Hollywood is big on trilogies, and probably always will be, but let’s get one thing perfectly clear. Spider-Man actually is not a trilogy like everyone believes. Although it was rumored that Spider-Man 3 was the last film, Sam Raimi already stated with the release of the first film that he would keep making them until people grew tired of them. These arguments that people have tried to bring about that without (fill in the actor’s name here) it won’t be the same, let me just ask; how many different James Bond’s have we had?

With all that in mind, Spider-Man 3 is the latest in the ongoing franchise of a super hero that is recognized the world over. As the third film opens, things seem to be going great for Spider-Man and his alter ego Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire.) Despite the efforts of J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons), New York City loves the wall crawler, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t, though things have been a little quite lately with the absence of super villains. Peter is about to finally propose to Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) couldn’t be happier, and that’s where everything starts to fall apart.

Mary Jane’s Broadway debut doesn’t go as well as she’d hoped and she’s let go, though she doesn’t tell Peter about it. Harry Osborn (James Franco) meanwhile tries to avenge his father’s death by becoming the new Green Goblin, but their conflict is short-lived after Harry is injured during their first encounter and a bump on the head causes a bit of memory loss. As for that lack to super powered villains; that’s all about to change after escaped convict Flint Marco (Thomas Haden Church) find his molecules merged with sand and becomes the Sandman, and apparently he’s the very same man who killed Uncle Ben. Now Peter is out looking for revenge of his own, and a new black suit, an alien symbiote, proves to be just the thing, if it doesn’t completely consume Peter first. And yes, alien symbiote plus the appearance of Eddie Brock Jr. (Topher Grace) does mean that there is yet another villain who makes an appearance; Venom.

One of the biggest problems that I’ve encountered with Marvel’s heroes and mutants making the jump to the big screen is often, I’m familiar with the source material and it’s difficult to separate myself away form that. Adding Venom into the story is something that I knew would be tough. It’s impossible to follow the true origins found as a part of the Secret Wars limited series, and trying to follow the storyline from the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man would also prove to be a challenge. So, the decision was to take the Venom origins from the animated series as a symbiote that arrived on earth via a meteorite, and I can accept that.

Origins and such removed from the equation however, Spider-Man 3 simply doesn’t work for me and it’s mainly because again we have the same old situation, just with a few new faces. The super-villain mentality has been the same in just about every movie, and that is if you want to get to Spider-Man, you get to Mary Jane, and as the case usually is, she once again finds herself abducted and held captive in an effort to lure out Spider-Man, though he ends up this time not facing one threat but two when Venom and Sandman team up. However, their line of thinking is a bit different. Venom is out of revenge while Sandman just wants to help his sick daughter, but Spider-Man is standing in the way.

The concept of the alien symbiote works a bit differently as well. Spider-Man finds that he is much more powerful, and that is true to the storyline found in the comics, but his personality begins to change as well, something that I don’t remember being the issue. It does work as a good reasoning for him to get rid of the thing, but I feel that Spider-Man 3 might have benefited more with Peter getting the symbiote and keeping it for a few films. It would have been easy enough to introduce Eddie Brock into the movies in this installment and developing a long standing rivalry between him and Peter, but instead it feels rushed. Even the introduction of Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) feels somewhat shallow as if we follow the true lore, and if you’re familiar with the character, her ultimate death should be something that will stick with Peter for quite some time, and this doesn’t seem like it will be the case at all. If and when the character does die, it will really mean very little as at this point, we have no real connection with her.

The effects seen in the film though are what most really come to see Spider-Man for, and while I can’t say Sandman is a fantastic choice, it is a character that requires quite a few more visual effects than most, and the same is true of Venom. Sandman really is quite a bit like his comic book counter part, and there are plenty of sand shifting and flesh to sand visuals seen through the movie. Venom is decent, but really lacks in a number of ways. He’s not the massive, hulking threat that he is in the comics but more of a sleek and trimmed down version. The lashing tongue is sadly missing as is his usual references of “we” which means both Brock and the symbiote together. Topher Grace isn’t a convincing enough villain. Much of the time I simply heard Eric from That 70’s Show in his voice, not a threatening monstrosity that has long been one of the greatest foes that Spidey has ever faced.

Spider-Man 3 comes in two different flavors on standard edition DVD, the first being a regular release, the other a special edition, and then there’s the BluRay. Sadly, we couldn’t get our hands on the BluRay edition, or the Spider-Man collection that was also released on the format, and we also didn’t get the special edition but instead the bare bones basic, but at least it was widescreen format. There are two different commentaries included with the movie, one including Sam Raimi and the primary cast of the film while the other has Laura Ziskin, Avi Arad and Grant Curtis, Editor Bob Murawski and Special Effects Supervisor Scott Stokdyk, so you get some fairly insightful. There is a gallery filled with sketches, paintings, effects and photos from the movie and the set and a music video which honestly, is fairly pointless.

I wasn’t terribly impressed with the first two Spider-Man films, but I really did have high hopes for the third, especially with the presence of Venom, but once again I found my hopes were dashed. I did like Spider-Man 3 much better than the third X-Men film, but ultimately the recent fascination with Hollywood and super-hero franchises has left a lot to be desired in my opinion, and with great licenses there should come great filmmaking, but so far, that hasn’t been the case.

-mike-