Sam raimi... what have you done? - Spider-Man 3 Reviews

I'll try my best to keep this from becoming a fan-boy rant. I'm majorly disappointed with Raimi after coming home from the midnight show. Not to mention, I'm utterly confused as to why he'd call this a fitting end to what may be a trilogy. The first Spider-man movie was excellent for it's first time at bat. I believe most would agree it had an endearing quality. Tobey really took this role and ran with it, not to mention a stellar performance by Willem Dafoe. While not quite perfect, it gave Spidey fans and the movie goers unfamilar with the concepts a fulfilling, well acted, stunning action movie. B+ Then here comes the sequel. Spider-man 2... uh oh, are we going to run it into the ground now? No, we're going to give you what most including myself without hesitation will call THE ABSOLUTE BEST, NEAR FLAWLESS SUPERHERO MOVIE OF ALL TIME. Alfred Molina had such a strong on screen presence, it was almost as though he was put here on this Earth to play Doc Ock. Wow, he really sold it. Stunning action sequences, realism, emotions, wow... just wow. A+ Then here comes 3, spoilers ahead. I was becoming increasingly skeptical after early reviews starting pouring in. Now I can say, rightfully so. How can Raimi, who hands down showed us twice over he's a man of vision. You'd think he'd at least have an idea of what he was doing here and try to surpass himself once more as he did with the first sequel... no. Let me first say it's good to try and give depth and emotion to these characters, obviously. If your answer to this is making every single character cry all throughout the movie, I think you've lost site of this. We're fortunate enough to have scene with Peter Parker crying, Sandman crying, Mary Jane crying, Aunt may crying, Eddie Brock crying, and hell let's have Harry cry too. The audience looked as though they were ready to cry too, but for completely different reasons. What? Did I accidently buy a ticket for the Notebook or something? Parker. Raimi's idea of showing someone being taken over by rage and becoming increasingly evil is apparently putting on mascara and rocking an emo haircut. Wait... that's not nearly evil enough, let's make him disco dance, womanize, and act completely irrational. That's evil. The only way that they could of made him more evil using this formula is if he listened to Marilyn Manson all day, played phone tag with MJ for 20 more minutes of vauable screen time, dyed his costume pink with white polkadots, and gave him a parasol umbrella to keep out of sunlight. Lame. Gwen Stacy. This actress in her 2 or 3 short pointless scenes was able to show off how hot she was. That's about it. There was no point, no development, no reason for being there. This is the least of this film's problems. Almost as troubling as the all knowing butler of Harry's... who wasn't even eluded to in either of the first two films, who can so easily repair the broken bridge that was Peter and Harry's friendship. Cop out. Let me get to my real beef. Venom. Resisting fanboy urges. Let me just say since I was five years old I wanted nothing more than to see my favorite villian/anti-hero of all time light up... or rather darken the big screen. I had no problem's with Topher in this role. My rage is focused on Raimi. He stated he wasn't a fan of Venom, and that he was an afterthought in this film. Well. It shows. The character just didn't fit, Brock seems out of place many times, and Venom is barely in this film at all. To say he departs prematurely would be an understatement. Where's my closure? You set up a MJ-Parker relationship all this time, and where are things left off? Awkward. And I thought they're relationship was left awkwardly at the end of 1... no. Sandman's daughter? Who cares. Characters die that SHOULD NOT have, characters cry that should not have, and a movie was made that should not have. It amazes me after the first sequel everything still seems so fresh, by the time I finished watching 3, I felt like it made the entire franchise stale. Some scenes didn't fit, it was almost as I was watching the director's cut with added footage that didn't really fit into the film. Not to mention awkward scene changes at points. There's no doubt about it, this was made to be a money maker, not a fan pleaser. Stan Lee must have been distant from this project or I think he would of put on those Hulk gloves with sound effects and beat Raimi unconscious with them. I'm being a little too hard maybe. Don't get me wrong, everyone should go see this film, it's a definitely popcorn movie. It just could of been so much more.