Yap vs. Yap: Spider-Man 3
It's been 13 years since Spider-Man 3 hit theaters with a resounding thud. A convoluted, bloated mess, the film grossed $900 million worldwide, but suffered critically and with fans. Its 63% on Rotten Tomatoes seems respectable, until you realize its two predecessors each eclipsed 90%.
With the benefit of time and two subsequent reboots that were received with varying degrees of acclaim (and, finally, an introduction into the Marvel Cinematic Universe), is Sam Raimi's second sequel better than we remember?
Of course, it depends on who you ask. If you ask Evan Dossey of the Midwest Film Journal (once interim Editor-in-Chief of The Film Yap), the answer is a resounding yes. In this Yap vs. Yap MFJ, Evan argues "Spider-Man 3"'s merits, while Joe argues it's even more a heaping, steaming pile of shit than he remembered. This is the long-awaited sequel to our previous Yap v. Yap about The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which Joe is still wrong about to this day.
Joe: We were talking while I randomly decided tonight to revisit "Spider-Man 3," and I noted the scene relatively early on, where Spider-Man, after rescuing Gwen Stacy from a random crane accident in New York City, is presented the key to the city, and, in a scene presented as silly and comedic (complete with an audience cheering, and kids sneering), he tells Gwen to "plant one on me," ostensibly replicating the iconic upside-down kiss from the first "Spider-Man film. His girlfriend Mary Jane is in the audience, a fact that Peter is well aware of. Gwen in this film is Peter's classmate and lab partner, a gorgeous blonde woman whom we learn Peter has never mentioned to MJ.
The most notable thing about this scene is that Peter had not yet encountered the attitude-altering symbiote that would soon send him over the edge. He did this either fully knowing it would upset her (in which case he gaslights her later by pretending to be clueless when she confronts him), or he is completely dense and ignorant to what it means to be a boyfriend or a decent person. I see this scene, as with most of the rest of the film, to be a disservice to the character.
Evan: Hi, Joe! Happy to be back on The Film Yap after three years running Midwest Film Journal to great success. “Spider-Man 3” is the second-best of all live-action Spider-Man films (third-best if we count “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”). And yes, I mean it. You’re wrong about it.
To get it out of the way, I'll rank those live-action versions for you right now:
“Spider-Man”
A protruding hernia
“The Amazing Spider-Man”
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2”
A steel-toed kick in the nuts
I've done you the service of linking to my existing Spider-Man reviews or the reviews on our site.
The thing that “Spider-Man 3” captures about the Spider-mythos is that Peter Parker is, frankly, kind of a dickhead at heart. “With great power comes great responsibility.” The reason he has to keep telling himself that is because he has impulses he can’t otherwise control. He’s constantly learning. I often think about myself a few years ago when I realized I needed to start my own film website at Midwest Film Journal. Life is a learning process, and sometimes we need to set out on our own. But even after doing so, the learning journey never ends!
In some ways you were like my Uncle Ben of film criticism, except you’re not dead (yet). The start of “Spider-Man 3” reminds us that Peter has darker impulses and a head full of delusions of grandeur. He’s forgotten his mantra already. The suit just amplifies the awfulness that’s already there, just like it does with Topher Grace’s magnificent Eddie Brock later in the film. This is the start of the story Joe. Peter has to learn his lesson — and what a lesson it is!
Joe: I won't even go into the ways your Spider-list is off-base (at least not yet). I'll agree with you that THIS version of Spider-Man is a self-centered dick. The original comics version, though, I disagree with, particularly the 80s version I grew up with (I can't speak to any potential changes over the years). That Peter Parker was constantly thinking of others to his own detriment. He was too painfully aware of what his choices did to others, and consistently considered them, both friends and enemies.
The Raimi Spider-Man, however? Selfishness from the get-go. He brazenly and unapologetically steals Mary Jane from Harry in the first movie, and he consistently does things for his own benefit rather than the good of the other. Even his nonsensical "get by on your own steam" moment in the first film felt arrogant more than ruggedly independent, and his heroics never really changed that--if anything, his arrogance only grew through the films. Even in Spider-Man 2, his frustrations feel more like someone on the verge of a temper tantrum than a crisis of conscience. His decision to give up being Spider-Man was wholly self-centered. So in that sense, we agree.
