See that picture to the left? With a hunched over Spidey looking like some a-hole stole his cookie? Well that’s pretty much what I felt like after SPIDER-MAN 3 came to a close very early this morning (approx. 3am to be exact). Yes my friends, the latest installment in what has been a dream-come-true for this unabashed Spidey geek, is a fairly significant disappointment. Heartbreaking would be another appropriate word to describe my feelings. It’s like writer/director Sam Raimi got bored and went camp-crazy, forgetting this wasn’t another entry in his EVIL DEAD series. I guess we all gave the dude a little too much credit for the success of SPIDER-MAN and SPIDER-MAN 2 (the best superhero movie ever in my opinion). We should’ve known better after seeing all the lame-o flicks he produced and helped bring to the screen with his little production company, Ghost House Pictures (responsible for BOOGEYMAN, THE MESSENGERS, and THE GRUDGE remakes).

The script is sloppy with a plot fueled by an endless supply of questionable coincidences, the humor is very hit or miss (many times missing very badly), the drama feels forced and contrived, badly constructed exposition is fast and furious, plotlines are resolved ridiculously quick or not resolved at all. And the movie is awfully and laughably cheeseball. The last action sequence is overblown and just boring. And what’s with all the crying? Having a character breakdown in tears should be a highly charged emotional moment that hits an audience hard, but in this movie it happens so often that you actually start to feel disgusted. I won’t even mention how bad they screwed up comic book canon with their empty characterizations of such classic characters as Venom/Eddie Brock, Gwen Stacy, Sandman, and Captain Stacy. They even managed to screw up their own movie canon, by either shortchanging or misusing characters like Aunt May, Mary Jane Watson, Harry Osborn, even Peter Parker himself. Its so bad they they even go so far as to revise Ben Parker’s death all in an effort to validate a new character’s existence (a character that truthfully doesn’t even need to be in the movie). There’s just TOO MUCH going on, too many villains, and not enough time dedicated to each plotline or character. They could’ve easily saved Venom for a fourth film, and simply set him up in this flick. But I digress, I don’t want to be one of those online reviewers that write about what should have been in a flick instead of discussing what was in the flick.

I love comic books, but I also love movies. I don’t care how far along CG effects have come, they still cannot convincingly pull off sequences like the ones depicted in this flick. I’m a firm believer that comic book movies need to hold back a bit and not adopt some of the more preposterous staples of the comic book medium. The symbiote and Sandman’s origins are rushed and completely unbelievable (the cartoon from the 90′s had a better reenvisioned origin story for the alien symbiote) and the subsequent “teaming-up” of Sandman and Venom was hurried and also very unconvincing. But those are the sort of things that are readily accepted in comic books. No matter how much some of this stuff may appeal to the comic book geek inside us, these moments just ring too untrue to ignore. They just don’t work on the bigscreen and filmmakers need to realize that. That’s why the first and second movies worked so well, they had their share of absurdity, but they kept things simple enough to allow for it. Finally, while the first two SPIDEY flicks closed out with goosebump-inducing sequences of Spidey swinging among the skyscrappers of New York, this 3rd entry seems to end with something of a whimper and uncertainty.

After all this ranting and raving, you probably get the impression that this could be the worst comic book movie since BATMAN & ROBIN or FANTASTIC FOUR. The truth is, it is not. It in fact has a number of really good, and sometimes great, moments throughout. I would even admit that the first half of the flick is pretty spot-on, almost perfect. I even turned to my girl about 90 minutes in, about the time Harry Osborn begins his mental and emotional ravaging of Peter Parker, and whispered “I love this!” While I think the overall interpretation of Peter under the influence of the symbiote was lacking and completely offbase, I did dig some of the initial scenes with that element in place. In particular, the moments when he gets his revenge on Harry, Sandman, and Eddie were quite good. Its only when Emo-Peter Parker starts his “Saturday Night Fever” impression that things begin to unravel. Maybe that’s why I’m so saddened by all of this, because SPIDER-MAN 3 had all the goods to be another classic Superhero movie. I could go into more details about the characters, the plot, what was done right and what was done wrong, but I don’t really want to. It really kind of hurts just thinking about what a misstep in the franchise this is. Its worth seeing on the bigscreen, but just don’t expect the greatness that the last two films achieved. I don’t know, maybe I’ll like it better the second time around. But at this point, I’m in no rush to sit through SPIDER-MAN 3 again. And I think that right there says more than anything else I’ve written here today. Until next time, see you at the movies.