Spiderman 3 Movie review - "Where's the freakn' Venom?"

Let me start off by saying "What in the blue blazes was that?"

For a year now, they have been throwing bits and pieces of the Spiderman 3 movie at us concealed in Teaser trailers, exclusive scenes, and 5 minute previews. Most if not all of them appeared to promise us a showdown between Venom and Spiderman. Yeah we knew Sandman and Harry were going to be there to. But I honestly thought they were just going to be along for the ride, a couple scenes here and there, no big deal. Man was I wrong. With the exception of that horrible excuse for an ending, Venom was a non-factor. "Short term memory loss" Harry had more screen time than anyone. What was Sam Rami thinking? What were the screen writers thinking? What was the creator of Spiderman and executive producer Stan Lee thinking? Who read this script and said "Heck Yeah! Let's do this! Oh… Wait one more thing. Let’s make everyone cry in this movie. Everyone will love it!”

From watching trailers and reading stuff on the net, I thought I had pieced the movie together before I saw it, or at least I thought I knew what was going to happen. I thought Spiderman 3 was going to go down like this....

Peter finds out that Sandman was the actual shooter involved in his Uncle's death. Meanwhile the symbiote has some how made it to earth and found his way to Peter's apartment. Peter is consumed with finding his Uncle's killer. The symbiote takes hold of Spiderman. Throw in some confrontations at work with Eddie Brock. After all Peter is no longer himself, he’s no longer quite and reserved. Peter proves that Eddie faked one of his photos. Eddie gets fired, he’s left enraged, embarrassed and angry. (You have to show why Eddie Brock hates Peter and Spiderman) Peter then uses the suit to kill Sandman and comes close to killing Harry.

Peter then realizes he’s got to dump the suit. He sheds the suit. The symbiote takes control of Eddie or vice versa. Venom doesn’t want to kill Peter immediately. He tortures Spiderman by attacking his family, friends ,loved ones and revealing Spiderman’s true identity. Because after all, both Eddie and the symbiote hate Peter Parker equally. Anyway, they battle through out the city in incredible and death defying aerial battles. Spiderman saves the day again, resolves issues with Harry and elopes with Mary Jane.

I would have been freak’n fine with that version of the movie. But unfortunately we got Spiderman 3: “The Young and the restless version.”

Are you guys still with me? I’ve got allot more to say. This has been building since Saturday night when I saw SP3. I’m going to break this down into categories. I’ll break down the Hero’s, Villains, Role players, Plot, Special effects, and overall story. Here goes…

The Heroes:

Spiderman (Toby Maguire): I thought over all he was alright. He did the best he could with what they asked him to do. When he wasn’t crying, or dancing down the street like some confused street pimp, or dancing at a jazz club, or dancing in clothing stores, I thought his performance as Peter Parker and Spiderman were good. He’s a good actor.

That’s it for the heroes. I don’t count Harry as a hero because he wasn’t heroic until the last eight minutes of the movie. Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy don’t count either.

The Villains:

Evil Peter Parker (Toby Maguire): Just flat out ridiculous. Some scenes were comical. Most just did not fit. The hair, the dancing, the Jazz club scene and the eye liner just simply did not work. What the heck were they thinking when they story boarded this whole sequence? Stick to the comic book, please. Again, I thought Toby did the best he could with the material they gave him.

Sandman (Thomas Haden Church): I thought he did well as Sandman. But heck, who couldn’t play Sandman. He’s not a deep character at all. Worse than that they changed Sandman’s back story. Sandman didn’t have a sick kid. In the comic books, Sandman was a career criminal. Why is it (now a-days) every villain needs some reason to commit a crime? Why can’t they just be a bad seed, or just plain evil. Are we supposed to some how feel sorry for Sandman? He’s not really a villain if the audience feels sorry for him. Villains don’t need sick family members. It serves no purpose to put that in the movie.

Venom / Eddie Brock (Topher Freak’n Grace): They should have given this role to Thomas Haden Church.  Thomas looks like he weighs close to a couple hundred pounds. Topher looks like he weighs maybe ninety five pounds. How could a skinny twirp like Topher Grace play Venom? Why would they even cast him as Eddie Brock or Venom? Eddie Brock was a wannabe body builder and a photo journalist that was always one step be-hind Peter Parker and was always close to making it big. He blamed Spiderman and Peter Parker for everything that was wrong in his life. I guess it doesn’t really matter who they gave the role to because Venom was a non factor in the movie. It was a waste of one of the most popular villains ever created.

Goblin / Harry Osborne (James Franco): Goofy. Just plain goofy. Like Toby Maguire. James did the best he could with what was given to him. The short term memory loss thing was really stupid, and a cheep way to do away with a villain for and hour or so. Was it me or did Harry act a little too happy? He just walked around with a really goofy smile on his face. When did Harry take up painting? He was painting when MJ called him. What the heck is up with that?

