Spider-Man 3: A Beloved Franchise Shows Its Wear
Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco

Review by Breanne Boland May 17, 2007 Issue

It’s an unfortunate truth of sequels, one that hits extra hard for a third or fourth installment: to create and sustain drama, what was done in previous films must be undone. Girlfriends suddenly become jealous, goals fall inexplicably to the wayside, and life-long best friends get amnesia so they conveniently forget their revenge plots. Coming up with a storyline for a sequel seems to start by hitting backspace.

It’s true of Spider-Man 3. At the end of the last installment (as we see in the convenient synopsis over the opening credits), Peter Parker had gotten his girl and was settling into life as a superhero in New York City. Things weren’t perfect, but his quarrel with former friend Harry Osborn, the son of the now-deceased Green Goblin, had reached an uneasy plateau. Alas, everything falls to pieces. Mary Jane breaks up with him and Harry, brandishing a new collection of deadly inventions, tries killing Peter again in one of the best and most brutal fights in the movie.

At this low point, a black gooey creature called Venom latches onto Peter, turning his suit black and bringing out his aggressive, competitive tendencies. The interesting thing about Spider-Man has always been that despite his strength and abilities, he’s relatively fragile. He’s a nerd, he’s excessively earnest, and he’s a shade homely. Tobey Maguire does this well; even at 32, he still has enough of the Boy Scout about him to make a man in a webbed leotard seem vulnerable.

These qualities do not serve him well as the dark, angry version of his character. Director Sam Raimi has always had a penchant for loopy comedy; that he might have been indulging that tendency here is the only way to explain the absurd, over-the-top qualities of Peter’s dalliance with the dark side. While black-suited and sailing through the skies, angry Spider-Man seems capable of real menace; while walking the streets with his bangs in his face, trying to act cocky, Peter comes off as deluded and pathetic. Which may well be the point, but if it’s so awkward that the audience is squirming and laughing inappropriately, it doesn’t matter. Two words: dance number.

Along with James Franco’s New Goblin, Peter also has to face Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman, an escaped convict whose spin in a molecular acceleration device leaves him able to shape-shift and command sand. Peter’s work rival, played by Topher Grace, is Venom’s second host; Grace plays understated growing menace better than Maguire does, so it’s a relief when Venom moves on. Naturally, as is the way of films such as these, the villains team up, leaving Spider-Man racing to save the city he loves, as well as his trouble-prone ex-girlfriend.

The two villains are twice as many as the story really needs. Sandman’s back story is told with surprising tact, even if it’s never adequately resolved, and Church plays him as a restrained victim of circumstance. To have the bitchy, jealous Venom lurking about in there is only distracting; it’s also a tease, because he ends up being the dark reflection of what Spider-Man could be, something ultimately dropped, under-explored.

To Raimi’s credit, despite the film’s deficiencies, it doesn’t wrap up too tidily. It also doesn’t leave an excess of loose ends to pull into Spider-Man 4, 5, and 6, which were recently announced. We live in an era of sequels (as the trailers you’ll likely see in front of this movie will attest), of forced trilogies where release dates are pinned down before plots are. Spider-Man 3 shows some of the damage that comes from this kind of storytelling.

Its fight scenes, its deliriously swooping views of New York, the mid-air acrobatics: there are few things that can top this franchise for effects and exhilaration. Unfortunately, the backbone of the films — the characters and their relationships — have been manipulated a few too many times for the sake of drama, and the endless bending has left them brittle and unable to function like before.

Bottom line: there’s a reason most series stop at three.

Coming Attractions
May 18
Shrek the Third - Shrek’s father-in-law gets sick, and he’s looked to as the next inhabitant of the throne of Far Far Away. Loathe to abandon his relaxed life in the swamp; he and his friends seek another person for the throne, while Princess Fiona and friends have other ideas. With the voice talents of a few dozen incredibly talented people.

May 25
Bug - From Exorcist director William Friedkin. Ashley Judd is a woman hiding in a motel room who welcomes in a Gulf War veteran who is as unstable as she is. The insect infestation in the room challenges their tenuous holds on sanity and reality.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End - Probably you have heard about these movies before, yes? Well, here is what you need to know: Keith Richards makes a cameo as the father of Johnny Depp’s pirate. Oh yes. All the regulars are back, plus Chow Yun-Fat and an entire country of pirates.

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