Spider-Man 3 | 
| Director: Sam Raimi
Actors: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
This item is no longer available
Rating:  453 reviews
Sales Rank: 5437
Genre: Action
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 140 Minutes
ASIN: B00118RPQC
Theatrical Release Date: May 4, 2007
Release Date: March 28, 2008
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| Synopsis:
In Spider-Man 3, based on the legendary Marvel Comics series, Peter Parker has finally managed to strike a balance between his devotion to M.J. and his duties as a superhero. But there is a storm brewing on the horizon. When his Spider-Man suit suddenly changes, turning jet-black and enhancing his powers, it transforms Peter as well. Under the influence of the suit, Peter becomes prideful and overconfident and he begins to neglect the ones he cares about the most. As two of the most-feared villains yet, Sandman and Venom, gather unparalleled power and a thirst for retribution, Peter’s greatest battle is the one within himself. Spider-Man will need to rediscover the compassion that makes him who he is: a hero. |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 448 more reviews...
 Too many crooks spoil the broth May 9, 2007
Tim Brough (Springfield, PA United States)
90 out of 123 found this review helpful
"Spiderman 3" falls victim to a common ailment of most hero movie franchises. If one villain is good, then two would be great, But if two would be great, then three would be fabulous! (Think the horribly overstuffed "Batman & Robin" or "Superman III.") So while I really enjoyed the third installment in the Spiderman series, I kept getting the feeling that I was watching what would have made two great movies crammed into a single average one.
For instance, is Thomas Haden Church's Sandman necessary to this film? Granted he lets the dark Spiderman loose for a bit, but both The New Goblin and Venom get their turns as bad spidey bait. It also sucked points away by convoluting plot points and weakly re-writing the circumstances of Uncle Ben's death. The movie's pace would have significantly improved had the conflicts been more limited to Peter, Harry and Eddie Brock. Since the main focus was on Harry and Peter's attention to Mary Jane and Eddie's anger at losing his girl to Peter, it would have tightened the story if Sandman had been saved for later.
The conflict also gives Tobey Maguire a chance to goof around with the role. His moments as Dark Peter Parker are some of the film's funniest (following J.K. Simmons as J. Johah Jameson), and his antics in the jazz-cafe were the ones that got the big reaction in the theater I was watching this. I also found it amusing that when Peter gets bad his bangs suddenly fall down his face and he looks like he should be joining a Fall Out Boy/My Chemical Romance concert.
What all this crowding does accomplish is a shortchanging of character development. How Sandman and Venom form an alliance in zero seconds flat is whiplash inducing as is the almost total lack of development in Topher Grace's character. He's brought in so quickly you wonder how he became so angry so fast in his evolution into Venom. Aunt May is barely in the plot at all; Peter's apartment manager and daughter get more significance. Harry/The New Goblin plays a major role throughout, but his character stages are done so abruptly that, once again, you end up wondering what the heck just happened here.
This probably won't distract you from all the action, and Sam Raimi again delivers the goods. The flights, fights and special effects are astonishing as ever. Spiderman's suits are as sleek and cool as before, and all the gimmicks will keep your eyes on the screen. So will the obligatory Stan Lee cameo. All told, "Spiderman 3" is not a bad movie, but given that both one and two were amazing, it is still a minor let-down.
 Lower Your Expectations A Bit and Then Have a Blast! May 7, 2007
Steven Hedge (Somewhere "East of Eden")
47 out of 80 found this review helpful
This film had awfully big shoes to fill with the highly successful Spider-Man 2 which is arguably the best comic-book film of all time. One can't fault the spidey team for trying to be ambitious here, but they just can't exceed, let alone match, their previous effort. This film is extremely satsifying and deserves to be the blockbuster that it is with its record setting $148 million opening weekend, outdoing Pirates 2 the previous opening weekend champ. Pirates 3 just missed outperforming Spidey 3 by about 10 million recently; therefore, Spidey 3 reigns champ for now on opening box-office revenue.
