As was discussed in the comments of last week’s rewatch of Spider-Man 2, it’s arguable who would truly be considered Spider-Man’s greatest foe. The top spot alternates between the Green Goblin (seen in the first movie) and Dr. Octopus (in the sequel).
However, throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the most popular villain in Spidey’s rogues’ gallery was definitely Venom. The character proved hugely popular when he first appeared in full on the last page of Amazing Spider-Man #299 in 1988 as this weird evil version of the black costume Spidey had worn for a while after the first Secret Wars miniseries. Venom appeared constantly throughout the Spider-titles, got his own miniseries and later an ongoing series, and was generally Spidey’s most popular foe for the final decade of the 20th century.
So it was inevitable that, having covered two of the biggies, Sam Raimi et al would go for the third in his third movie—which, by the way, was scheduled for May 2007 release before the second one even premiered…
The original treatment that Sam & Ivan Raimi put together for the third movie didn’t have Venom in it at all. Instead, Raimi brought in another member of Spidey’s huge collection of bad guys, the Sandman. Originally a low-level thug named Flint Marko who gained the ability to turn himself into sand, the character went through numerous changes in the comics, eventually reforming to become a good guy. In the film, the Raimis kept some of the more complex elements of Sandman’s backstory, but made him more directly responsible for the death of Uncle Ben.
Raimi also wanted a second villain, and was originally considering the Vulture (Ben Kingsley was apparently in talks to play the role), but producer Avi Arad convinced Raimi that Venom was the best choice, given the villain’s popularity.
Unlike the genesis of most of Spidey’s bad guys (the vast majority of which boil down to “accident involving science,” which is also Spidey’s origin, truly), Venom’s origin was a bit more complicated.
Okay, cast your minds back to 1984. Marvel launches Secret Wars, a twelve-issue miniseries that takes place between the May and June 1984 issues of Marvel’s titles. In the May issues, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Hulk were whisked away to another world to fight against a collection of bad guys. In the June issues, the heroes come back from their sojourn, many of them changed: the Hulk was injured, Iron Man had fancy new armor, the She-Hulk had replaced the Thing in the Fantastic Four, Colossus fell in love with a woman who died (thus ending his nascent relationship with Kitty Pryde)—and Spider-Man had a new costume, which probably got the most press out of all the changes. Now in an all-black costume that obeyed his commands to change shape, and which even had its own web-shooters.
(Tellingly, every single one of these changes was reversed—the ones to the Hulk and Iron Man were dumped immediately, in fact. Spidey’s costume actually lasted for four years, and writer John Byrne got considerable storytelling mileage out of the roster change in the FF. Oh, and it took a loooooong time, but Colossus and Kitty did get back together eventually.)
Over the course of the SW miniseries, several heroes’ costumes get trashed. Spidey is shown a room where the costume-fixer is, but he’s not sure which alien doodad it is. He walks up to one and gets the new black costume that obeys his thoughts.
Eventually, we learn, as is hinted in the miniseries, that that wasn’t the costume-fixer. The new costume is actually an alien symbiote that leeches onto Peter Parker. The Fantastic Four figure this out when Spidey realizes that he’s sleeping but not resting (the symbiote is taking Spidey out for thrills when Peter Parker sleeps) and he goes to Reed Richards for help. The symbiote is sealed in one of Richards’s labs until it’s freed by one of Dr. Doom’s gadgets, and it goes after Spider-Man one last time. Spidey manages to kill it—seemingly—with a gigunda church bell (the alien is vulnerable to sonics).
When the costume reappears worn by someone else (and with a tooth-filled slavering mouth) tormenting Mary Jane (at the time, Peter Parker’s wife), we learn that in that same church was a man named Eddie Brock, a journalist for the Daily Globe, the main competition to the Daily Bugle in Marvel’s New York. Brock, we learn, did a story on the Sin-Eater, a bad guy who killed NYPD Captain Jean DeWolff, complete with an interview with the guy beneath the Sin-Eater’s mask. Except it turned out that he was a copycat, and Spider-Man captured the real Sin-Eater. Brock was disgraced and was in that church contemplating suicide when the symbiote bonded with him—both metaphorically over their mutual hatred for Spider-Man and biologically. (It should be noted that Brock is a total retcon, as he appeared in neither of the 1985 stories in question, not the DeWolff murder story in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man—which more or less launched Peter David’s writing career—and not the death of the symbiote at the church—which was in the inaugural issue of Web of Spider-Man.)
Because Venom’s origin is so complicated, and tied into three different storylines that weren’t all initially related to each other, attempts to adapt Venom into other media have faced quite the challenge in distilling it down. The 1990s Spider-Man: The Animated Series did a decent job of seeding a rivalry between Brock and Parker, and also tied the symbiote’s bonding with Spider-Man to astronaut John Jameson, son of the Bugle publisher. Embarrassingly, I was thinking last week how clever it was to introduce John in the previous movie so he could be used to set up Venom in this one, only to realize I’d conflated Spider-Man 3 with the animated series. Derp. In fact, John isn’t even in this movie.
Not that there’s room for Jameson’s kid, as this movie not only brought back Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, J.K. Simmons, Rosemary Harris, Bill Nunn, Ted Raimi, Dylan Baker, Elya Baskin, Elizabeth Banks, Mageina Tovah, Michael Papajohn, Cliff Robertson, and Willem Dafoe, they added Thomas Haden Church as Sandman, Topher Grace as Brock/Venom, Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy, James Cromwell as George Stacy, and Theresa Russell and Perla Haney-Jardine as Sandman’s wife and daughter, respectively. This would be Robertson’s last film role before his death in 2011.
