Spider-Man 3 (2007) Options

[Betsy Speicher]

imdb.com listing for Spider-Man 3 (2007).

Movie suggested for rating by Mercury.

[Mercury]

This is a fabulously entertaining follow-up. There isn't a boring millisecond.

The movie's tone shifts uneasily in places, giving it an unpolished feel, but somehow the whole thing hangs together and is thoroughly engrossing.

Sam Raimi does a great job: this may be the best action directing and special effects I have ever seen. So much verve...life most abundant!

The acting is very good, with James Franco standing out. Hayden Church, Maguire, Dunst, and Grace all rise to the occasion. They are great guides on this emotional rollercoaster.

I'd always found Bryce Dallas Howard very attractive, but my attraction is now at crush-proportions. She's soo....

A great way to start the summer.

[darren]

I thought Spiderman 3 was absolutely horrible. This movie ruined every good plot line set up from the previous two movies, turned the "black suit" story-line into a bunch of nonsense, and made the hero out to be a wimp who can't tell right from wrong. This movie turned the Spiderman trilogy into one that that's a lot like the Matrix trilogy: A series that starts off well, but declines so fast that by the end of the third movie you wish you (and the makers of the movie) hadn't wasted your time.

It's almost frustrating how bad this movie was because it didn't have to be. I probably shouldn't go into many details here, so I'll just say that I think there are many scenes that could have been cut, scenes that could have been expanded, or small edits in the story line that would have made the movie make more sense. I'm not a huge Spiderman fan, but the black suit story I remember made much more sense. It's almost like the makers of the movie deliberately made changes that could only make the story more confusing.

I wish the movie makers would have taken the movie seriously. The Saturday Night Fever scene, the scene where he combs his hair differently, the piano bar, the local news broadcast, the message the bad guy leaves for Spiderman, the butler's speech, the meteor, the bridge scene... give me a break. What was he point in any of that?

I thought the funniest part of the movie was when it ended and people started to get out of their seats, only for the acutal scene to come up. Most didn't bother to sit back down.

I think there are some real problems with the ideas this movie pushes. It's hard to make too big of a deal out of the movie when it's obvious that the movie makers didn't take it seriously, but I think there is some real confusion between the concept of "vengeance" and "justice." Also, the movie seems to also talk about the importance of the choices you make, but then the movie ends with the bad guy.... argh, I can't say without spoiling it.

I was really looking forward to seeing this movie, and I was let down. I will never see this one again.

[Arnold]

The movie had a nice start and generally had a good set of values. While I can enjoy fantasy, such sequences must have a connection to reality. In this regard, the special effects are too intense, fast and difficult to follow; in short, leave me uninvolved. I give it a 7 for sense of life, but 3 for getting me engrossed.

[bborg]

I finally got around to watching this yesterday. I enjoyed it, but I thought the way the conflicts were resolved was lazy and contrived. Mostly, Harry’s reform was unconvincing. Perhaps they wanted it to look like his friendship with Peter during the brief amnesia brought him back in touch with his values, but I don’t think it was done well. Also, the number of internal conflicts going on with each character gave each too little screen time to understand their transformations. The battle-royale at the end just looked like a fan fantasy without much substance to it.

However, one thing I was impressed with was the difference between Peter and Eddie with the symbiote. The writers seemed to have a better grasp of the nature of emotion than most people. For example, even though the symbiote amplified aggression more than other emotions, Peter’s aggression was mostly in reaction to injustices (finding his uncle’s real killer, being betrayed by his best friend). Eddie, by contrast, immediately became a villain. This, to me, was an acknowledgement that emotion is tied to values. If you notice, most of the time Peter is in the black suit, what gets amplified is his confidence and even playfulness (in his embarrassing display outside with the pointing and dancing).

The theme of the movie, “every hero has a choice” was not done especially well, but the movie’s focus on volition does raise its sense of life for me. This is something I enjoy about the Spider-Man movies, the idea that we shape our own destiny. One thing that brought this one down a peg was the package-deal of cockiness and selfishness in the Peter/Mary-Jane relationship. I would give it a 5 for Artistic Merit and 7 for Sense of Life.