The Role Players:

Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst): I didn’t care for MJ the entire movie. For the first few minutes of the movie she’s in love with Peter. Then she loses her job because she can’t sing real loud. Then she hates Peter and won’t talk to him. She kisses Harry.Then she makes Peter cry by telling him she’s cheating on him with some other guy. Which by the way, why would she agree to do that to Peter? Why would she possibly believe that Harry could hurt Peter? She knows Peter is Spiderman doesn’t she? She does realize he can take care of himself? That just made no sense.

With Regards to the other role players, I’m not going bother to put their real names up because I’m running out of time and I’m too lazy to look their names up.

Aunt May: She was solid. But really wasn’t in the movie all that much.

J Jonah Jameson: Solid. Was one of the brighter spots in the movie. He brings J Jonah to life.

French guy / Hostess (Bruce Campbell): I’m a big Bruce Campbell guy. I though his scenes were the most memorable of the movie. He was very, very funny.

Gwen Stacey: Solid, but why was she even in the movie? She kissed Spiderman, that’s about it. (This was the only thing that Mary Jane could really be mad at Spiderman for).

Am I missing anyone important?

Oh Yeah… Harry’s Butler: This guy has one line out of the entire first two Spiderman movies, in which he says only a couple words. Then comes in at the last  crucial minute to SUDDENLY reveal to Harry that he EXAMINED his Fathers body and discovered that it was his own glider that killed him. When did this guy see Norman Osborne on the glider? Norman kept the goblin secret from Harry, his son but not from the butler? And please tell me why this guy wouldn’t have said something sooner to Harry?

CGI: Solid. The effects were very vivid and all the motions seemed very real. They did an outstanding job bringing all the characters alive. I can’t imagine how many hours it took to build the action sequences.

 The plot / story/ ending:

Were these the same writers that wrote the first two Spiderman movies? Did they go out and hire the writers from “Dawson’s Creek” to write and story board this movie? Why would you abandon such an efficient formula that worked so well with the first two movies?

Spiderman 3 had no real flow. Within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, Harry smoked the Goblin potion, Peter asked MJ to marry him, Flint Marko got stuck in the sand pit, and the  symbiote crashed down in the park right next to Peter’s moped.

Minutes later Harry and Pete are fighting it out. (Which by the way I thought this was the best action sequence of the movie). The movie moved real fast then would slow down to a snails pace. When the movie would slow down, the writers seemed eager to work in someone crying or some other emotional tirade by one of the main characters. The memory loss Harry sustained at the beginning of the movie was laughable. Harry mentions in that scene that he would give his life for his friends. You had to know that he wasn’t going to make it out of this movie.

They decided to not show the effect that the suit had on Spiderman for the most part (with the exception of the fight with Sandman).They decided to show the effects of the suit on Peter’s personal life. Which I feel was a MUCH better choice (being sarcastic). I would rather much see Peter dance down the sidewalk and point at girls that walk by than watch boring action sequences. I really enjoyed (kidding) the Jazz club scene to. People were laughing in the theatre, but were they really supposed to? Was this supposed to be a comedy?

 Peter finally sheds the suit, and Venom is born. But then the movie stalls in the climax. Venom and Sandman team up to try and kill Spiderman. Which may have worked except they kept stopping things by going back and forth between the actual battle, news reporters, and some old guy doing a live news report from back at the station. Again, what were they thinking?

My personal theory is that the filmmakers simply ran out of time putting the climax together. I believe they ran out of time and couldn’t get the CGI scenes put together. I think they were hurried and they had to throw something in there to fill time.

What happens now with MJ and Peter? Are they ever going to get married? Will things go bad again if MJ gets fired from the Jazz club she works at? Will she start dating Flash again? Will Peter date Gwen Stacy? Will Harry’s butler ever forgive himself? After all, had he not told Harry the truth about his father, Harry wouldn’t have helped Spiderman and he probably wouldn’t have gotten killed. Will MJ feel sorry for Harry’s butler and date him?

Where does Sandman go from here? Peter forgave him, does that mean he’s free now? Sandman is kind of responsible for Harry’s death. Did Peter forgive him for that to? He seemed ok with just letting him go.

This movie upsets me for two reasons (And I’ll close on this)

1.       This is Spiderman we are talking about. It’s hard to mess up Spiderman, especially since you’ve already made two other successful Spiderman movies. I hate when filmmakers mess with Characters and story lines that are already so good. More than that I hate when filmmakers make one or two good movies in a row and then make a really bad sequel or third movie in a series. They mess with them until they ruin them. The numbers were good this weekend because of all the hype Sony pushed on us. I hope the word gets out on just how bad you have ripped people off.

2.       Comic book fans waited for a long time to see Venom on the big screen. You get one chance to use a villain (in most cases). Unless they do a version of Spiderman or “Ultimate” Spiderman we’ll never see Venom again on the big screen. It totally sucks that they used such a cool character as movie filler. Again, I ask what the heck were you thinking Sam Rami? You wrote the freak’n story for God’s sake?