One has to consider the pressure on this team to continue a story in which they obviously have great affection and in addition to living up to great expectations, these folks also had to heavily consider that this could be the last Spider-Man film as both Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst have made it very clear that they want to move on past Spider-Man before it wrecks their careers like the superhero actors of the past. This may explain the overly complex storyline, the introduction of Gwen Stacey (for future romance should Dunst walk), multiple villains (under the notion that more is always better), and the over-reliance on special effects (which are outstanding). It's all a bit too much even though it is all entertaining, but if this is to be the last Spidey film, they wanted to give it all they had. Too bad it just isn't as good as their last effort, but it is still an outstanding film and great popcorn fun. You will have a blast with this film if you lower your expectations just a bit. I left the theater very satisfied.
Some Strengths: The Sandman effects are outstanding and manage to emote great sympathy for this character who is skillfully played by Thomas Haden Church of TV's Wings and the hit film Sideways. The black blob effects are really spooky. Kudos to James (Annapolis) Franco as Parker's best friend. He was outstanding and believable the entire time.
Some Weaknesses: Too ambitious and too contrived. Spidey being taken over by the black blob wanders back and forth from weird and haunting to sensationally funny to the point of looking like a Saturday Night Live parody of Saturday Night Fever. It became laughably distracting to an otherwise good storyline.
 Spider-Man 3 takes you on an emotional journey and does not disappoint May 5, 2007
Porfie Medina (Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA)
41 out of 51 found this review helpful
I have to say Spider-Man 3 was another great addition to the Spider-Man trilogy. I do have to admit I was afraid this movie would not live up to the first two Spider-Man's. I mean those first two were great and how could this one possibly match that? After I finished watching it I can say I was not at all disappointed. I think many people were expecting this to be just like Spider-Man 1 and 2. Spider-Man 3 does take more risks than its predecessors by having more villains than usual, but It still manages to entertain, spark emotion and above all inspire and bring out the kid in many of us. It is like the first two with many of the same characters returning, but where Spider-Man 3 differs is when we get to see the dark side (with the black suit) of Spider-Man which takes the movie to a whole new level. I have to say this movie was AWESOME. This movie truly has a great stand out cast. TOBEY MAGUIRE who plays Spider-Man did a great job as usual and brought emotion to the character that made him more human than any other hero in a comic book inspired movie. The action scenes are amazing and they make you jump out of your seat a few times. All that along with the emotional journey that Spider-Man takes you on, that's what truly makes this movie so great and special. This is one Roller-Coaster ride that I highly encourage any one to see. The ending is also a surprise and I will not give it away, but I will say some people liked it and some people did not, Go figure. I did not buy in to all the hype of this movie, or the negative things some critics had to say. I went to see Spider-Man 3 to be entertained and I was not at all disappointed. With a expected DVD and blu-ray release date of November 2007 this is sure to be one great year for Spider-Man fans!
Too many villains make for a scattered plot May 21, 2007
T. Burger (Chicago)
29 out of 56 found this review helpful
Spider-Man 3 is everything that its predecessors were not. In other words, where the previous two were shining examples of great movies made from comic books - especially the second - this was not. In the event that anyone ever wonders again if more villains means a better movie, SM 3 should provide the definitive answer: NO. The problem with making a movie with three villain is that you can't ever properly focus on one of them, which then means that unless they're united as one with a common purpose (as in Superman 2), you're left with plot strands and story arcs that intersect and some are left hanging while others are explored. You *forget* that there's something else happening - or, if you don't forget, you wonder why you should care.
The special effects, it should go without saying, were fantastic, and the high production standards and solid acting were what lifted this from being a very, very bad movie to an entertaining one. In the hands of a lesser director, and certainly without the big budget, this might have been the cinematic equivalent of used coffee grounds.
But even so, there were times when I laughed aloud in the wrong places. For example, Spidey encounters his dark side in this film, and much has been made of that in the previews, so much that I don't feel the need to say much more about it. When Peter first saw his dark side, we got a glimpse of that with Maguire pulling his hair down in front of his face in a pseudo goth style (had it been longer). He didn't look like he was in a moment of magnifying his dark side; rather, he looked silly. The film's exploration of Spider-Man's and Parker's dark side delved no deeper than the black suit he wore for a bit. And it was, well, lame. My roommate thought that the film was trying to be funny during most of it, and they probably were. In that case, it truly beggars the imagination. I hope they were trying to be serious, because if anything Maguire was doing while wearing the black suit under dark clothes and messy hair was supposed to be taken seriously, ouch. It didn't work.