“I like being bad”
Spider-Man 3
Written by Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent
Directed by Sam Raimi
Produced by Laura Ziskin and Grant Curtis and Avi Arad
Original release date: May 4, 2007
Life is pretty danged good for Peter Parker and for Spider-Man. Peter’s studies are going well, he’s in love with Mary Jane Watson and she loves him back, and MJ is having her Broadway debut. Spidey is well loved—even the Daily Bugle can’t find much bad to say about him—and life is skittles and beer.
The one fly in the ointment is Harry Osborn, who still blames Peter for his father Norman’s death. (The fact that he now knows Norman was the Green Goblin hasn’t altered his anger.)
One night, after they have a romantic evening in the park watching the stars while lying on a giant web, a meteor crashes nearby. A black gooey substance oozes out of the meteor and attaches itself to the back of Peter’s scooter as he and MJ scoot out of the park.
Flint Marko, a new suspect in the Ben Parker murder, has escaped from Riker’s Island Penitentiary. He goes home to visit his daughter, but his wife wants him to go away. The cops chase him to a laboratory where they’re performing particle physics experiments. Marko goes into the testing field unwittingly and winds up being bonded with the sand on the ground in the field. The cops think he’s dead, but he’s now got the ability to turn himself into sand.
Reviews of MJ’s opening night are extremely poor, and Peter’s attempt to cheer her up by reminding her that Spidey used to get slagged in the papers all the time too fall on deaf ears. Peter now has a police radio, and he hears a report about a crane that’s out of control, and he heads there, rescuing a student and model named Gwen Stacy (who’s in Peter’s science class with Dr. Curt Connors), whose father is NYPD Captain George Stacy. During the rescue, we also meet Eddie Brock Jr., a new freelance photographer for the Bugle who is taking pics of the rescue and tells Stacy that he’s dating his daughter and tells Spidey that he’s the Bugle’s new Spidey photographer. This surprises Spidey, since he thought he had that gig.
Peter plans to propose to MJ, though his freelance photojournalism doesn’t leave much financial room for a ring. Aunt May comes to his rescue, though, and gives him her engagement ring. When walking through Times Square, he reads a billboard stating that Spider-Man is going to be given the keys to the city after rescuing a police captain’s daughter. A bystander who looks just like Stan Lee comments that he guesses one person can make a difference.
While riding his silly little scooter down the street, Harry swoops down in his purloined Goblin gear and grabs Peter. They have an extended fight, and Peter almost loses the ring (why didn’t he web it to his pocket?), but Peter wins by garroting Harry with a web line. He hits his head, and falls into a coma. Peter removes the Goblin gear (and puts it where????) and rushes him to the hospital. Eventually, Harry comes out of the coma, but he is suffering memory loss. He has a vague recollection that his father is dead, but nothing after that—which means he no longer remembers Spider-Man dropping his father’s corpse off, nor that Peter is Spider-Man.
At the Bugle, we find out that Brock overstated things a bit to Spidey, as he’s only sold a few pictures to the Bugle. Peter arrives, and is warned by Betty Brant that he has competition, and Peter enters J. Jonah Jameson’s office just as Brock is angling for a staff job. Jameson decides to give the staff job to whoever gets him pics of Spider-Man committing a crime.
MJ shows up for rehearsal only to find out that she’s been replaced due to the overwhelming negative critical response to her performance (which, I’m fairly certain, is a violation of union rules, but I’m sure MJ filing a grievance with Actors Equity happened off camera, ha ha). Not wanting to spoil Spidey’s big day, MJ doesn’t tell Peter about her job loss.
Gwen gives Spidey the keys to the city, and she also kisses him while he’s hanging upside down, a mirror of the kiss Spidey and MJ shared in the first movie, something that upsets MJ greatly. (With good reason.) Brock also chats briefly with Gwen, and we realize that they’ve only gone out for coffee once, not “dating” as Brock claimed to her father.
A sentient wave of sand zips through the ceremony as Sandman is robbing an armored car. Spidey tries and fails to stop him. Later, Peter tries to propose to MJ at a fancy French restaurant, but she’s still annoyed at the kiss, especially since she didn’t even know Gwen existed, even though she’s his lab partner. She walks out on him before he can pop the question.
Stacy later summons May and Peter to the police precinct to inform them that they have new information that Marko is actually the one who killed Ben Parker. Dennis Carradine robbed the wrestling match while Marko did the carjacking, but then Carradine left without him to be fatally confronted by Spider-Man. Both May and Peter are pissed.
Peter sits in his apartment on the edge of his seat, listening on the police radio for any news of Marko. MJ comes by to try to comfort him, but he rebuffs her. Eventually, he falls asleep, at which point the alien creature (which has been just sitting around his apartment up until now) covers him in a new version of his costume—it’s now all black. The alien creature also alters Peter’s personality somewhat, making him more aggressive and meaner. He tracks down Sandman and they fight in the subway, with Spidey able to wash him away with water, turning him into Mudman.
Brock sells a picture to the Bugle of Spidey robbing the armored car, which Peter knows is doctored—from one of his photos. Instead of getting the staff job, Brock is fired and disgraced.
Harry recovers his memory with help from the Norman voice in his head, and attacks MJ as she’s en route to her new job as a singer/waitress at a jazz club. He threatens her, forcing her to break up with Peter and say there’s another man. After MJ does so, Harry meets up with Peter and says he’s the other man. (This is also when Peter finally finds out that MJ got fired from the play, something she never did tell him.) This leads to another Spidey/Goblin fight, only this time Peter is nastier and webs a pumpkin bomb back at Harry. The explosion disfigures his face.
