Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my thoughts on SPIDER-MAN 3.

I’ve had a few days to digest what I saw, so hopefully I’m as calm and composed as I can be, having had some time to go over my thoughts on the flick.

When the negative and mixed reviews began coming in a couple weeks back, I was a little worried, but I didn’t give them too much thought. I remember when the reviews for SPIDER-MAN 2 came in saying the film sucked and it turned out to be vastly superior to the first film (in my view). It’s one of my favorite superhero movies of all time, with so much attention to character AND action, not to mention the inspired casting of Alfred Molina as Doc Ock.

I figured the situation was probably going to be the same with #3.

I’ve contemplated how to write this review. Should I write it as a fan? Or should I write it as a critic? I thought it might be cute to write two smaller reviews, call one the Black Shark Quint review of the raving fanboy and one the Red and Blue Shark Quint that was a little more professional.

In the end, I think it’s better if I wrote the review as a mixture of both since that’s ultimately what I am. I can be both when I want to be.

The truth is the movie isn’t bad. Unfortunately, it’s just kind of lame, which is almost worse.

Don’t get me wrong. There are things to like in the movie. Thomas Hayden Church is a fantastic Flint Marko and I even like his dying little girl backstory. The accident that causes his transformation is a little random (more on the conveniences later on). He just falls into a secret lab while running from the cops. This place is run by the most inept scientists ever and he gets trapped, standing on a pile of sand, as his molecules are broken down.

My favorite part of the movie was watching Sandman take his first baby-steps as a character, not being able to form anything more than a humanoid lump of sand at first, then slowly finding his footing. There’s a particular moment involving a locket with a picture of his daughter that I loved.

Topher Grace as Eddie Brock is a breath of fresh air in a series that is showing the first signs of becoming stale. He’s natural, quick-tongued and extremely entertaining.

I like Tobey Maguire and I think he can be an incredible actor when he sets his heart to a project. Look at his work in PLEASANTVILLE and WONDERBOYS and ICE STORM. I could be completely off base… I don’t know the guy, but the feeling I get is that with each passing movie Maguire feels this series is beneath him, the spark in his eyes getting duller and duller.

Seeing Grace so energetic and alive made me wish I could see some sort of parallel dimension version of this series where he was cast as Peter Parker. He would have gotten the geek and would have gotten the wise-cracking Spider-Man, who has been fairly absent in this series, minus a couple one-liners in the first two movies.

One constant, though, is JK Simmons who is so damn funny and perfect as J. Jonah Jameson . His work here is fantastic. Hilarious. It’s worth seeing this flick just for him alone.

And, if for nothing else, SPIDER-MAN 3 stands above the other two movies in giving the best cameo to Bruce Campbell. That's somethin', right?

Let’s look at Bryce Dallas Howard for a moment. Gwen Stacy… okay, yes. She should have been in the first movie. I agree. But just like Grace kind of raised the bar for Maguire, Howard raises the bar for Kirsten Dunst. I respect Dunst as an actress, have liked many of her performances, but her as MJ has never completely worked for me. She’s not horrible, but not ideal.

Again, there’s something to Howard. Both women are beautiful, but Howard feels vibrant, alive and fresh whereas MJ in this movie is done a huge disservice as a character, written as a shallow, vain and sometimes ugly person.

Another unfortunate is that Gwen Stacy has almost nothing to do but get rescued, take a publicity photo with Spider-Man and cause Mary Jane to get jealous. I’ll bring this character up again in a minute. Bear with me.

Let’s talk about Venom a little bit.

I love the character. He was introduced right when I was beginning to read comics as a kid and back then the Spider-Man books were my favorites, followed closely by X-Men. I love that he represents the darker aspect of Spider-Man. I love that he’s the Lethal Protector, a monster that doesn’t have any qualms killing a thug that steals an old lady’s purse.

Everybody loves an anti-hero and he’s somewhere on the border of anti-hero and anti-villain. Plus the design for the character is just so damn cool. He’s a big monster and real threat to Spider-Man… he’s bigger, he’s meaner and he doesn’t set off our hero’s Spidey Sense.

Then there’s the duality of the character, how this alien symbiote influences Brock and vice versa, both of them feeding off the others’ hatred for Spider-Man.

All that stuff is fascinating to me, but unfortunately it’s pretty clear watching this movie that it’s not fascinating to Raimi. In Raimi’s defense, he’s always said he never cared for the character of Venom and watching the movie you can see that. He doesn’t really go beyond the base of the character. It’s Eddie Brock. Venom is a monster version of Spider-Man and he has a big toothy grin.

I could nitpick the character to death… believe me, I’ve heard all about it from Kraken, who was so pissed off at how Raimi handled the character that I’ve seen him go from rage to sadness back to rage again… Venom never refers to itself as “We,” which nullifies the duality aspect that people love about the character, etc. etc.

But there could have been changes made that didn’t piss everybody off.

Unlike The Green Goblin in the first film, they designed Venom damn near perfectly. I would have preferred a little more of a hulking monster, but I also dig the early Venom design where he was just kind of a grinning Spider-Man. I actually really dig the movie version of Venom quite a bit, but Raimi makes a huge mistake at the end… especially given that Venom is featured very little in the movie. I’ll get to that at the end, as well.

The script is just sloppy. It pains me to say it, but its true. It tries to tell too much, fit in too many characters and anytime they’ve written themselves into a corner they just come up with the lamest most convenient out they could find (I’m looking at you, Old Butler Guy).

