Review: Spiderman 3

I've been meaning to write up a Spiderman 3 review for a few days now. Now that I managed to get ahead on work, this is about as good a time as any. Here's the short review: I liked it. I didn't like it as much as the first two, but I liked it quite a bit. For more, including a total disregard of spoilerphobia, continue below...

For all my incredible nerdiness, I just don't understand nerds. Here we are in the greatest era of all time to be a nerd and the amount of bitching continues unabated. We've had an unprecedented amount of comic book movies come out in the last few years. Yeah, there have been a few bombs in there (I don't even need to write a Ghost Rider review. Just, please, don't see it), but by and large they've been better than mediocre. I guess I just don't understand the mentality that all movies have to really impress me or they're regarded as terrible. Most of the time I just want to be entertained, and Spiderman 3 did that quite well. Look, it's not like I don't accept that there were flaws. In fact, let's have a whole paragraph about the movie's mistakes.

1) There's too much plot. It's amazing the movie works as well as it does with all that's going on, but it would have been nice if Eddie Brock had been introduced near the beginning of Spidey 2 and begun hating him by the end of that film. Still, he's important to the plot because Harry needed to die and the Sandman couldn't kill him without becoming unsympathetic. 2) The goth-Parker scenes were a little much. Even here I feel like I'm nitpicking, but I guess I can see how people might not like Pete getting all emo as the suit takes hold of him. Again, you've got to move Spidey from "This new suit is awesome" to "I think it might be an evil symbiote trying to take me over" in about a half hour, and a easy trick to do that is give him an increasingly non-friendly look. I actually liked the Saturday Night Fever scene as I tend to imagine that a super suit giving him more power might make Pete Parker more confident and kind of a douche, but it can't make him unnerdy. 3) Uh, I hear the video game adaptation isn't very good? Seriously, I saw it last Thursday and while I have a great mind for remembering trivial details about movies, I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that was out and out bad.

I've read a number of people online complaining that they didn't do the Venom story right. Well, I'm not sure what they expect. Here's where the symbiote comes from. I don't just consider Secret Wars one of the all time worst events in comic history because it set the precedent for crossovers merely being excuses for a bunch of characters to punch each other. I consider it one of the worst events of all time because it's fucking clown shoes. And Eddie Brock hasn't been an intersting character either. I won't go into it because this is already turning into too much of a rant, but just read the Wikipedia entry. Topher Grace's "Peter Parker without ethics" is much more interesting than what most Venom stories do with Brock.

In the end I just can't imagine why someone who liked the first two movies wouldn't like this one. Overall I'd give it a B+ or maybe an A- if I'm feeling really generous; nobody should be ashamed of a B+, but it's probably not going on your resume either. I paid $8 to be entertained and I most surely was. Mission accomplished. Sam Raimey should land on an aircraft carrier.

P.S. Best Bruce Campbell cameo of the series!