Peter, who now combs his hair forward (because, I guess, the best way to show that a guy is evil is to make him more emo?) and generally acts like a goofball, invites Gwen on a date to a jazz club—the same one MJ works at. He dances with Gwen for the express purpose of humiliating MJ. To her credit, as soon as Gwen realizes this, she apologizes to MJ and leaves. When the bouncers try to take Peter out, a fight ensues, and Peter backhands MJ—at which point he realizes something horrible has happened. He goes to a church and tries to remove the alien costume—but it won’t come off. As he struggles, he accidentally rings the church bell, which badly affects the alien.
Below is Brock, who saw Peter taking Gwen to the club, which is the final indignity. He goes to the church to pray for God to kill Peter Parker (nice guy…), and then he hears Peter’s struggle with the alien. Through judicious ringing of the bell, Peter is able to get the alien off him, and it seeks out Brock instead. They bond and the alien now has a tooth-filled mouth.
Brock seeks out Marko, who has managed to reconstitute himself, and convinces him to team up. They kidnap MJ and take her to a construction site. Peter sees on the news what has happened, and his first stop is the Osborn mansion—he’s hoping Harry will help him, for MJ’s sake if not his own. Harry refuses and Peter goes to confront them on their own.
Even as Spidey takes on both Marko and Brock, the Osborn family butler decides that now is a good time to tell Harry that Norman definitely died from being stabbed by his own glider. This convinces Harry to go help Peter, and the two of them take on Sandman—who is now able to make himself about thirty feet tall—and Brock.
In the end, Harry winds up impaled by the glider (irony!), Spidey uses large metal poles hitting each other to disrupt the alien and then blows it up with a pumpkin bomb—though Brock throws himself at the alien like an idiot and gets blown up also. Marko explains to Peter that he accidentally shot Ben, and Peter forgives him and lets him go, even though he’s a thief and a murderer and an escaped convict. Somehow, despite there being cameras with zoom functions all around the construction site, nobody catches Spidey with his mask off on camera, even though he doesn’t wear the thing for 85% of the fight.
Later, Peter goes to MJ’s club and they embrace even though she’s in the middle of a song.
“You’ve taken your eye off the ball”
You’d think Sam Raimi would have learned.
By all reports, he wanted two villains in Spider-Man 3, though the identity of the second villain changed several times—in addition to continuing Harry’s arc as an antagonist for Peter—and all I can think is, why? By this time he already had several example of multiple-villain films that at best were overcrowded (Superman II, Batman Returns) and at worst awful (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, X-Men: The Last Stand).
Yet even with all that, he wanted multiple villains in the third film, which was just a hugely bad idea.
Calling this movie overstuffed is a grave understatement. It’s The Last Stand all over again, as Raimi tries to cram way too much in there.
The best superhero movies are ones that distill decades of comics stories into a single film. The worst are the ones that try to compress decades of comics stories into a single film. Spider-Man 3 is one of the latter. As seen above, Venom’s backstory was complicated enough, and they try to shove it all in there, from the alien’s history as Spider-Man’s new costume to his getting rid of it to it taking over Brock, plus also giving Brock a proper setup instead of shoehorning him in the way David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane did in 1988. On top of that, Harry’s arc covers a ton of territory (which took the better part of two decades in the comics), from his learning his father was the Green Goblin to getting amnesia and forgetting to remembering again to taking up the mantle of the Goblin to redeeming himself in the end and sacrificing his life. Plus there’s MJ and Peter’s relationship drama and adding the Stacys to the mix.
Oh, and then there’s the Sandman. Hilariously, given that it was the original base of the film, the Sandman is utterly superfluous to it. If you excise the Sandman from the movie, it changes very little except for the climactic fight, in which Sandman is a boring CGI monster. And honestly, Venom has always been a tough enough foe that they could have kept it to just him and still challenged the combined might of Spidey and the Goblin.
It’s too bad, as Thomas Haden Church is actually perfect casting for the Sandman, but his story is so completely disconnected from the rest of the movie as it becomes irrelevant. To make matters worse, it adds an unnecessary layer to Uncle Ben’s death that didn’t need to be there, and the effect it has on Peter is completely muted by everything else happening in the movie.
Particularly Peter turning into an emo freak by the alien, which is some of the most embarrassing footage ever used in a superhero film. Seriously, him boogie-ing down the street finger-gunning people to music that’s only in his head while wearing all black may be the nadir of Tobey Maguire’s acting career.
Though he doesn’t cover himself in glory the rest of the movie, either. He’s not aided by a script that makes Peter into a smug, unfeeling jerk long before the alien shows up and makes him into an ass. Not that MJ is treated any better, as so much of the relationship drama could have been avoided if MJ (a) actually understood that Peter was trying to help when he reminded her about all the times Spidey was slagged in the papers, and (b) actually told Peter that she got fired from her play.
Including the Stacy family was just unnecessary, and winds up doing a major disservice to two of the major supporting comics characters of Spidey’s first decade, as Captain Stacy is a walk-on and a cipher, and Gwen is reduced to a ditzy model type (in the comics, Gwen was a brilliant student, and also one of the loves of Peter’s life).
Most of the rest of the cast, at least, does a decent job. J.K. Simmons continues to knock it out of the park in his final appearance as Jameson, Rosemary Harris remains the best Aunt May ever, and after phoning in his performance in the second movie, James Franco is superb as the tormented Harry. Would that I could say the same for Topher Grace, whose Brock is abysmal. In the comics, Brock comes across as threatening and delusional; here, he’s just pathetic and stupid.
