Menace syndrome. While in the theater and directly thereafter the audience member is thoroughly enjoying the movie. It isn't until later that they compare it to what has come before (this is especially true with franchise films). Upon comparison they find the movie isn't as high quality as the one that preceded it. Then the backlash hits. They feel tricked out of their money into seeing a movie that wasn't as good as before. Entirely disregarding their earlier feelings and sometimes even the movies quality on its own, a relentless tirade of anger emanates out via a keyboard, flooding movie blogs and message boards with hate.
Spider-Man 3 is not a bad movie. Nor is it a great movie. But due to its following of fantastic Spider-Man 2 and also being lumped into a grab bag of movies during 2007's threequel summer it gets put down far more than simply being judged by its own merits.
There are a few items within that keep getting brought up during negative reviews: Peter's "emo" stage and the multiple villains.
Peter's "emo" stage could have been handled better but its failure could be traced back to a single shot: Peter messing up his current hair into his "emo" hair. With such a focus on the hair, the subtleties of Toby Maguire's acting is lost. Now all the audience sees when Peter is in "emo" stage is that somehow his hair is different. While it gets darker, it does not appear to be hair dye as much as lighting effects. Also, the intensity in Toby Maguire's eyes as he acts in the less comical scenes are enough to sell the change in character. Alas that is not the case. Instead the hair was setup to have the focus and it is through the preposterousness of that change that the later comic scenes of Peter trying to be cool lose their touch as the audience already is thinking "so the hair makes him evil? or stupid? wtf?" It's like that Treehouse of Horror segment from the Simpsons where Homer gets a hair transplant from Snake and becomes evil. It destroys all suspension of disbelief.
The multiple villains could have worked better if there was no focus on Sandman's and instead some actual screentime for Venom. In the context of this movie, Topher Grace was perfect as Venom. Instead of the bodybuilder type from the original comics, we have a skinny kid that mirrors Peter very much. Harry Osborn as the new Goblin does not muddle to much up plot wise as he is only a physical villain for the first fight near the beginning. After getting his memories back later he becomes more of a psychological villain. James Franco's performance I think is the best of the whole cast, even when taking into consideration the overdramatic "so good." His transition to a hero at the end made me almost stand up in the theater and cheer. It is too bad he died. I would have loved to see him in further films.
The movie has good and bad points with its large collection of characters. Characters introduced in earlier movies get more screen time. Peter's landlord quits being a two dimensional character and has a bit of depth in his few scenes. Dr. Connors is also around in a more plot oriented fashion (and without having to be The Lizard!). The main problem is the introduction of new characters. And of course it is always a pleasure to see the characters from the Daily Bugle. The best scene in the whole movie is when J Jonah Jameson is in dire need of a camera to shoot pictures of the final battle.
Captain Stacy could have been replaced with a generic police captain but since the name recognition did not overweigh the role there wasn't much of a problem there. Gwen Stacy, on the other hand, was little more than a plot device to add some jealousy from Mary Jane. At least the filmmakers did not try to fit in the plot of her dying.
Spider-Man 3 is a movie that deserves another look. While not as good as the other two in the series, it is not the utter rubbish that some would want us to believe.
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