Another friend commented that he wanted to channel Tom Hanks from A League of Their Own and remind the filmmakers that "There's no crying in comic books!" Of course, there is, but there was far too much of it in this movie, with little believability to back it up. There was far too much down time - i.e., time where nothing of consequence is happening - for a film with a budget of some $258 million dollars.
Still, I found myself entertained. True, I was quite pleased when the film ended, but I wasn't pulling an Elaine from Seinfeld when she was watching The English Patient with Peterman, squirming in my seat and wanting to get out at any cost. That was likely due to, as I mentioned above, the high production standards.
 Looks like Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi were actually trying to make a bad movie May 4, 2007
SylvesterFox007 (USA)
20 out of 37 found this review helpful
Right now, I know you're not going to want to believe me. But trust me, this movie isn't what you think it is. I loved the first Spider-Man movie. I tell people that it took me on the whole emotional journey: I laughed, I cried, and I had more fun that I did during any other super hero movie. And then I enjoyed the second Spider-Man movie.
But there were those rumors that Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, and Kirsten Dunst all wanted out of the franchise. And there were those rumors that the producers wanted to do more, with or without them. About halfway through "Spider-Man 3", I got the distinct impression that writer/director Raimi and star Maguire were intentionally trying to sabotage the franchise, brilliantly screwing the studio heads begging for more sequels and, consequentially, the audience as well.
The movie starts out promisingly enough, as an excellent character drama in the spirit of the first two movies. Like the first two, the movie puts the emphasis squarely on the character of Peter Parker and his relationship with those around him, specifically beautiful redhead Mary Jane and "New Goblin" James Franco, as well as Eddie Brach Gwen Stacey, Aunt May, Sandman, J. Jonah Jameson, Captain Stacey, and too many others for the director to keep track of, even if he wanted to, which Raimi certainly doesn't seem to. Then there's the sloppy handling of the introduction of the symbiote that will eventually create Venom. And there's also the annoying continuity error of Eddie Brach, already mentioned as being a photographer for the Daily Bugle in the second movie, coming to the Bugle for the first time in search of a job.
Despite a few excellent action sequences, the character drama soon devolves into an overly long soap opera filled with love triangle upon triangle and other contrived interactions between the characters. The movie then devolves further into a B-list monster movie. Along the way, it mixes in song-and-dance numbers, extremely awkward and sometimes laughable moments, forced humor, and cliche lines from cheesy buddy cops movies. And the whole time the dialogue and situations become more and more cringe-worthy, to the point it seems certain that Raimi and Maguire were trying to make the worst movie possible in order to guarantee there wouldn't be a "Spider-Man 4." The movie climaxes in a series of sickly sweet, over-the-top, sappy "moral of the story" scenes.
Kirsten Dunst at least seems to not be trying to destroy the movie, turning in one of the film's better performances. Nor does Christopher Young, who takes over scoring duties from Danny Elfman, who also wanted desperately out of the franchise. The special effects people also seem to still be trying to turn in their best work, doing incredible jobs of bringing Sandman and Venom to life, even though the movie's major showdown involving the two villains seems like something out of a cheap Godzilla or King Kong movie. Bryce Dallas Howard is kinda cute as Gwen Stacey but seems somehow unnatural. Meanwhile, Topher Grace as Eddie Brach/Venom seems to be playing a more contemporary version of his character from "That 70's Show" while Tobey Maguire, who did an amazing job portraying Peter Parker in the first two movies, mugs so much that he, once again, seems intent on sabotaging the franchise.
The only other people involved with the film who did a decent job were the advertisers. By placing elements of all the best scenes into every trailer, they raised my expectations for "Spider-Man 3." I haven't been this disappointed by a movie in a long time.
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