Also the movie doesn’t actually earn its ending. It’s not at all clear that MJ even knows why Peter did what he did, and how much the alien was responsible, and if she doesn’t, why is she forgiving him after he hit her? There’s so much stuff to unpack in their relationship, and the movie doesn’t bother to even try, just telling us that it’s all okay now at the end.
Of course, by this time, you just want it to be over, as the movie is not only overstuffed, it’s horrendously paced. It simply takes forever, and characters disappear for long periods to the point where you forget about them. The alien attaches itself to Peter’s scooter early on, and is in his apartment thereafter, but it takes ages for it to finally attach itself to Peter. When Peter goes to Harry for help rescuing MJ, you’ve kind of forgotten that Harry was even in the movie, ditto when Marko reforms himself from Mudman back to Sandman. Worse, in the end, Spider-Man is indirectly responsible for Brock’s death, and he doesn’t even seem to notice—on top of that, he lets a murderer, thief, and escaped con go free just because he forgives him for murdering his surrogate father. Some hero.
Raimi would wind up not doing Spider-Man 4, as he couldn’t settle on a script he was happy with, though there were specific plans for subsequent movies (including Dylan Baker finally getting to be the Lizard after being Dr. Curt Connors for two movies). Instead, Sony would choose to reboot the franchise with a new cast and new origin story in 2012 with The Amazing Spider-Man, which we’ll cover down the line.
Next week, we’ll take a look at another red-suited New York hero as we rewatch the 2003 Daredevil movie starring Ben Affleck.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is pleased to announce that his high fantasy/police procedure series is back in print with a new edition of Dragon Precinct from eSpec Books. This new edition also has the bonus short story “Gan Brightblade vs. Mitos the Mighty.” Coming soon are new editions of Unicorn Precinct, Goblin Precinct, Gryphon Precinct, and Tales from Dragon Precinct, followed by the long-awaited next book in the series Mermaid Precinct.
I can definitely nod in agreement with this. The emo-Spider-Man part is almost…embarassing. It’s not even so bad it’s good, its just…bad. And totally agree with you about how MJ and Peter’s relationship is handled.
It’s funny that you described this film as being Venom’s story, with the Sandman being superfluous. I always thought of it as being a Sandman movie with Venom forced into it, but I think your interpretation is more accurate. No matter how you interpret it, why Raimi chose to go with too many villains is a complete mystery.
Before Spider-Man 4 was cancelled, I’d heard that Raimi wanted to double-down again, and use both the Vulture and the Black Cat. The strange part is, I can see how that would work — Vulture as a career criminal looking for “one last score,” and Cat as his protege, or maybe a young rival, who eventually switches sides to help Spidey out, giving her anti-hero status. I have no idea if that’s what Raimi had planned, but it’s one way that two villains could have actually worked organically — give them a common goal, or at least something in common other than “we’re both villains.” Of course, if that film had been made, we wouldn’t have Michael Keaton’s Vulture in Homecoming, and that would be terrible.
Minor note: this is J.K. Simmons’ final live-action appearance as Jameson, but he’s voiced the character in several cartoons, most prominently in Ultimate Spider-Man.
@2 As I recall, it feels more like Sandman’s story because Venom takes forever to show up. The movie is starting to end before we see Venom proper.
Has anyone tried to recut this one to excise the Sandman thread? It wouldn’t fix the various other issues, but simply making the movie shorter and less bloated might address some of the pacing problems. The Venom vs. Spider-Man rivalry, along with that of their real-life counterparts, seems to be a decent core for a feature film if Raimi had spent time to tighten it up a bit.
I always found emo-Peter to be so campy ridiculous as to be kind of fun; laughing at it at least distracts a bit from the dull pacing. To this day, brushing a lock of hair forward and saying “Bad Spidey” with an evil-eye scowl is still a joke around my house for some reason.
The thing that always makes me face-palm in this film is the ‘experiment’ that results in Sandman. This owner of a degree in physics can usually tolerate the crap science that goes into most TV and movies, but it is just so, so bad here on mutliple levels that it is just painful. Gaining superhuman powers from a radioactive spider seems positively plausible by comparison.
@2 and 4. I think the core problem of this movie is that there is the movie Raimi wanted to make with the Sandman as the bad guy. Then there is the movie Raimi thought he should make to please the crowds and suits, with Venom and Harry. Then there is what we got, a smashed together version of the two that just fails everyone. This really should have been two separate movies.
Yeah, entirely too much stuff, all handled in a very half-assed fashion, and Bad Emo Peter. Sigh.
I think there was a recut version of 3 released last year? Has anyone seen that?
Oh this movie. I’ve only seen it twice…and it’s definitely not one I own. Agree with pretty much everything in your review, Keith. And for fun…dug up my old livejournal post when I saw this. My review went thusly: “Saw Spiderman 3 tonight with Chris and Dream – was definitely a fun movie, although it was all over the place. Three villains, crazy plot..but I liked it for the popcorn flick it was.”
So apparently back on May 5th, 2007 I found it enjoyable. Definitely remember cringing at “that” scene. Oh emo Peter…*rolls eyes*
neaden: I think it’s unfair to lump the Harry plotline and the Venom plotline together, as something was going to be done with Harry because that, along with Peter & MJ’s relationship, was a running theme in the first two movies and was a natural outgrowth of what hapened in 1 & 2. Honestly, this should’ve been three separate movies, as the Sandman one had none of the pathos it wanted to have as there was no room to deal with how this related to Uncle Ben’s murder; the Venom one needed room to breathe; and the Harry one, which could’ve been the perfect culmination of the Osborn family stuff from 1 & 2 instead of a lost subplot.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Agreed they tried to fit too much into the film…I know Venom was crowbarred into it, thought I remembered Raimi only wanting to use Sandman, but don’t recall about his plans for the Vulture also…Only saw it once (opening weekend) and my memory’s abit spotty on details, but seemed to me that the Stacey’s tying into everything seemed convoluted…The closing fight with Sandman seemed anticlimactic, and oh yeah the Musical opening and closing were cringeworthy to say the least…And one more thing on top Spidey villains,?sermed there was a time Kingpin was up there also before being transferred to Daredevil…
ther
I like this movie better than most people do. Certainly it’s more flawed and cluttered than its predecessors, but I think it ultimately holds together and makes an effective, if imperfect, conclusion to the trilogy. What made it work, unlike the various multi-villain Batman sequels, is that all the new characters were tied in to what the film was really about, which is Peter Parker’s personal journey through life.
