I hate to say it but Spidey 3 was a disappointment! It looked awesome—insanely awesome—but I think they just wasted characters and wanted to do too many things to make it work coherently.
MINOR SPOILERS INCLUDED:
As a fan of the comics, I think it would have made more sense to introduce the black costume in #2 and then develop the Venom/Eddie Brock (Jr.—whatever) plot in #3. They had so much they could do with that character and they squandered it. It could have lead to Carnage in the next movie and Carnage is awesomely evil. I could have gotten on board with the changes to the character (making it Eddie Brock’s son that becomes a smarmy photog and the parallelism between Peter and Eddie was working for me). One is good, the other is a sociopath. Give them an alien costume that ups their own darkest impulses and it’s ON. I get it. I’m down with that. For those (like my husband) who didn’t understand how Eddie Brock took to the spidey acrobatics so fast? It’s the costume. It’s an alien that has some small level of consciousness and knows Spidey’s movie better than Spidey.
Also? It’s an alien costume. And even though I know the history (he did get it during an intergalactic adventure in a Marvel Comics special series called Secret Wars 2) I found this is a silly twist. It would have made more sense to give it a government conspiracy backstory that would have taken about ten minutes to explain and would have made more sense than the randomness of it falling to earth just yards from our hero. Seriously.
I didn’t really get why Gwen Stacy was making utterly random appearances. It’s especially weird since Gwen was long dead (killed by Norman Osbourne/The Green Goblin in a way reminiscent of the way MJ almost died at the end of the first movie) by the time Peter and MJ got together. And the first movie gave MJ so many of Gwen’s personality traits (super nice and a little bland) that I didn’t see the point in bringing the most bland of Peter’s girlfriends back from the dead and then doing nothing with her. I do think MJ is such a weak character in the movies when compared to the comics. MJ is very fiesty in the comics and kind of a bad girl. She was a go-go dancer and dated all of Peter’s friends before finally getting together with him. I love her. They did get the B-movie actress thing right, though MJ was a bit player on a soap opera in the 1980s. Bwah!
It would have made so much more sense to include another of Peter’s college girlfriends. Someone who would be/was a real threat to his relationship with MJ—like Felicia Hardy/The Black Cat (she was a “cat” burglar, trained by her criminal daddy and she eventually sought out super powers though I seem to recall that didn’t go well). And she was alluring to Peter/Spidey because he didn’t have to hide anything from her, she could prowl about at night with him, and she really got off on seeing him in action. She would have been just as happy to play with “dark” spidey as “good” spidey and would have provided an alternative to his depressed girlfriend at home.
Sandman was just filler and the nonsense backstory of him killing Uncle Ben was just that—nonsense!
They should have taken Peter’s professor—Dr. Conners—and turned him into The Lizard like in the comics! That would have been way more interesting and less coincidental. And he has a really sad backstory (he loses his arm and has a breakdown and he uses his super smarts to do experimental regenerative research using lizards and other slimy creatures and ends up injecting himself with the cells that he believes leads to regeneration of limbs and ends up turning himself into part Lizard—I love that. He even has the sad family backstory in that his wife and young child are adversely affected by his Lizardy side. He almost killed his wife and kid a few times but generally ends up realizing what he’s doing and sobs on the floor or something.)
As for the new Green Goblin? I don’t recall Harry ever saving Spidey/Peter because whenever he Gobbed out it indicated he’d had yet another break with reality. Harry was always annoying to me so I had to let that go to enjoy him in the previous movies. He’s still a weak-willed little shit but not nearly as annoying as he was in the comics. OMG. I hated him.
I was okay with the evolution of the Green Goblin, overall, but the storyline could have used more time/less cheese.
Speaking of cheese, the entire disco/jazz sequence felt like it was fron another movie entirely! WTF was that? I am all for the director poking fun at his own movie/characters but the “bad” Peter/Spidey sequence was played for laughs and I never really bought it. I did laugh but it would have been much better if Eddie Brock DID catch dark Spidey doing something really bad. We could have handled it. Spidey completely maimed this pscyho killer once (the killer—a deranged human, not a super villain—killed a police detective that was friendly with Spidey) and it left Peter feeling deeply conflicted. He lost control and used his super strength for evil. Or did he? Since the killer couldn’t hurt anyone else in his weakened condition. It was a painful quandry because “with great power comes great responsibility” and he sort of blew it. Though I was glad he really hurt Harry in the movie, with malice and not by accident, the fact that it was mostly played for laughs sort of ruined it for me.
The only thing I liked about the dark Spidey (aside from blasting Harry) was it gave more time to the landlord and his daughter Ursula. I LOVE them. So cute! In fact, they could have cut back on the Aunt May parts (I was never a fan of Aunt May—so cloyingly helpful with her stories!) and added more Ursula. I love her. They could have made her the Black Cat, even. She’s adorable.
