Spider-Man 3 - UK-Exclusive DVD on Page 37

[Inner City Blues]

Spider-Man 3 was horrible. They put too many subplots in this movie and it prevented development at any level. The next big problem was they would do things to characters to take them out of the picture so they could focus on other things.

Spoiler:

They gave Harry amnesia for what? Oh, so we could ignore his character and then we could create scenes with Sandman. They wash Sandman away for what? Was this to show some sort of weakness to water? No, it was just done so they could have him gone when Harry just "snaps" out of his amnesia. And let's not forget the worst reveal, the butler comes in years later to tell Harry his father killed himself, this is after he face is blown off and he's tried to kill his friends. Couldn't he have saved time and just told him this earlier (perhaps at the end of the first movie)? Again it was a convenient scene so that Harry can "redeem" himself at the end.

I see you question Sandman, but what was the point of Sandman? I know, he's the criminal with a heart of gold. He's not a bad person, he just made some bad decisions. But in making him into Uncle Ben's killer, doesn't that just turn Peter Parker into a murderer? Doesn't that destroy the whole origin? I thought it was supposed to be Peter Parker letting a criminal go and this criminal kills his uncle. He had the power to stop someone and he chose not to because he wanted revenge (the guy not paying him his money). Wasn't the whole idea to show how Spider-Man started out seeking revenge (letting the guy go, then killing the guy) and then later realizing "with great power comes great responsibility"? Suddenly Sandman comes in, erases all of that learning and it becomes about revenge again. We've done this plot already.

And when Sandman is there, he just meanders around the movie forming sandstorms and constantly grunts. Somehow we're supposed to believe the character has depth because he looks at a locket. After killing however many people, he walks up to Peter Parker with tears in his eye saying he's sorry. Peter forgives him and he blows away. Okay, so what about all those banks he robbed? Where'd the money go? What about all those people's he's hurt and killed? Is it okay now because he was just trying to rob banks to help his sick daughter? Sandman was completely pointless, he was nothing more than a plot device to bring in the "dark side" of Spider-Man in his search for revenge. But we've already done vengeance.

I guess we can talk about the symbiote. Some people didn't like the meteor conveniently being there, I didn't see a problem. But I would ask why go through the trouble of introducing J. Jonah Jameson's son as an astronaut in the previous movie. Couldn't they have used that in the third movie, bringing back a space sample or something? I would also question why Jameson complete ignores the fact that Mary Jane left his son at the altar and is now with the freelance photographer for his paper. But back to the symbiote, it was in his apartment for how long? It was the same thing as Harry's amnesia and Sandman disappearing. The symbiote was sitting around doing nothing for a good portion of the movie before it attached.

And when the symbiote finally attached, you didn't really learn anything about the turmoil. You didn't learn anything about what it really did to him. Peter said he felt powerful, that really means nothing because he just looked and did things like Spider-Man in a black suit. The director seemed to think by having Dr. Conners phone in periodically, you are somehow learning about the symbiote. It's supposed to make Peter more aggressive (how did he learn this from the sample) and the movie takes this as Peter changing his hairstyle, winking at women, and gyrating his hips on the street.

And this just ties in with Brock. The character had such little face time the hatred for Peter Parker was just forced. There was no real emotional build to how he could completely be broken down. The audience laughed when he was asking Jesus to kill Peter Parker since it really comes out of left field. There was no development of Brock as Peter Parker's competition. And then he becomes Venom, who just happens to team up with Sandman out of nowhere. Somehow we're supposed to believe that Sandman just believes Brock when he says Spider-Man is against him helping his daughter. Sandman will just ignore the idea that people are trying to stop him for robbing banks, or his murder of Uncle Ben... nope, it's because they want his daughter to remain sick, Venom told me so.

Now the fight scenes in the movie were good, but the development of the characters was so poorly handled. There were many good scenes in the movie, but that was all. As standalones you could watch a scene and say it was good, but they were stitched together into a disjointed movie that allowed for nothing to develop. As I said before, they should have saved Venom for the fourth movie, it's ridiculous to do a movie about the black suit with Venom when you haven't had Eddie Brock in previous movies. You use the third movie to develop the rivalry between the two. The third movie should be about Harry and the symbiote. Make the great climax Spider-Man in the black suit fighting his friend and killing him (or almost killing him). Then you can have him get rid of the suit in the church. At the very end, Eddie gets the suit and becomes Venom. Show Venom in all his glory, roll the credits. I would have left fighting Venom and Sandman out.

The fourth movie could then be about fighting the symbiote that hates him along with Eddie Brock, someone else who hates him. And then you can serve all your fans with the line, "We are Venom." Nope, they wasted it by rushing a storyline that should have taken time to develop. It should have been developed the way they developed Harry into the Green Goblin.

Alas, Spider-Man 3 joins the other bad thirds:

Superman 3

Batman Forever

Blade Trinity

Terminator 3 (They should have never made it)

X-Men 3

Sad really.