It’s odd to see a story where Spidey is universally acclaimed as a hero, but that’s the path these films seem to have taken, and it was valuable to set up the central arc, where Peter gets too caught up in the power and loses sight of the responsibility. It’s the flip side of the previous movie — rather than losing his way because he doubts his ability to handle being Spider-Man, here he loses his way because he has too little self-doubt. The thing that makes Spidey who he is is that he’s always questioning himself, never letting himself get too cocky in the use of his power, and that keeps him honest. It’s when he stops second-guessing himself that he risks becoming arrogant and screwing things up, both as Peter and as Spidey.
Even though the alien symbiote storyline was foisted on Raimi, he managed to integrate it well into this story, since it merely takes that overconfidence — and the bitterness that overtakes Peter when his overconfidence screws things up and everything else in his life goes wrong — and amplifies it. It becomes merely a vehicle for externalizing what’s already inherent in his character arc.
Meanwhile, Eddie Brock is introduced as a rival to Peter, but at the same time is kind of his warped reflection — who Peter would be without his humble decency, more confident and successful but also more unscrupulous and cruel. Which is what Peter becomes under the symbiote’s influence, so it’s no wonder the symbiote and Eddie hit it off so well after Pete breaks free.
As for Sandman, I really like the route they went here, focusing on his more sympathetic side. The Sandman effects were impressive, but the most impressive effect was Thomas Haden Church’s performance. He was superbly cast, making Marko very sympathetic, a worn-down poster boy for the School of Hard Knocks, but still with a heart in spite of it.
Harry’s story arc was rather contrived in the way it rushed through years’ worth of comics plotting, from vengeful New Goblin to amnesiac best friend, then to recidivist Goblin playing devious mind games with Peter and screwing up his life, and finally to hero Goblin fighting by Peter’s side. But aside from the clumsy compression, this was probably my favorite arc of the film. The amnesia stuff was corny, but it served a purpose in the plot. And once restored to Goblinhood, it’s Harry who becomes the driver of everything that follows, engineering the setbacks that drive Peter into the symbiote’s clutches as a willing ally and leading to his apparent killing of Sandman and his destruction of Brock’s career. But the best part is in the final act, when Peter comes to him for help against MJ and he eventually comes around.
If anything, I think the overabundance of villains works in the story’s favor. Having Venom (though he’s never called that onscreen) and Sandman team up provides an excuse for having Peter seek Harry’s aid, and an opportunity for Harry’s redemption. I can’t really see that happening if Spidey had only one villain to fight. And seeing the two best friends reunited, fighting side-by-side as a Marvel Team-Up, was a great resolution to their arc through the whole trilogy.
On the downside, I agree with the general consensus that Bernard the butler’s inexplicable silence about the manner of Norman’s death until it’s convenient to drop a truth bomb is bizarre and clumsy. I think the action is overly CG-dominated and overdone, though the Sandman stuff worked well. I also don’t like the way the symbiote was just this random rock that literally fell out of the sky. It might’ve been better if it had been some kind of experimental construct created by Oscorp or something that tied in better to the existing storyline. I didn’t care for MJ being reduced to a damsel in distress for the third time running. And their version of Gwen Stacy was underwhelming. (I gather she was originally just some random rescuee that Peter flirted with, with the idea of making her Gwen being an afterthought.)
One thing that earlier films had and this one lacked was a sense of the people of New York as participants in the action — not just watching or needing rescue, but standing up for Spidey, doing their part to help out. In S2, everyone got to be a hero. Aunt May saved Spidey from Doc Ock’s spike, the toddler in the fire tried to pull Peter up to safety, the subway passengers saved Spidey after he saved them, and even Stan Lee got to pull someone away from falling debris. Here, the New Yorkers were just spectators like in any other superhero film — cheering Spidey on, but not contributing anything beyond that. Before, they were united behind him when it counted, but here it was more superficial. It’s like, in accepting Spidey as a hero, they’ve become too dependent on him to do the heroing for them. And that’s a shame, because that sense of everyone being a hero was what made the second film in particular so special.
I find it interesting, by the way, that this film draws more on the Spider-Man: The Animated Series “The Alien Costume” saga than on the comics. The comics’ symbiote merely drained Peter’s life force; the animated series introduced the idea of it making Peter more aggressive and amoral, an idea that’s been reused in later animated adaptations as well as the movie. The iconic shot of Spidey waking up to see his black-costumed form reflected in a skyscraper window originated in the animated series too, I believe. And as Keith mentioned, the movie follows TAS’s precedent in introducing Eddie as Peter’s rival before he becomes Venom. I saw the animated series first, so I was surprised when I finally read the comics and saw how clumsily Brock was retconned in out of nowhere in Venom’s debut appearance.
I thought I read at one point that Raimi didn’t even like the Venom character and only included him because the studio forced him to. Other than that, I have nothing to add, you’ve hit all the proper points.
