“This is not what I wanted, I didn’t want it to happen this way” says Thomas Haden Church as The Sandman in the third and by far the weakest installment of the now overblown Spider-Man franchise. I’ve chosen that line of dialogue to begin this review because I believe it reveals something a little deeper about this film.

SPOILERS IN THE WHOLE REVIEW FOLKS

I believe the line is director Sam Raimi telling us something. I believe his vision for Spider-Man 3 has been tampered with and compromised with the addition of characters such as Gwen Stacy and Venom. I don’t think he wanted the characters in his film and that’s why they are treated poorly. Maybe I’m giving Raimi too much credit, but I’m shocked at some of the decisions that were made with this film and I think he is only partly to blame.

Spider-Man 3 is a sloppy and incoherent mess where it feels like there is 3 movies in one. The first two Spider-Man movies I thought were great because they introduced a villain slowly and every step was the logical conclusion of the scene before. Alfred Molina becomes Doc. Ock because of his obsession to create his new energy source. Willem Dafoe becomes The Green Goblin because of his ego in testing his new machine on himself, when it’s deemed unsafe to do so.

So just why does Eddie Brock become Venom in this movie? Because he was in the same church as Spider-Man when he is trying to take off his black suit? Why does the symbiote attach itself to Parker in the first place? A god damn meteor fell to Earth! Why the hell do Venom and The Sandman team-up after running into each other in the street and why is the scene like something out of the animated tv show? (which by the way, handled the story of Venom way smarter than these guys).

Lame choices are all too frequent, and Raimi lets coincidence fill in the blanks for reasonings behind character’s actions in the film, rather than he giving them a a purpose to exist with a better written script that this film so badly needed.

We all know that Raimi isn’t a fan of Venom, no matter what type of rebuttal he comes out with these days. We know he didn’t want the character in his Spidey films and I don’t believe we really have. Topher Grace’s role as Eddie Brock is poorly executed from a script standpoint and when he becomes Venom it’s even worse. What is his purpose in this film? The Green Goblin had a purpose. Doc. Ock certainly had one in Spider-Man 2. The Sandman kinda has one in Spider-Man 3 (well he begins with one, but with most things in this movie it is soon forgotten).

He’s just tagged on at the end to say “well there you go fans, there you go studio and Avi Arad, there’s your Venom… will you shut up about him now please?”. I absolutely hated that you kept seeing Eddie Brock’s face in the Venon suit. What was with his silly voice?

I felt nothing in the Venom/Spidey fight. Nothing but sheer boredom and that’s not what I wanna see when Venom is up there. It should have been exciting. Spider-Man up against his most formidable foe but alas Raimi’s heart wasn’t in it. There’s nothing like the great train sequence from the second movie, that’s now a distant past.

Why did we have to sit through another Mary Jane Watson (weak Kirsten Dunst) and Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) soap opera of a love story. We have seen that in the first two movies, that storyline is done. Mary Jane made her decision to be with Peter, we don’t want to seem them two bitching and whining at each other, AGAIN! Move on, give us something new.

And while we are on that subject, why the hell is Peter Parker with Mary Jane anyway? She does nothing but shout, bitch and moan at Peter and when there’s someone as hot and as nice as Gwen Stacy (who Bryce Dallas Howard beams with beauty in her limited screentime) who by the looks of things is the perfect women and girlfriend, you really have to wonder why he makes the choice to be with MJ.

Of course one of my favourite set pieces was the Bruce Campbell cameo and I bet ya’ll knew exactly when it was coming, as the camera slowly panned right in the restaurant. It could only be one guy who would get such an epic buildup. I loved the scene and it made me smile in what was mostly a joyless film although I was begging to see the much talked about Mysterio cameo which alas never happened.

There’s an idiotic change in the character of Peter Parker, where he suddenly becomes John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever which I’m not really quite sure how to mention. It’s kinda like that goofy scene in Spider-Man 2 where he is walking along to “rain drops keep falling on my head” but in this film Raimi pushes the button too far, and I felt like the audience’s laughter was more at the film than with it. It was painful to watch, an almost WTF laugh out loud.

You would think by the third film they would have made Parker grow up a bit by now.

A few questions left over then….

Why was James Cromwell in the movie for 2 shots only?

Does anyone not wish that Aunt May would die?

Why do we have to hear Kirsten Dunst sing… TWICE!!!!

Did anyone else think the Harry Osborn (James Franco) memory loss was the lamest thing ever? And if that fucking butler knew about the Green Goblin killing Norman Osborune… why the hell didn’t he tell him sooner?

Did anyone else think The Sandman character was really great and interesting with the problems with his wife and daughter, but then they just quickly forgot about that and his moral plight, until right at the very end where it was like “oh yeah, he loves his daughter. He ain’t a bad guy really”. I could see what they were doing. Raimi was trying to make him out like a Universal Horror Monster from the 30’s and 40’s and it nearly worked, but just needed a bit more fine tuning.

Spider-Man 2, which remember I have frequently called the “best comic book adaptation ever” is severely done an injustice here. Spider-Man 3 is a hard movie to watch, a painful, boring and joyless movie. What the hell happened? If I had a watch, I would have been checking it at least 30 minutes before this flick ended…. awful.

The special effects and some of the fight scenes are cool though. Some of Raimi’s best work actually.

That’s it, I don’t wanna see anymore Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and thankfully I don’t think we will see any. His heart in the character is gone, it seems he was just doing a job here. Spider-Man 3 makes some crazy ass decisions and is a cluttered mess of a film that forgets about it’s moral center and the direction of where it is going. Hopefully, a new director is where it’s headed otherwise this franchise is done.