Leading Up to No Way Home: Day 3 – Spider-Man 3

We exit the Raimi trilogy today on a low note. This movie is a travesty to it’s previous installments and to Spider-Man as a character. Unfortunately, it still counts as a Spider-Man movie and will likely be relevant to No Way Home as Sandman is confirmed to return. As a general note before diving in, my rewatch of this movie was a chore and all I can say is that it really prepped me to tear Spider-Man 3 to shreds.

Jack’s Score – 36/100 | Rotten Tomatoes – 63% | Audience – 53% | IMDb – 6.2/10

This movie immediately turns Peter into an ego-inflated showman that undermines his entire character arc from Spider-Man 2. This character change is marked well before the Venom symbiote is even introduced. For instance, when he has Gwen kiss him at the key to the city ceremony, this is extremely out of character. Peter knew that Mary Jane was in the audience and at this point had plans to propose to her. Peter Parker is not a showman.

Then, his conversations with MJ are entirely centered around his experiences as Spider-Man. This, combined with MJ not telling Peter that she got fired, lead to the conflict between them throughout this film. Miscommunication is a terrible plot device. It does nothing more than to frustrate the audience and never leads to satisfying payoffs.

Miscommunication is also the basis for Harry’s existence as a villain. Between him and Peter, as well as with Bernard, his butler, who knew the entire time that Norman Osborne was responsible for his own death. It’s nothing more that forced conflict.

Outside of all of that, Peter’s time being the host for the Venom symbiote is nearly unwatchable. I can understand that it is supposed to manipulate his personality, but there had to have been a better way to go about it than what was put to screen. He treats Gwen Stacey like a pawn and is constantly flipping between attracting every woman he meets to creeping them out. On top of that the way these sequences are filmed are distracting and cringey beyond any acceptable level. I’m just going to leave this here:

Finally, the villains in this movie are a mess. I’ve already addressed the problems with Harry as the New Goblin. As a result, his turn to good and subsequent sacrifice to save Peter is not compelling. Then we get Eddie Brock, who we are immediately introduced to as a brown-nosing fraud. The villain schtick gets a little too leaned on when he proceeds to go to church to ask God to kill Peter Parker. This is where he bonds with the Venom symbiote, which has a terrible design. Flint Marko as the Sandman isn’t terrible. The movie does its best to humanize him. The problem with his character comes in his final lines, where we find out that killing Uncle Ben was nothing more than an accident that no one is wholly responsible for. It diminishes the death and what it means to Peter. The only provision it gives is to allow Peter to forgive the man who killed his uncle, but this moment doesn’t hit the right emotional beats for the same reasons.

Overall, this movie falls flat. It’s a terrible way to end what is otherwise a fantastic trilogy. Frankly, I have nothing more to say on this movie, as short as this article is. Hopefully, if Tobey Maguire does appear in No Way Home, it will help give a more satisfying conclusion to his iteration of the character.

#Marvel #Movies #RaimiTrilogy #SpiderMan