Still, it was a disservice to the character, and EVERY character in this movie was a cock, save two. Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the first. She has the best moment in the entire film, when Peter takes her to the jazz club and makes a spectacle out of himself. She gets swept up in the moment, knowing Mary Jane is in the club, but allows herself a sexy dance with Peter, only to finally notice him staring at Mary Jane, in an effort to taunt her. When she stands up and apologizes, tears in her eyes, is really the only singularly good character moment in the movie. The other character? Ursula, the pig-tailed Russian daughter of Peter's landlord. The girl obviously has a crush on Peter, and that he never gave her the time of day is unfortunate. She's certainly more deserving than the priggish, bullish MJ.
As for Brock, I could have been into this take on the character, if it hadn't been crammed into an already full movie. Part of the issue is that Sandman was such a weak villain in this entry, and he wasn't used properly. There was entirely too much time spent 1) making him Uncle Ben's TRUE KILLA, and 2) establishing him as a sympathetic villain. I get the arc it was supposed to set up with Spider-Man with forgiveness and everything, but it was idiotic, down to Thomas Haden Church's reading of "I'm not a bad person." He WASN'T a bad person. Just a bad character.
And THEN we get into Harry Osborn's Snowboard Goblin. His design was dumb. His arc was dumb. His amnesia subplot? DUMB.
And one note on Brock: those Venom teeth when Brock was maskless were ri-goddamn-diculous.
I've long contended that Spider-Man 3 should have been 2 movies. The black suit should have popped up in the first 15 minutes, and should have not looked like the Greyscale version of his normal suit. Give me the classic comic black suit look, FOR GOD'S SAKE. Let the suit be the suit (complete with transforming-into-regular-clothes gimmick), and let it slowly take over him and uncover his aggressive, selfish side. Then the film's climax involves him getting rid of the suit, then an entirely other movie where Venom is established as the badass he is. I don't believe there was a single instance of Spider-Sense in this film. There is a reason for some of it, but we never learn of it in the film. But there are at least three moments when the Spider Sense let him down completely, for no reason.
And fine, I WILL give you my spider-film rankings:
Suck on THAT.
Evan: First of all, I don’t think “Captain America: Civil War” should count unless you’re also including “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” which both feature great Spider-Man moments. Just like “Spider-Man 3,” you’re trying to shove as much as you can into much too small a space. Unfortunately for you, Raimi was far more successful in this, the grand finale of his humanistic take on our favorite crawly boy.
You mention that the Spider-Man you grew up with in the 1980s wasn’t a jerk. Sure, I’ll let your nostalgia be. I’m not a jerk, but that’s because I grew up with this Spider-Man who was a jerk. His trilogy isn’t content to be about a boy getting his jimmies rustled by animal people and then fighting them to prove his value to a cute lady. (I mean, some of the story is). Like when I left The Film Yap to found Midwest Film Journal, this is the story of a Spider-Boy becoming a Spider-Man.
I get that you only like two characters in the movie, but hey, that’s more likable characters than “Far From Home.” Zing! Still, I kind of empathize with your distaste for having three villains. James Franco is a real disaster artist in this movie, handling a pretty underwhelming culmination of his overarching character story with a pit stop in Amnesiaville to keep him dormant until the final sacrificial battle. Sandman’s transformation remains one of the most beautiful supervillain origin moments and really takes me back to the summer of 2017 when I wrote my goodbye email to you. Adding him to the Uncle Ben narrative? I hated that, too, but then I got smart and realized it just helps tie it all in to that special origin we know and love.
And Venom? I’ll agree that the 2018 version with Tom Hardy is funnier, but he lacks the pathos of Grace’s Eddie Brock, who is Peter’s dark reflection even before getting slathered in black space goo.
Anyway, Peter has to be self-centered from the start of the movie to truly evolve to a place where he can admit his faults and take responsibility for his bad behavior. That’s why the reconciliation at the end of the movie works. He has fallen so far down that only acknowledgment and contrition can suffice. It doesn’t promise a marriage or children or a future for him and MJ. It only promises humanity from Peter Parker. As we work our way through this Endless Summer without movies, I really miss having a nice, thoughtful blockbuster into which I can sink my teeth.
Joe: I don't and can't argue too much with most of what you wrote, except for Raimi being successful. He went on record saying he wasn't a fan of this movie either, and objected to being forced to include Venom in by Avi Arad. This could have been a cool trilogy of movies: The black suit/Sandman/Hobgoblin (give Harry a little orange and throw a hood over that Goblin mask!), then Venom/Spider-Man in Spider-Man 4 (and make that shit a straight-up horror movie, with Venom as a killer), and Venom/Spidey/Carnage in Spider-Man 5 with the Maximum Carnage story. How different would the Marvel world be if that had happened? A lot of this has to do with a lack of imagination from Raimi, Avi Arad, and a few others in sticking too close to the Batman formula of villain stuffing.
