Apparently Sam Raimi doesn’t realize the way these big film franchises usually work, with a predictability approaching an ironclad rule–these things are supposed to get worse and worse, not better and better. Sequels are almost always worse than the originals, and certainly by the point you reach the third film in a superhero franchise, things are supposed to start rapidly falling apart (It was the third Superman movie, for example, that introduced Richard Pryor as the Man of Steel’s sidekick, and the third Batman film in which Joel Schumacher inherited the reins from Tim Burton).
Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 actually improved upon the original, and this third installment offers no dip in quality–the creators are unchanged, the cast is unchanged, the lived-in New York City setting is unchanged, and the tone that blends elements of drama, horror, high comedy and special effects-laden action is unchanged.
If Spider-Man 3 doesn’t improve upon Spider-Man 2 to the same degree that the sequel improved upon the original, it would seem to be only because it’s handicapped by its ambition. There are simply more characters, more plotlines and more hints for future films seeded herein than in the previous ones. The film blithely breaks the Two Villain Rule (which states that any more than one villain in a single superhero movie spells disaster) by giving us three marquee villains. The focus pulls back from its tight focus on Peter Parker, Spider-Man to more heavily include his relationships with Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane and friend James Franco’s Harry Osborn, making for a pseudo-Shakespearean (or at least soap operatic) love triangle between the three, one involving oaths of revenge, amnesia and back-stabbing.
And it still makes plenty of room for J.K. Simmons’ gruff J. Jonah Jameson act, Rosemary Harris’ wisdom-dispensing Aunty May, and even serial cameo-ers Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi and, yes, Stan Lee.
The plot is so complicated, it’s approaching Byzantine, so stay with me here. Life is, for the first time, going great for nerd-made-good Peter Parker and his alter ego Spider-Man. Pete’s doing well in school, where he has a beautiful new lab partner, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard, apparently being groomed to hedge future bets should Dunst decide not do a Spider-Man 4), and is madly in love with the love of his life, Mary Jane, to the point where he’s ready to propose. The city has finally accepted Spider-Man as a superhero, to the point where he’s getting parades in his honor and being handed the key to the city.
Not that he doesn’t have his problems, which soon start to multiply and feed into one another.
A falling star sends a pile of sentient black goop his way, goop that is attracted to dark feelings, and eventually turns itself into a black suit that drives Peter a little bonkers (and inspires him to dance).
He learns that the man who killed his uncle is still out there and, what’s worse, has just gotten himself superpowers (Thomas Haden Church, as the Sandman).
Hotshot photog Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) is trying to steal his job out form under him at The Daily Bugle.
And his best friend Harry, who still blames him for murdering his father at the end of the first film, is out for revenge as a totally x-treme new Goblin billed in the credits as “New Goblin.”
Oh, and Mary Jane’s acting career isn’t going very well, driving a wedge between the young couple (A plot that is elegantly metatextual, as she wrestles with the problem of being a supporting character in someone else’s story, instead of a star of her own).
Whew!
Raimi sets a lot of plates spinning here–one gets the sense that the film was made with the understanding that it could very well be the last one, so he’d better hurry up and get as much as possible into it–but does a remarkable job. Every character has a fleshed out back-story and interlock with each other quite nicely; yes, two-to-three villains is probably too many, but none of them would work without the other ones.
There’s more than enough going on for two, maybe three movies here, but Raimi does a great job of making them all fit into a single one, hardly ever betraying any bulges or irregularities that might have signaled over-packing.
I could have used another half hour or so to develop the relationship between the Sandman and Grace’s anti-Parker, who inherits the goo to become Venom near the final act, when they decide to team up against Spidey. And that’s probably the film’s only drawback–simply put, as long as it is, it’s just not long enough. In a post-Lord of the Rings world, a three-hour summer action movie should be more than acceptable, but what’s best for the box office isn’t always what’s best for the film, and you can see a bit of that in Spider-Man 3. But, thankfully, just a bit.
It’s as close to perfect movie as a superhero movie can be, and now having produced three consecutive films of similar caliber and quality, Raimi, his co-writers and his cast have done something completely unique in the ever-burgeoning genre. They’ve made a set of comic book films that have managed to successfully transplant the serial nature of the comic book medium to the silver screen.