Question for next week: I assume you’re covering the theatrical version of Daredevil because that’s the one we were originally presented with. Will you be touching on the superior Director’s Cut of the film at all?
As a fan of Venom back in the day, I thought this movie was a disappointment. First, while Topher Grace is a decent actor, he’s totally miscast as Eddie Brock. He’s Eric Foreman with a bad attitude, and not all the movie magic in the world can make him look like the big, imposing figure the character is supposed to be. Because when we finally get a good look at him, he looks like he shrank in the wash. A mini Venom.
The only part of the symbiote storyline I liked was the little nod to the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Listen closely when the black goo arrives on Earth and you can hear the same weird sound effect used in that movie.
The rest of Spidey 3 feels like a romantic comedy/tragedy and a monster movie awkwardly pasted together. Neither wholly awful nor terrific, just a large mess.
@13/Gwangi: It was a complete reinvention of Brock, yes, but I think it worked because the goal was to advance Peter’s story, and so an evil reflection of Peter worked better thematically within the film than some big musclebound bruiser. I mean, with the symbiote’s powers, I don’t see how a hulking musculature would’ve made Venom any more intimidating.
Of course, I generally hate the Venom character. I liked him in “The Alien Costume” on the animated series, because a villain who knew Peter’s identity and weaknesses and was invisible to his danger sense was a compelling threat. But the comics hugely overused the character and took him to ridiculous excesses (and spawned Carnage, a character I loathe even more), so I got pretty sick of him. I was glad that the movie limited its use of Venom.
14.
You mean like the hulking musculature of a giant sand monster? The filmmakers thought size mattered in at least one scene, I guess. As for Peter, I think it would’ve been better to apply the evil reflection to Harry. That’s where the heart of the story was. We cared about Harry.
Come to think of it, this story didn’t need Sandman or Venom to work. But they couldn’t just repeat another goblin villain. Got to sell more action figures.
For some reason when I saw the movie the first time, I interpreted Sandman’s ending where he turned into sand and floated away on the breeze as a kind of suicide. That’s why it never bothered me that Peter just let him go despite all his crimes. I felt like Peter forgave him, Sandman felt remorse for what he had done, and so he let himself just dissipate away.
The movie is shit, too much stuff in one film, and badly managed. Making a named villain responsible for Uncle Ben’s death was stupid. And Harry’s Snowboard Goblin… ugh…
On the other hand, I remember liking the VFX for Sandman and Venom, and Haden Church was well casted as Marko, and he looked great too.
Speaking of Venom, he’s like Marvel’s Harley Quinn: a character introduced in the modern era, but that grew to be as popular as classic characters, becoming a modern classic.
@14 – Chris: If only it was just Carnage… they have lots of alien-goo characters, and the Venom alien has even bonded with freaking THANOS in the comics now.
Upon seeing the movie in 2007, my reactions were similar to many of those stated above. They included:
* I was familiar with Venom from the 1990s animated series on Fox.
* Instead of Sandman, that show had Hydro-Man, a completely different “where we’re going, we don’t need physiology” character. (People comprised of rock, ice, crystal, mud, shadow … who still have muscle, sensory and speech functions.)
* Wow, that’s too many villains and too much plot.
* Marko becomes Sandman through a more implausible-than-usual contrivance — it’s almost literally a mixing bowl. (There’s an episode of Invader ZIM in which a couple of very stupid aliens conduct random fusion-experiments on abductees. “What’ll we fuse’im wit next, eh? Howzabout this milk carton?” “But what if’at gives’im superpowers? Have you thought of that?”)
* Harry’s goblin air-board … Where did he get it? How does it possibly contain enough fuel?
* Brock jumps after the caged symbiote at the same moment Spidey tosses a spare pumpkin-bomb at it? Well, that’s either dumb or possibly very considerate (I’ll just remove myself as a witness).
* Spidey lets Marko go? That might be an important moment of personal catharsis for Parker (“I forgive you”) but in a more holistic crime-fighting sense, it’s dumb.
I’d have to rewatch the end again, but I think I also had the impression that Sandman was kind of … dissipating.
And if you want to feel old: Venom is now older (30) than Spider-Man was (26) when Venom was introduced.
For a long time, this movie was the poster child for stitched-together, art-by-committee superhero flicks. Justice League may have eclipsed it, but I’m sure not going to revisit SM3 to make sure.
It’s bitterly ironic that it took a year longer to make SM3 than SM2, yet the former is the one that feels far more rushed. It does indeed come off as overstuffed – but what’s really bizarre is how much seemingly essential material is bypassed in favor of the completely trivial. The introduction of the symbiote is reduced to a Blob-like meteor crash, the Sandman and Venom join forces via an utterly perfunctory meeting in a back alley, and their kidnapping of Mary Jane isn’t even shown on screen … yet we have time to watch Harry and Mary Jane jitterbug while making an omelet? WTF?
I remember the extra year of filmmaking time being explained away as necessary for the then-elaborate Sandman effects. And they do represent some of the only parts of the film I enjoy, particularly Marko’s initial transformation and his first encounter with Spidey. Otherwise, I don’t like what they did with his character, particularly as it retconned the classic origin story to no good purpose. From what I remember of the original Sandman, he was scary because he was just an ordinary thug gifted with unimaginable powers. Guys like that are often more dangerous than brilliant master criminals, simply because they’re lacking all sense of proportion and consequence. They’d use a nuclear bomb just to knock off a jewelry store. (See: White House, current occupant of.)
Other observations:
Here’s our second on-screen Goblin who looks markedly different than, yet still inferior to, the comics version.
Having the alien costume look merely like Spidey’s standard suit spray-painted black isn’t a terrible choice per se, but I bet it was made at least in part to save some toy manufacturers money.
