Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Film: Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Stars: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard
Director: Sam Raimi
Oscar History: It is one of only two films that led the Box Office in the past twenty years that received no Oscar nominations.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

As we are investigating the films of 2007, I figured it was important for me to see the year's highest-grossing picture (domestically, at least).  Somehow when it originally came out I missed the movie, despite having seen both of the originals and having a bit of a thing at the time for both Topher Grace and James Franco (also, what the hell happened to Topher Grace's career-he was the highlight of That 70s Show and yet Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis became superstars and Grace became Shelley Long).  The thing that kept me from the film at the time were the awful, awful reviews that accompanied it, but despite this fact the film made gazillions of dollars (for comparison's sake it made more money than mammoth hits like Captain America: Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy).  So I was curious what it would be like filling in this missing piece of Marvel iconography.  Unfortunately the initial reviews were right.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's biggest problem, oft-discussed when it originally was reviewed, is that it is WAY too busy.  When I originally started I groaned a little bit because the film was going to cross the two hour marker, but then I recalled that they would be covering three of the biggest villains in the Spider-Man universe: Venom, Sandman, and the Green Goblin.  How in the world were they going to give each of those three a real plotline without short-shifting one?  The answer was, of course, that they weren't.  In the Batman series the films became greedily worse whenever they expanded the number of villains, but while one villain is controlled, two villains is potentially solid but shaky, and three villains always ends in disaster.  Comic book villains are generally more interesting, at least aesthetically, than heroes, and so we want to see what they do, see what it's like for them to occasionally win before they eventually fall to their doom or learn the error of their ways.  Here, with three villains in such a short amount of time, we see no growth from any of them.

We see, for example, the ridiculous plotline of Venom (Eddie Brock, played by Grace).  Eddie goes from being a happy-go-lucky guy on top of the world, trying to get ahead, but then he quickly falls and becomes homicidal after just a few quick mishaps (his girlfriend Gwen Stacy dumps him-also, Gwen Stacy is coming chronologically after Mary Jane, totally throwing that entire lore from the comic books to the wind-and Peter Parker exposes his lies).  If we're meant to feel a little bit of sympathy for Venom, it fails (he kind of deserved both of these falls), and the movie is predicated on us thinking Peter has done something bad when, quite frankly outside of trying to kill the Sandman instead of arresting him, he doesn't.

The film also sacrifices a critical part of the initial movie by making the guy who killed Uncle Ben be someone different than the man he initially thought.  The original movie and comic book sees Spider-Man take up a hero's lifestyle when he realizes that letting evil grow has dire consequences (his uncle is killed by a man whom Peter doesn't stop from sticking up a convenience store).  As a result, the film in order to establish a quick rivalry between one of the three villains, gives up one of the most important moments in the first film and in Spider-Man's history.  I know I don't usually care about a film matching the source material, but the Uncle Ben story is arguably one of the most beautiful in comic book history, and I just don't see why they gave it up.  The Sandman villain, it should be noted, just randomly knows how to control his powers despite not even planning to become a villain, and we get a lazy story arch involving a dying daughter who doesn't even get a name (if she does, it's mentioned like once).  Overall, the Sandman and Venom stories are so ridiculously rushed and stupid that you wonder if they didn't actually plan on a fourth film and were just throwing paint on the wall.

The main stories, the ones that don't feel as rushed surrounding the Peter/Mary Jane/Harry love triangle have already been done to death in the first two pictures.  We make no use of Gwen Stacy (poor Bryce Dallas Howard gets underutilized yet again...also, she is in a LOT of movies), and Harry in love with Mary Jane is yet another repeat of a previous film.  We also get no indication of how Harry survives a blast about halfway through the film (or whether the Sandman is even beatable), and then dies later on in the film.  The movie tries for the epic, and everything is there, but it's trying to be too many things to too many people, and Tobey Maguire, nearing his mid-thirties, is too old to still be playing a guy who can't figure his life out like he's still a teenager.

Overall, then, this is possibly the worst comic book movie I've ever seen.  It's a mess, and when the only cool things about your film are seeing powers onscreen come to life, you have an issue (that's in literally every comic book film ever).  It's worth noting that I've never seen Daredevil, and I'm just now remembering Green Lantern exists (that was worse than this), but where does this rank in your personal estimation?  Do you think this film ruined the Spidey franchise?  Share your thoughts in the comments!