I just got back from a midnight screening of Spider-Man 3 and here's my quick, and perhaps only review about it.
I guess I could write a few paragraphs lampooning the movie, pointing out every faults and unintentional moments of hilarity, making the movie sounds more like a comedy. But I won't. This movie is flawed. I expected it. It tried to do a lot of things, as shown by having 3 villains (including Venom who truly deserves a stint on his own). I disagreed with a lot of choices the filmmakers made about this. I came in with low expectations. However, in the end, I thought Sam Raimi and co have made a courageous and worthy effort to achieve their lofty ambitions and completed a trilogy quite successfully. The story is very complicated (it could be Babel of comic book films). Plus the movie also have to show their obligatory exciting summer movie action sequences and tell their story well. There have been summer films like this before like Van Helsing and last year's X-Men: The Last Stand that fell short. For Spider-Man 3, the filmmakers are barely able to pull it off, but in the end, I am quite satisfied with their efforts.
This film is also quite emotional. However, it really tries to coax a lot of emotions from the audience through a lot of complicated story in a short time as such many emotional moments actually feels forced. If the movie earns your emotion, it owes a lot of debt to the great performance of actors Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and James Franco (although Franco does have his moments of camp). It's just a summer movie, but they played their hearts out for this one. However, there are also scenes of camp and unintentional hilarity from Tobey and James, but that probably can't be helped given the nature of the story, and they're quite entertaining and easy to overlook (unless... see next paragraph).
Now, I believe the reviews are out and they're mostly mixed to negative (I have a feeling this film will show up undeservedly in many worst of 2007 lists and also my most underrated film of 2007 list). I understand the reactions. It's a very ambitious movie, and it is undeniably flawed. It's easy to criticize a flawed movie. If your tolarence for needlessly convoluted plotlines and forced emotional moments are low, then you're probably gonna hate this movie. For comic book fans, it really depends on how fanatic you are to the comic, I think the more fanatic you are, the more likely you're going to hate it (especially if you're a venom fan). However, when I look from the context of the first 2 films and see how this film fits in the trilogy, I think this movie has earned its place to successfully complete the trilogy despite of its flaws. This film could probably be The Godfather III of the comic book films. I've always thought that Godfather III, no matter how flawed, is overly maligned but it was still a great film that greatly completed the trilogy. Spider-Man 3 is like that, but for me, Sam Raimi has done a good job given the ambition and scope of the movie and gave a good closure to a movie trilogy. Here's hoping there won't be a Spider-Man 4, unless it starts afresh.
Final Rating: a solid 3.5 out of 5
PS: SPOILER
In my previous summer movie preview entry, I predicted that Mary Jane, played by Kirsten Dunst would die. I have been proven wrong. Mary Jane does not die in the movie. But one important character die. I told you this is an emotional movie, or at least a movie that tries to be one.
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