About Spider-Man 3 -- and Part 3's in general
I suppose the big question is, is the third time the charm with Spider-Man 3?
No, unfortunately -- although that does not mean this is a bad movie. It is not. It can legitimately be called good, but not great like the first two (which can also be said of the Batman and Superman movies).
What we seem to have here is another case of what has been called "the curse of the 3s" -- which means that by the time you get to part 3 of something, things begin to go downhill. And sadly, many third installments have individual scenes, sequences or qualities that, on their own, are quite powerful and worthwhile. For instance:
Superman III: The big mistake here was the casting of Richard Pryor and the general shift in tone to silliness and stupid comedy scenes. Yet the highlight of the film (similar to Spidey 3) is the exploration of the dark side of a superhero. The whole sequence in which Christopher Reeve turns psycho and ultimately splits into two personas, having a big fight with himself, is the only reason the movie is worth seeing, and most people fail to acknowledge that Reeve actually did some truly good acting here, good enough so that the "bad Superman" is convincing and somewhat scary -- especially the scene where he is sitting in a bar, unkempt and unshaven, breaking holes in a mirror behind the bar while flicking peanuts at it (never mind that alcohol is not supposed to have any effect on Superman). Unfortunately, the rest of the film is shit.
Star Trek III: This marked the point in the franchise where the cast members basically assumed creative control of the movies, and so rather than really pushing the envelope in terms of character development or doing stories that were really about thought-provoking science fiction (or even real exploration), it became about the egos of the actors and their wanting to protect the financial gravy train that they were riding. Of all the Trek movies, only the first one can truly be called science fiction. Yes, it was slow and boring and it failed at actually being "Star Trek," but it had a grand-scale SF premise that really raised some interesting questions about man vs. machine and man's place in the greater scheme of things.
All the other films since then have been big-budget TV episodes. Star Trek II can be forgiven because it is so perfectly done and it allowed the characters to really advance and develop. These were not young people anymore; having to deal with getting older made things interesting and allowing death to intrude into their world (when Spock died) was an incredibly bold move. Yet anytime the Trek films took a bold step like that (or promoting Kirk out of the captain's chair, or destroying the Enterprise), a way would be found to timidly take back that development -- Spock was brought back in a cheesy way, Kirk gets demoted later on, Starfleet just happened to have another Enterprise tucked away in case Kirk broke his. And after Trek II, the next three films became about anything but growing old gracefully.
Yet, what was good about Trek III was the fact that, with Spock basically out of the picture until the end, each of the other characters got a moment to shine, and Shatner, dare I say it, actually does some good acting. But again, the good parts cannot eclipse a mediocre whole. Once Nimoy (and then Shatner) took the director's chair, the third, fourth and fifth movies became about playing it safe and giving the fans what they wanted -- and why would the actors want to risk their steady income by taking creative risks? (Because the movies might not make money.)
Alien 3: You have to give it credit for having the nerve to be a downer from start to finish -- in the first five minutes, most of the characters we cared about in the previous film are killed off (which kinda makes Ripley's heroics in Aliens all for nothing), and the main character bites it at the end. Basically, life does not always turn out the way we want it to, and in story terms this was a gutsy approach to take, and I think it actually works well. This was certainly not a decision to simply play it safe. Sigourney Weaver is great, as always. But the pacing drags at times, and given that most of the cast are bald Brits yelling "wanker" at each other, things get confusing and hard to follow after a while.
Batman Forever: Casting obnoxious Jim Carrey as the Riddler guaranteed the movie would be too over the top (and instead of providing a more somber, menacing counterpoint to Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones competes with him as Two-Face). But the Robin subplot is the one thing the movie gets right and is able to make interesting (though Val Kilmer is too close in age to Chris O'Donnell to really pull it off convincingly -- it was obviously written with Michael Keaton in mind, who would have been the right age to play the older, wiser mentor figure).
The Godfather Part III: In terms of story, it just does not compare to the first two. Yet Al Pacino singlehandedly makes it worth watching, and his performance is the only area in which the film equals what has come before.
Return of the Jedi: The point at which Star Wars went from being a real movie to a two-hour toy commercial aimed at the kiddies. The Ewoks ruined it for me, along with the fact that nobody other than Luke Skywalker really has anything to do here. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are wasted. The newer characters introduced in Empire Strikes Back with so much potential -- Yoda, Boba Fett and Lando Calrissian -- are either killed off in lame ways or pushed into the background. The Death Star thing had been done already. And having Luke and Leia be siblings is silly and obviously just a hastily thought up way of "topping" the surprise revelation from the previous film (not to mention that Luke and Leia commited incest when they kissed in Empire).
What redeems the film? The whole Luke-Vader-Emperor conflict and Ian McDiarmid's truly creepy, evil performance as the Emperor. But that piece of Jedi deserved a better overall movie to be part of. Imagine if Lando and Fett died in the first half-hour, very dramatically, in the battle to save Han -- so that Fett at least went out as a badass and Lando basically redeemed himself for betraying Han in the last film. Then, instead of silly Ewoks, we had the Wookiees on Kashykk. And finally, in the climax, Han and Chewie led the assault on the Death Star but could only destroy it in such a way that they would have to sacrifice their lives in order to pull it off. And Leia would finish the story by returning to lead what was left of her people from Alderaan and the Rebel Alliance once the Empire is destroyed (The Return of the Queen, sort of). Now that -- along with the Luke-Vader-Emperor sequence as is -- would have been a third chapter with emotional heft and worthy of following the first two. Alas, it was not to be.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Maybe it is me, but doesn't it kinda ruin the mystery of the character to learn that he is named after his childhood dog?
Terminator 3: Repetitive of the first two, although what I liked here was the two young stars. Nick Stahl, who plays the grown-up John Connor, kinda looks like a young Michael Biehn, who of course played the character who traveled back in time and fathered John Connor in the first film. Claire Danes is a good match for him, and many of the action scenes are well done (and ending the story the way they do takes guts). Oddly, it is Schwarzenegger himself who brings things down, as he seems like a parody of his earlier self (and the female Terminator is a poor substitute for Robert Patrick from T2).
X-Men 3: Shit. Nuff said.
Anyway, you see my (long-winded) point ... like Spider-Man 3, these films all had good points on some level but failed to live up to the greatness of their predecessors. To some extent, they are all watered down from what we had come to expect. We expect so much from movies like this that when one is not as good as the others, it really stands out jarringly. There was a good movie (or perhaps enough material for two movies) somewhere in Spidey 3, but it just gets weighed down by too much mediocrity.
The blame may lie on the producers – who demanded that director Sam Raimi inject characters and themes into the film that he didn’t necessarily want to. As a consequence, the director was forced to work with too many subplots; too many villains (including one he didn’t like) and too many stories each calling for their own resolution. At the end of the day, it seems there’s been too much to do … and Raimi just ended up shoving it all in … putting the producers’ “wish list” above the wants and needs of an audience.
What saves “Spider-Man 3” from being “Superman III” is the fact that it’s still a solid film that packs a punch when it comes to turn on the spectacle. The action sequences and special effects are as eye-popping as ever; the actors are as good as ever (Maguire and Dunst, especially); and the storyline is as fun as it is predictable. The Spidey series at this point is still in better shape than the Superman and Batman franchises were when they reached No. 3 in their cycles. But after this one, they really should give it a rest.
