The Real Spiderman 3 Review
Written by Dan Seminara
Published on 05/07/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

2 hours and 20 minutes is a long running time for a movie. Unless you're just way too ambitious (or your name is Peter Jackson,) that time should be plenty to fit your whole story in and then some. Spiderman 3 fits the former category (The lack of an hour long scene where Spiderman fights random criminals doing nothing to advance the plot indicates that Jackson had nothing to do with this movie.)

This movie has alot of plot, but much of it winds up being contrived or glossed over simply because they couldn't fit it all. This one takes place several years after Spiderman 2. Mary Jane is starring on Broadway, Peter is doing well in school, things are looking up, then everything starts going wrong. Harry finally decides to take his revenge on Peter/Spiderman for killing his father. After a cool fight sequence in the skies above New York City, Harry loses his memory. That night, Peter and Mary Jane are lying on a web in a park, and a meteor comes from the sky, and just happens by chance to land right near Peter's motorcycle, with some black space thing coming out and going home with Peter. Also, a convict escapes from prison because he needs to get money to cure his daughter's arbitrary disease.

None of this is expanded upon in the movie, so allow me to do so now...

The story really started years ago on the planet PlotDevice. Their planet was under constant assault by the Contrivian Space Empire. They were going to, as a last result, engage in germ warfare against the Contrivian homeworld, but Contrivian spies has sabotaged PlotDevice's computer navigation systems, so the disease went to Earth instead. That disease was called Plotdeviceitis. It's main effect is that the inflicted must wear an oxygen mask when they sleep, no one knows if it is fatal, but if it is, it takes a long time to kill its victims. A cure, however, was found, and that is having alot of money. You don't need to pay it to anyone for any sort of medical treatment, just having money cures the disease, which is why the convict needed money to cure his daughter.

So, a few years later, PlotDevice sent their ambassador to survey the effects of the disease on the Contrivian homeworld. He also unwittingly went to Earth, and so our story begins.

Anyway, back to what was in the movie. The convict, on the lam, hides out in a particle physics testing facility. These people are testing the properties of sand, by inflicting centrifugal forceon a pit of sand. No one knows what this is supposed to prove, but it provides an excuse for turning the convict into Sandman.

The rest of the movie is just as rushed. Harry recovers his memory, and turns into Mr. Soap Opera villain, appearing to take Mary Jane away from Peter, the convict killed Uncle Ben, so Peter, with the help of the space symbiote, turns evil on him, and almost kills him. Then Peter, in full evil mode, decides he's going to beat Harry senseless for taking Mary Jane. Also, another photographer at the Daily Bugle went a little Photoshop happy, and faked a picture of Spiderman robbing a bank, which Peter exposed him for. The other photographer became Venom, and Venom and Sandman decide to take on Spiderman together. Peter can't take them alone, so he gets Harry to help. Yo, Peter, you got a giant supervillain whose weakness is water, and you need the New Goblin to help you? What about the fire department? Or were you thinking about nothing but how you were going to pose in front of the American flag?

This movie was decent, but it seems like it was too short for what it wanted to do. Maybe they couldn't make a 3 hour movie out of it, so what about making the movie about 3 and a half hours, and splitting it into 2 movies, like Kill Bill. This movie did $148 million on its opening weekend alone, did they not want to do that kind of business twice?