Spider-Man 3: It's a good sign when the characters are more developed than the action sequences

I finally got around to seeing Spider-Man 3 (and writing this post) and I must say that, after hearing about the tepid response to this installment, I was pleasantly surprised. When the film begins things are going great for Peter Parker but in a way that's very grounded in reality. I think my favorite moment was seeing Parker stare, through a store window, at an engagement ring with a tiny diamond just as a clerk puts up a sign that reads "layaway available". It's a very authentic moment and it made me think that I could enjoy a 90-minute film about Peter Parker's life going swell.

Of course, it would be insane to spend 250 to 300 million dollars on a movie like that so Harry Osborn begins showing signs of his father, Willem Dafoe's, evil geniusness; genuinely nice-seeming crook, Thomas Hayden Church, walks into some strange nuclear-sand experiment that I'll never understand; and a goopy black creature drops out of space. Non of these things bode well for our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Parker eventually takes a sample of the creature to the creepy guy from Happiness who tells him that it is a symbiote that "amplifies characteristics of its host, especially aggression." Not quite, guy who will one day turn into a giant lizard, the characteristic that the symbiote primarily amplifies is douchebaggery, which is infinitely more entertaining on screen.

At this point the film takes a fairly long detour where Parker goes through one of the most amusing transformations I've ever seen on-screen. There's a montage where he gets a new, all black wardrobe and walks down the street giving every girl he sees the double finger-gun point, receiving an awful lot of eye-rolls in return. That's what I like so much about Sam Raimi, I think a lesser director would've had Parker become an arrogant prick and gotten all the chicks but when Parker douches it up in this film Raimi keeps it real by not having the ladies buy it.

I suppose I should take a moment to point out that the sequence I just described seems to be the reason why many people dislike this movie. It's goofy, bizarre and generally incongruous with what is supposed to be an action blockbuster. Of course, those are all of the reasons why I love it so much. So, there you go.

Although I like the way the group dynamic works out in the final battle, it is a little disappointing when the film moves away from the fun stuff and gets on with the real plot. Raimi seems to have so much fun with these characters and the material that you hate to see see the film devolve into a standard action movie. Even if it's a really well-made action movie, and it is. One of the great things about Raimi is that he's got such a strong background in horror that he can slow a fight scene down to a moment of pure terror in a way that I don't think a Brian Singer could.

Raimi is just a quirky guy with a low-budget past who's managed to work his way up to big blockbusters while keeping many of the idiosyncrasies that made him interesting in the first place. Not a lot of guys have done that and I applaud him for it.


By the by, every time I see a Spider-Man movie I think "Who's that black guy in the newsroom" and I am always amazed when I find out that it's Radio Raheem.