Isn’t it thoughtful of the symbiote to recede momentarily from Brock’s face in the final confrontation scene, just so we can watch Topher Grace chew the scenery?
@17/MaGnUs:
Comparing Venom to Harley Quinn is an interesting thought. Personally, I’d say Venom is even more closely analogous to Bane. They’ve both always struck me as brutish and uninteresting villains introduced to their respective mythologies by brutish and uninteresting creators. And no matter how much time goes by, I doubt I will ever give a damn about either one of them.
@15/Gwangi: “You mean like the hulking musculature of a giant sand monster? The filmmakers thought size mattered in at least one scene, I guess.”
Sure, so why did they need two hulking villains?
“As for Peter, I think it would’ve been better to apply the evil reflection to Harry. That’s where the heart of the story was. We cared about Harry.”
But Harry isn’t a dark reflection of Peter. He’s a basically decent guy who went astray because of his daddy issues. Brock was who Peter would’ve been if he were a creep — the kind of person who would embrace the corrupting influence of the symbiote rather than reject it as Peter did.
@18/Phillip Thorne: A bit of trivia: The reason the ’90s animated series couldn’t use Sandman was because it was developed at the time that James Cameron was planning to make a Spider-Man feature film featuring Electro and Sandman as the main villains. So the show had to avoid using those characters, and also to avoid the origin story (since of course the movie would’ve covered that). I figure the intent was to make it as the kind of animated show that you can mistake for a sequel to the movie if you don’t look too closely. Once the movie plans fell through, they eventually covered the origin story, and then did a version of Electro toward the end of the series, but for some reason they never bothered with Sandman.
@11-ChristopherLBennet: I completely agree with you regarding Peter’s story in the film. I think what the Symbiote represents in Spider-Man 3 is more interesting than what it represented in TAS, or the comics. The entire movie is about Forgiveness, and how holding on to hate and revenge can completely change you. Harry, and MJ are also put in positions where they have to forgive those that’ve wronged them as well. It’s refreshing to see a movie like this where the hero has to forgive their enemies. There are other things about the film that don’t work, but I think the overall theme is handled quite well. Probably the most underrated Spider-Man film for me thus far.
22.
A dark reflection need not be a full one-to-one comparison to work. They can have shades of similarities, without hitting us over the head with the THEME of the story. Indiana Jones is a shadowy reflection to Rene Belloq and vice versa, but one doesn’t have to be a well-to-do Frenchman or a gruff American professor too for that story to work. So all the more reason to make Brock a large muscleman who is also a photographer.
But then I don’t think this story needed a dark reflection of Peter anyway. There was plenty of material in Harry’s resentment towards Spider-Man and his daddy issues to give us a memorable antagonist.
Quoth Stephen Schneider: “their kidnapping of Mary Jane isn’t even shown on screen”
While I agree with everything else you say, I just want to point out that we do see MJ’s kidnapping on screen.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Why is Emo Peter so reviled? Well, mainly it is because a very many comicbook nerds have dreams of being an edgy badass (cf every “-gate” fight in nerddom) and Emo Peter reminds us how ridiculous a geeky nerd trying to be badass actually is. Sorry guys, but put your fedoras away because that cringey Jazz cafe dance is you.
It is one of the reasons I like that particular part of the movie.
Because of all the backstory involved, Venom versus Spidey should have been a standalone film all to its own. Plus, emo Peter was just hideous. The movie was too much stuff to fit in one two hour sack.
@25/krad:
Wow, really? I don’t remember that at all. All I remember is an extremely abrupt cut to a female news anchor telling her audience (and us) that Mary Jane is being held hostage. And me thinking, “When the hell did that happen?” Which is exactly what I was warned I would think by some friends who had attended the press screening and had the same reaction.
Ever since, I’ve put that bit of truncated story development in the same mental category as the scene in Superman IV in which Nuclear Man suddenly shows up on the street in front of Mariel Hemingway’s apartment building and Superman is there to stop him — with us having no idea how either of them decided to go there. But least in that case, we know there was explanatory footage that was shot and then omitted at the last minute.
Please tell me that whatever is shown of Mary Jane’s abduction is brief and perfunctory. I really don’t want to think I’m completely losing my mind. (Ignore obvious joke.)
@26/random22:
Oh, I’d love for that to be the reason. Sadly, I think there’s a different one: Sam Raimi is a freakin’ DORK! I’ve been saying it all through these rewatches.
“What do kids do when they go bad? They wear black and act up at … uh, jazz clubs!” “How do the young folks court nowadays? Uh … they jitterbug and make omelets!” “What kind of show does an up-and-coming New York actress find herself in? Uh … The Importance of Being Earnest! I saw that one in high school!”
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: He’s David Lynch without the irony.
“They jitterbug and make omelets”
Really? My impression from reading this is that Peter isn’t the one who puts the Boom-Boom into MJ’s heart and that Gwen is the one who sends his souls sky-high when his lovin’ starts
;)
Stephen: It is brief — MJ gets into a cab to head to work and the cabbie is revealed to be Brock, who then grabs her face with a black-clad hand.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve always said that the symbiote story and the Venom story need to be two movies. Have a primary villain in the first, while the suit is a secondary plot. Maybe Peter realizing what it’s doing to him and deciding to abandon it can serve as the nadir? “I couldn’t beat _____ WITH the suit, so how am I going to without it?” And then maybe a stinger shows a previously-established Brock getting the symbiote treatment.
