Spider-Man 3 (Marvel Comics Movie Review)

Plot
The seemingly invincible Spider-Man goes up against an all-new crop of villains -including the shape-shifting Sandman - in the third installment of this blockbusting comic book adventure series. While Spidey's superpowers are altered by an alien organism, his alter ego, Peter Parker, deals with nemesis Eddie Brock and gets caught up in a love triangle.

Jason's Thoughts
When I saw that there was not one, not two, but three villains in the third installment of the Spider-Man franchise, I really thought this movie was going to be really bogged down. As the saying goes, three's a crowd, but somehow Sam Raimi squeezed it all in, and although I enjoyed it, Spider-Man 3 does seem to be a little bloated at times.

Spider-Man 3 features three villains in the form of Sandman, Venom and a new Green Goblin with Harry Osbourn at the helm. While the Green Goblin costume was a hokey as the original, the visual effects on Sandman and Venom were very good. Sandman isn't a character that one would think would translate well on the big screen, but the visual effects were well done.

However, the main drawback of having a trio of bad guys in this film is that none of them had much time to shine as the villains did in the previous movies. While having a few extra around can help break up the monotony of the movie and make it seem more epic, but instead of being the biggest battle Spider-Man has ever face, it ended up being villains that came across as vanilla and almost non-threatening due to the shared screen time.

Not only does Spider-Man 3 feature three villains, but there are also numerous subplots going on in the film that it seems as if there are too many strings dangling all at once. For instance, there is the rocky relationship going on between Peter Parker and Mary Jane, the strained relationship between Peter and Harry Osbourn, a new photographer in Eddie Brock moving in on Peter's territory, Gwen Stacy becoming a possible love interest, and Peter's attitude change due to the alien symbiote entering his system.

Oh, and for some needless reason, Sandman was fingered as the one who killed Uncle Ben. This is the one aspect that I hated the most. Not all of the rogues that Spider-Man faces has to be somehow connected to him, yet in this trilogy of movies, they all have some relationship with Peter Parker. While movies based on comic books can stray from its source materials, this aspect was created just for the film and completely unnecessary

As a matter of fact, the Sandman character could have just been removed from the film altogether. As I stated before, the effects for Sandman were great, as were a majority of the effects in this movie. There was just too much other things going on for a movie whose runtime is less than 2 1/2 hours. Either this movie should have been longer (which would have been too long) or this movie should have been split into two different movies.

While Spider-Man 3 is bloated, it was enjoyable, at least for me. It wasn't the greatest end to the trilogy, nor was it the best film of the franchise, but it was still head and shoulders above many other movies based on comic books. One villain too many, though, drags Spider-Man 3 down from being what could have been a great ending for a great trilogy.

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