But even if they had confined this to a single movie, cutting some of the nonsense would have worked wonders. Just drop the Uncle Ben shit, and lose the dance montage, and the amnesia angle, and the Harry/MJ romance redux. That Chubby Checker scene with the omelets was some trifling shit, and bits like Peter pointing at people and strutting around was just embarrassing. His new-found popularity should have come from the black suit, which led to him attracting Gwen, and let that be the friction between he and MJ as his ego increases. Instead we got a glimpse into the life of Sam Raimi, with fedoras and jazz and snapping and other assorted non-Spider-Man nonsense.
And don't think I don't see your jabs about Far From Home. That movie was ridiculous, but I still liked it a lot.
And one more thing: I haven't rewatched it, but I might be ready to concede that the Amazing Spider-Man movies were certainly a missed opportunity, and that I overshot the value of "The Amazing Spider-Man 2." Again, I wish they had stayed more true to the source material of the Gwen Stacy story, but I enjoyed that as an arc in the movie. I do also concede that they didn't earn that with the awkward graduation scene about death, and that tonally it was screwed, and that there was way too much going on, and that Peter's parents was a dumb addition (a 90s-era inclusion, if I remember right). They tried to cram in more plot than even Spider-Man 3 did. I still say Andrew Garfield is closer to MY Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire is, and maybe even more than Tom Holland is, as much as I like Holland. And Emma Stone was a superior Gwen both in performance and as written. I'll call it a clumsy movie I still enjoyed overall.
And here's the part where I attack Raimi himself. He put too much of himself in these films. I wrote this about the Raimi films: "They’re poorly edited, hokey and far too reliant upon Raimi’s familiar tropes (like making Peter Parker into an emo, woman-beating beatnik)."
I'm standing by this. His editing is often atrocious, as is the dialog dating back to the first movie (Remember when Doc Ock, the scientific genius, said T.S. Eliot was more difficult than "advanced science"? Or how Peter spurned Norman Osborne's offer to help him find a job, leading to an instant "I respect that. You want to make it on your own steam." There are so many awkward transitions, ill-timed gimmicks (like his penchant for three shots of close-up), or the artificial speeding up of certain scenes. That works in "Evil Dead" or "Drag Me to Hell," but by "Spider-Man 3" it was overused and felt like a waste of time.
Evan: You know, I sort of know what you mean in regard to wanting these movies to have less stuff per installment, and more opportunities with which to tell an ongoing story. Spider-Man is a character who, more than most, deserves a TV series. It will never happen, but it would be ideal. This conversation brings to mind your essay on “Iron Man 2” for the Midwest Film Journal, which is another overstuffed Marvel-character sequel, although I don’t think Iron Man could sustain a long-form serialized narrative where Spider-Man can. I think his later MCU episodes feel a bit like TV shows, though — especially in quality. It’s a rough road to travel, but what makes “Spider-Man 3” seem so interesting, especially in hindsight, is that it takes chances and really tries to push / punish the character for his transgressions whereas “Iron Man 2” does not do that very clearly. If the black suit is all that was causing Peter’s tension, he wouldn’t have a character arc to speak of — just an external conflict to destroy with bells.
It also reminds me of “Return of the Jedi,” another so-so third entry in a series. “Jedi” is similarly overstuffed as “Spider-Man 3” but lacks the pathos to drive its characters. Darth Vader just stands around. Han Solo just stands around. Leia does some cool things. Luke is the only character with any movement forward. I think Grace’s Brock is the most misunderstood element of “Spider-Man 3” and, in that sense, he’s the Ewok of the films. Much as it was with the Ewoks, there will come a day when a great essay is written about his contribution to the series.
I don’t understand how you could love Andrew Garfield more than Tobey Maguire; Garfield’s Peter is annoying. I like Tom Holland’s turn as Spider-Man a lot though, as does my fellow former-Yapper-turned-MFJ’er Sam Watermeier. The two of us once collaborated on an article on this very site about the state of superhero cinema, but I disavow anything I’ll say about “Spider-Man 3” in it. I initially loved, then loathed and now love the film again. The Chubby Checker dance scene, the street dance scene, it all works — a perfect blend of 1960s silliness right out of the cartoon and 1990s serial glumness that could only come out of percolating creative dissatisfaction. Sort of like Movie Jibber-Jabber.