Structurally, the script is interesting, but with a scope this big they decide to focus on the most ridiculous things, giving 10 or more minutes to Peter being under the influence of the Black Suit… but not. I loved the goofy SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER moment, to be honest… but then again, I loved the RAINDROPS ARE FALLING ON MY HEAD sequence in #2… It’s just so bat-shit goofy… maybe it’s because in both those sequences Tobey Maguire actually looked like he was enjoying himself, getting to do something funny.

But the problem is you hear Spidey talk about how great the power of the Black Suit is, but you never see him use it. It doesn’t give him any advantage in fighting Sandman. The second confrontation is more about him using his location than the suit helping him.

They spend more time with disco-Peter Parker being a show-off and a goof-ball than with Black Suit Spider-Man. That’s a horrible choice and I think it hurts the film.

It’s also sloppy that the one meteor in the universe that carries this symbiote to Earth just happens to crash next to Spider-Man. Really? I don’t mind too much that it landed in New York, but right next to the only superhero acknowledged in this film universe? C’mon, guys.

How about the Symbiote lands and attaches itself to a few different hosts, but ultimately its drawn to Spider-Man’s power and inner turmoil? At least that wouldn't feel as contrived.

If they did that, then they might not have had enough time to have Peter and Mary Jane play phone tag a half-dozen times or maybe it’d take up the time dedicated to the forced and hollow arguments the two have for the first 45 minutes?

The Eddie Brock/Venom character is interesting. The Sandman character is interesting. I even like what they did with Harry (The New Goblin). That’s probably the strongest arc in movie, but that has more to do with it continuing the momentum of his character from movie #1. However, there’s just not room in the movie to give any of these interesting dynamics and characters (let alone the black suit) enough time to live and breath, to become fleshed out.

I’m going to go into some major spoiler territory from here on out, so if you don’t want to know, don’t venture any further.

I told you I’d get back to Gwen Stacy and Venom. They are neck and neck for the Most Underdeveloped award for Spider-Man 3. Stacy didn’t matter. It could have been any other girl in her role (when you watch the movie, imagine if Stacy was actually Betty Brant from the Bugle, JJJ’s secretary who has been flirty with Peter for 2 movies now). She shows up, has a few scenes, then disappears while they go for the 3rd time’s the charm moment where MJ is kidnapped and in danger.

How about you stick Gwen Stacy up in the webbed up taxi cab? It makes more sense for every character. Peter likes her as a friend. Eddie Brock used to go out with her and blames Peter for them breaking up.

I guess the only thing that doesn’t completely work with Stacy being in the finale is the Harry/Parker angle, but honestly… at this point in the movie, it should have been enough that his best friend was in danger for him to go racing to the rescue.

The big battle at the end is epic, but distant. I hardly ever feel any real excitement or sense of danger when a character has to face down a giant CGI monster.

Speaking of CG, the work in this film is a step backwards for the Spider-Man series. There are a few key moments which are incredible, like the Sandman scene I mentioned earlier and most of the close-up Venom work, but on the whole the CG in the film is incredibly inconsistent. Most of it looks rubbery, which it absolutely shouldn’t given the money they had to work with on this thing.

What they ultimately end up doing to Venom is horrible. What’s really bad is they very cleverly found a way for Spidey to defeat Venom without killing him off as a character, then they just say, “Nevermind.”

That’s a whole lot of negativity, but I must stress that this movie isn’t horrible. It’s no BATMAN & ROBIN. I’d say it’s not even BATMAN FOREVER because at the end of the day, it still feels like the same universe that existed before.

I love Sam Raimi. I love his movies. I love the look of this series and there were even small moments in this film that just made me smile. Simple things like seeing a man in a kick-ass Spider-Man suit swing down to a busy street, land and look around, in one shot.

I thought, “Wow… what an amazing world we live in that I can see this on the big screen.” But I can’t overlook the flaws of this film. I can’t stand that battered housewife mentality of “Just be thankful you get what you get. I could have punched you in the mouth.”

Raimi is the man. I love his style, his goofy nature, his sense of humor. But, even though I hate to say it, I’m thinking it might be time to Harry Potter up the Spider-Man series. Get some fresh blood in there. An interesting and talented director, not a Brett Ratner or Paul WS Anderson, mind you.

I can feel the series getting stale, could feel it even before I saw the movie. They’re just not changing anything up. Every film is the same formula, just plug in a new villain (or three), rinse and repeat.

If Raimi comes back for more, he needs to change up the formula or he’s going to run it into the ground. I have two main suggestions for him.

One, please, please, please stop having Spider-Man take his mask off for every goddamn villain he faces. What’s the point of him wearing it if he just shows every bad guy who he is anyway?

Two, for the love of Christ… stop killing off every villain. There was no need to kill Doc Ock. His defeat and realization was enough. He kills off someone he shouldn’t have in this one, too. What’s the point? Keep your future options open, yeah?

Like I said at the beginning of this long-winded review, the movie isn’t horrible. It’s just bland when it should be exciting and it cuts short everything that succeeds in being interesting. The script mistakes are huge, the missed opportunity is even more depressing. For everything they do right, they do at least one thing wrong, leaving it in this sort of bizarre middle ground. Count me disappointed. This would be an even 5 out of 10 if I used a rating scale, with the first being about 7.5 and the second being 9.

I hope you guys like it more than I did. I pre-bought tickets to the Thursday Midnight at the Alamo Drafthouse and I’m going to take my little brother. Maybe on the second go ‘round I’ll appreciate the movie more or see something that makes the film work better for me. I can hope anyway.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com