If you're doing a follow-up to a film that was enormously successful, not just financially but critically, the pressure is on to produce a film that's even better. In the case of "Spider-Man 3", the results are unfortunately a mixed bag. Although this instalment in the franchise is still light years ahead of the first film, it does fall behind the second film by a fair bit. Part 3 had a strong foundation from which to build upon and the writers and director Sam Raimi have certainly given it a great shot to make the third film special but somehow its just falls under the weight of having too much crammed in to the story (didn't any one learn from the Batman films of the 90's that you don't put more than one villain in to the piece?). As a result, you have a number of storylines that by themselves would have been brilliant but mashed together like they are in this film ultimately leaves them all underdeveloped and unsatisfying. In short, I left thinking of that great line from Homer Simpson, "well it was good, but not great..."

As with Part 2, this film gives Peter Parker/Spiderman a strong character arc. Now having balanced his personal life as Peter Parker and his responsibilities as Spiderman, Peter is now having the time of his life; everyone loves Spiderman, Peter's doing well in class, and he's with the love of his life, Mary Jane. You'd think nothing would go wrong but alas a storm is brewing in the form a growing ego; all of this is now starting to go to Peter's head. This ultimately manifests itself visually and physically in the form of an alien symbiote which attaches itself to Peter, transforming him in to a tougher, stronger black-suited Spiderman. In his new state, he manages to start driving people away from him, including Mary Jane who unfortunately for Kirsten Dunst spends the bulk of the film sulking about her bad turn in life when things don't go her way. Eventually Peter realises he has to get rid of the black suit before it destroys him; as he does so, the alien symbiote detaches itself from him and drops on to Peter's rival at the Daily Bugle, Eddie Brock, transforming him in to the evil, sharp-teethed villain Venom played deliciously by newcomer Topher Grace.

Running along side this is the development of Harry's character in to the new Goblin; having learnt that Spiderman killed his father (or so he believes), Harry now utilises the Goblin technology he found in his father's mansion to transform himself in to a villain hell bent on vengeance against Spiderman. The new Goblin is much better than his predecessor; there's no green mask so we can still see his face. Perhaps they learnt that a villain behind a mask is no good. At any rate, in addition to dealing with the black suit, Peter also has to manage Harry and his constant attacks which ultimately tests the boundaries of their friendship and sets them on course for a love triangle with Mary Jane when Peter's ego pushes her in to Harry's arms.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that this would be enough to sustain the story but wait! There's more! We also have the Sandman. Caught in a scientific testing area while on the run from the police, Flint Marko finds his molecules scrambled with grains of sand, thus transforming him in to the shape-shifting villain, the Sandman. Marko wants to cure his daughter's illness, and through some rather arbitrary retrospective storytelling, we learn he is also responsible for Uncle Ben's death in the first film. When Peter finds this out, he exacts vengeance in the form of the black-suited Spiderman but only with mixed results.

The main problem with this film is that it's trying to do too much. It's juggling too many storylines, too many characters and ends up being a jack of all trades but a master of none. On the face of it, although the Sandman is beautifully rendered (his origin scene ranks as probably the best-executed origin in any superhero film to date, particularly how he struggles to make up his body out of the granules of sand), his story seems to be the most arbitrary. Apparently the Sandman was a favourite of director Raimi but Venom was insisted on by the producer and what's that saying about too many chefs...? Venom's storyline is better integrated in to the plot as Eddie Brock shows up early in the film but unfortunately Venom doesn't show up until the last third of the film (mainly because we get side-tracked by the Sandman, black-suited Spidey and the Goblin story) and as a result, we only get to see Venom in action for about twenty minutes before he's disposed of by Spiderman. Clearly Raimi won the battle as the Sandman lives to fight another day in another eventual sequel whereas Venom dies a horrible, explosive death!

Another story that gets diluted severely is the Peter/Harry relationship. This is clearly the strongest as we've gone through two films of it before this one and it's the strongest storyline on offer in this film but because there's too much going on, even this gets chopped off at the knees, undeveloped (although perhaps not as bad as the other storylines).

There are some bad points. Mary Jane is given a woeful throughline in this film, pretty much just sulking about the bad luck she is getting at the moment in her life and how Peter isn't there for her. Another massive misstep, although I'm sure it was well intentioned, is a truly atrocious scene where Peter, having donned the black suit and brimming with confidence, is pointing the gun fingers at all the cute girls he walks past. Not good.

If they'd concentrated more on focusing the story, this installment in the Spiderman series would have been as brilliant and masterful as Part 2. Instead, we have a film that is still very well done, entertaining and technically well executed, light years ahead of the first film, but ultimately no where near as satisfying as the second film.

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