OK, OK. I know I’m a little harsh on “Far From Home.” We actually ran Three. Positive. Reviews. I was the only dissenter. We’re like the “Spider-Man 3” of Hoosier-based film criticism sites — bursting with inspiration and unafraid to take some really exciting chances. It doesn’t always land, but when we succeed? We make out like a film-critic den of thieves.
In the words of “Big Nick” O’Brien, portrayed by the patron saint of our site: You. Are. Done.
Joe: You're right that the dances were right out of the 60s. If that had been a vibe of the first two movies, from characters created in the 60s, it would have worked. As it was, Venom first appeared in April 1988, and had his heyday in the 90s, making that an awkward transition for the film to make.
Plus, in a film that is decidedly darker and more glum than either of the other two entries, those moments of outright silliness clash with and stymie that dark momentum significantly. I like the brief tension created with Venom stalking Spider-Man, but we got it in a 2-minute scene, rather than stretched over the length of the film, as we deserved.
There's also another thing that REALLY bothered me watching it again: you remember that time when Harry jumps in front of Venom as he's looking to impale Spider-Man with Harry's glider, sacrificing himself? Venom then casually threw his body down a few stories, where Harry lay with MJ, dying, while Peter fought Venom?
After Spider-Man defeats Venom, Sandman shows up, and we get this whole limp sequence where we finally solve that--OOPS--Marko accidentally killed Uncle Ben. Spidey has time to talk through Flint's neuroses, we are reminded that HE'S NOT A BAD PERSON, then Pete learns about Marko's daughter, then he forgives him, before Marko ambles away as literal dust in the wind.
Then--OH SHIT, I FORGOT--my best bud totally just got stabbed through the chest for me! Maybe I'd better go check him out. Maybe Pete could have gotten him to a hospital if he hadn't decided to play a few rounds of bridge with Sandman.
So I'll just have to say I hope you guys AREN'T like "Spider-Man 3," which was a movie bereft of creativity, relying on the same beats, camera tricks, and indeed often the exact same dialog ("FIRST YOU ATTACK THE HEART"; "MAKE HIM WISH HE WERE DEAD"), where the filmmaker was tasked with, and outright forced into making, creative choices based on the whim of suits.
In conclusion, "Spider-Man 3" continues to suck.
Evan: So, in conclusion, “Spider-Man 3” continues to rock. Oh, sorry, I got ahead of myself because I was too busy thinking about how awesome it is that i can stream “Spider-Man 3” on Hulu now instead of having to get up and find the copy I own On DVD. I actually started it earlier but my wife, Aly, told me to turn it off. She said we “had watched it recently” and that I “have curated a taste in bad movies instead of good movies.” Frankly, she’d have preferred we watch “Birds of Prey” again, a movie that I think proves the point I’m about to make. Actually we watched “Candyman,” which is awesome.
My concluding argument is that “Spider-Man 3” represents the natural endpoint of its era of superhero cinema and is a movie that could have only been so ridiculous in its own time. It’s the “Batman & Robin” of its time, and just like “B&R,” it only ages finer and finer.
Marvel Studios perfected the mixture of comic-book fidelity and four-quadrant appeal with its movies so well that most of their stories seem intentional, which has given them room to flourish as the predominant spectacle of our geek generation. But they have also created a world where audiences' appetites clamor for one kind of superhero movie. “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2,” “Doctor Strange” and “Ant-Man” are all clever and exciting movies, but none are as wild as “Spider-Man 3” because they have the burden of living up to expectations.
Raimi’s Spider-Man movies had to make themselves slightly more generic just to get made at the time, with three-act structures and origin stories galore. “Spider-Man 3” obviously doesn’t represent Raimi’s pure artistic intention but his grappling with the extra villains and corporate mandates for CGI poop monsters makes for a truly idiosyncratic and unique entry in the Spidey world. If it was a straightforward Venom-killing-people, black-suit-bad story, it would’ve ended up the “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” of the Marvel movies. It may be flawed, but there’s nothing like it.
Which brings me back to ”Birds of Prey” (clearly a better movie than either “Justice” or “Spider-Man 3”): “Birds” is a small-budget superhero movie with lots of thought and passion and style. It was also a massive blockbuster failure. Superhero movies haven’t been able to dance so wildly in the past decade. Even Ryan Reynolds’ supposedly wacky Deadpool movies are banal and generic.
The failures have been mostly bland or moronic, and although the successes have been genuinely fantastic, I don’t see us writing thousands of words arguing about any of them in 12 years. Of course, if we do, we can always take it over to the Midwest Film Journal.