The saga of Peter Parker and his alter ego continues this summer with the third installment of the franchise. In my
review of
Spider-Man 2, I raved about the film but warned that other super-hero franchises were great the first two films, but fell apart in the third with the "creeping disease of franchise-itis." With the third film--the first in the super-hero film genre to return the full cast and director of the prior films--finally in theaters we will see if the same holds true for this franchise. The summary is: it does fall short of its predecessors and shows franchise-itis, but it is still an enjoyable film.
In 2, Peter was tormented by the conflicts between his personal life and his public life in the suit. In 3, the torment is still there, but it's Mary Jane who is tormented. Peter would be, but he's far too caught up in the celebrity of being Spider-Man. To a "nerdy kid from Queens" the thrill of rescuing hot blondes in distress and getting the reward of a lip-lock is too much to pass up. And then he can't understand why his girlfriend would be upset at seeing him kiss another woman. MJ and Peter are still together. In fact, Peter plans to pop the question. But the celebrity has gone to his head, so when MJ has issues and problems in her own career, rather than listen and provide support, he goes off talking about his issues as Spider-Man. Rather than losing everything because he's conflicted about being Spider-Man, he's losing his girl because he's now become far too comfortable in the role. As with the other films, it is this relationship between Peter and Spider-Man that provides the main story.
This big sign of franchise-itis in the film is the presence of three villans: Green Goblin 2 (dismissively referred to as Goblin Jr.), Sandman, and Venom.
Goblin is, of course, Peter's old buddy Harry Osborn, who still holds a grudge against Spider-Man for killing his father. The two engage in a spectacular fight early in the film, which all but kills Osborn. Peter takes him to the hospital, and when Harry wakes up he finds he has lost part of his memory, including the memory of who Peter is. This enables the two to become friends again. But, of course, Harry eventually remembers and gets back to the business of bringing down Peter Parker.
Sandman is Flynt Marko, the man, we find, who really killed Uncle Ben in the first film. He's a thief who steals to provide money for his sick child. While running from the police, he falls into a particle physics experiment (which inexplicably has nothing to do with particle physics, but rather whipping up sand storms in a controlled environment), where his body is destroyed and he becomes a creature of sand.
Venom is, well, hard to explain. First, there's what I would call pre-Venom. This is a gooey, living substance from a meteorite that, when bonded with a host, accentuates various negative characteristics of that host, particularly aggression. This substance finds its way to Peter, where it gives Spider-Man a black suit and a much more aggressive personality. At first Peter enjoys the power, but after one particularly shocking incident, he realizes what he's become and so frees himself from the goo. Then we get Venom proper. The goo, leaving Parker, finds its way to Eddie Brock, a photographer competing with Parker and who has been particularly humiliated. Brock becomes Venom, a creature much like Spider-Man in abilities, though far more evil.
There are too many villains flying around. None really get well developed. Venom is never even named in the film. I only know the name because of reading other reviews of the film. Apparently he is a pretty popular villain in the comics, but the film doesn't do much with him. He appears late and only has a couple of scenes before the big climactic fight. Sandman is just plain frustrating because he's like two different characters. The rules don't even seem well defined. The first time Spidey fights Sandman, he punches right though him. Sandman is, after all, a sand man. The movie uses this when convenient. But other times, when convenient, Spidey can hit him hard. As a character, he starts out being a thief with a good cause, then he becomes a pure bad guy trying to kill Spider-Man (for no defined reason), then at the end he becomes the thief with a good heart again.
At least the main story is well told and developed. As already written, Peter has become caught up in his own celebrity (anonymous though it may be). He's not there for MJ one night because he has to go off and do his superhero thing. He doesn't really hear MJ when she's trying to share the hurts of her day. And there's the aforementioned hot blonde and her lip-lock. Eventually, when she just needs someone to talk to, she pauses before dialing Peter and instead switches up to Harry's number.
Meanwhile, Peter is enjoying the things the pre-Venom goo is doing to him. Women notice him, initially with apparent interest but then with laughter to which he's oblivious. In what is easily the most hilarious sequence in the entire trilogy, Peter channels his inner John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever's his way down the street to buy a black suit (from a second hand shop, of course). He's no longer the push-over geek of high school. When Brock gets the staff job that Parker has wanted for years, Peter physically intimidates and then humiliates him, and enjoys doing so.
After MJ breaks it off with Peter, in an extremely well acted scene by both Dunst and Maquire, Parker gets his revenge by bring the now twice aforementioned blonde to the club where MJ is singing and proceeds to (a) show her up by performing a fantastic dance sequence that steals the spotlight and (b) shoving the blonde in her face. Very un-Peter-like, but it's not over. This sequence leads to the shocking incident mentioned above which knocks some sense into Peter's head.
With Peter's head finally cleared and dealing with a lot of remorse over what he had become, the stage is set for the climax. Which is disappointing. Having to wrap things up with so many bad guys makes for an over-long, not to mention somewhat recycled, ending. The resolution with Sandman cheats and doesn't really make a lot of sense. The resolution with Venom requires discovering at just the right moment a totally contrived weakness in the enemy. (As the Knights Who Say Ni have certain sounds and words they cannot bear to hear, so goes it with this alien goo.) The Goblin story line is the best resolved, but even that requires...well I won't give it away. Suffice it to say, a development comes out of nowhere to allow that storyline to get resolved.
So, in the end, Spider-Man 3 is an enjoyable summer flick with a lot going for it, but bloated and overly ambitious which makes it the least satisfying of the three.
Labels: movies, reviews