I generally agree with the review but I’m another one who thinks more of the movie that most people. As someone who grew up on Amazing Friends in the 80s and wasn’t really familiar with the comics at the time, much like Raimi I was much more excited about Sandman than this Venom guy whoever he was. And having both of them did seem to mean both got short-changed. The summary seems to skim over a lot of the beats in Sandman’s character to make his “redemption” seem even more unearned: His daughter has a life-threatening illness and he was stealing to fund her medical treatment, Uncle Ben’s death was accidental with the gun discharging when Marko was startled. But the problem is the whole plotline is never resolved. I’ve heard of an alternate version where, when Venom tracks Sandman down, he’s playing with his daughter in his sand form and we learn her condition is terminal and he just wants to spend what time she has left with her. (Even in the finished film, it’s clear he only helps Venom go after Spider-Man because he thinks it’s kill or be killed.) I’ve kind of got that in my head canon because it makes more sense of the ending and presumably Sandman will turn himself in afterwards.
I tend to veer towards the idea that Emo Peter is meant to be embarassing: That at heart he’s still a nerd doing a nerd’s version of being a bad boy. I also think it’s a nice touch that the producers feel bad about hurting Mary-Jane’s feelings when the lazy cliché would be for them not to care. I forgot to mention that I like the arc May goes on throughout the films from the early idea of her thinking Spider-Man is a menace to gradually realising he’s a hero (and secretly deep down knowing it’s Peter), so the bit where Peter tells her Spider-Man’s killed Sandman, thinking she’ll be pleased, only for her to be horrified that Spider-Man would do that is a nice beat.
The film doesn’t need Gwen but it does a good job with her all the same, making her a likable character who, much like her comic counterpart, possibly would have been good with Peter in different circumstances. Another thing I’ve heard is that originally Gwen was meant to be the one taken hostage at the end (which would make more sense, since she’s the one Venom has a link to) and Mary-Jane was going to convince Harry to help Peter (they even used a clip of that version in the trailers) but at the last minute they decided they needed Mary-Jane to be the one Peter and Harry team up to help, so the butler got drafted in as an unconvincing replacement. They did try and make Mary Jane a bit more proactive but I think it basically consisted of throwing bricks at the bad guys. As for the ending…it’s a bit simplistic but it’s a movie. Peter and Mary-Jane have just been through hell together and seen one of their oldest friends killed, it’s understandable that in the moment they’d just want to comfort each other. I don’t think it’s as simple as “Yay, they’re back together!” and hopefully if there’d been a fourth movie it would have built up to that and had them earn it.
@32/cap-mjb: “I tend to veer towards the idea that Emo Peter is meant to be embarassing: That at heart he’s still a nerd doing a nerd’s version of being a bad boy.”
Yes. This. Exactly. The symbiote doesn’t change his basic nature, just dulls his empathy and inhibitions and ups his aggression. What he ends up doing is what he would’ve imagined himself doing if he’d had the confidence or selfishness to do it. And since he is such a good-natured goof at heart, what we get is a goofy and not especially threatening “dark side.”
Which is one of the ways in which Maguire’s Peter is different from the comics’ version. The comics’ Peter has a lot of anger and resentment in him, and if not for the lesson of Uncle Ben’s death, he would’ve gone on using his powers for personal gain and let the rest of the world hang. So he could’ve turned pretty dark if things had gone differently. I don’t think Raimi & Maguire’s Peter really had that in him.
It seems that, in the 21st century anyway, no superhero series can go more than three installments before a reboot. If this movie had been a hit, there would have been a #4, as it was already being planned. Yet looking back from 2018, it seems like three is a hard limit: X-Men stopped at three; the Nolan Batman films stopped at three. Iron Man seems to be done; Cap and Thor could continue, but it looks like they won’t. Given how odd it is that the same creators could make two great movies and then tank the third, it feels like there’s a conspiracy here — karma, or the studios, dictated that the third one had to be poor, in order to set up the reboot.
I know that’s a bad sign for Avengers 4. I’m going to choose to believe it can escape by essentially being the second part of Infinity War.
@34/ Brian:
Well, SM3 was technically a hit, and a big one. Domestically, it was the top grossing film of the year, and internationally, it remains the biggest Spidey flick of all, to this day. The problem was that it was so justifiably reviled by the core audience that a Spider-Man 4 would have had to do serious work to mend fences. Still, plans for such a follow-up continued for the next two and a half years, until Raimi dropped out, unable to get a script he liked that could be filmed in time for the 2011 release Sony had decreed.
@34/Brian: The X-Men series had four films, counting X-Men Origins: Wolverine, before doing First Class, but that was more a prequel than a reboot. Then came The Wolverine, and only then, as the 7th film in the series, did they do a timeline reset with Days of Future Past. But in its own way, that was a continuation. Like Star Trek, it used time travel to create an alternate timeline within the same overall continuity, rather than starting completely over with an unrelated version as the Spider-Man films did. And they aren’t even thoroughly committed to the timeline reset. Logan seems like it relies more on continuity from the original timeline than from the revised one, though it’s a little vague whether it really fits in either.
“Given how odd it is that the same creators could make two great movies and then tank the third, it feels like there’s a conspiracy here — karma, or the studios, dictated that the third one had to be poor, in order to set up the reboot.”
Of course not. It’s just that, the more successful a series gets, the more executive meddling it’s often subjected to. The execs are trying to make it better, but they often have poor judgment about how to do that, because their talents are in business and finance rather than creativity. Also, sometimes, there’s a tendency to try to cram in more plot threads with each sequel, which increases the odds that the third film will be the most cluttered one.
Although, for whatever reason, our culture seems to think of trilogies as the default length for multi-part series. So it’s not that studios go out of their way to make film series end at three; it’s just that their predisposition to think in terms of threes makes them more likely to start thinking in terms of endings and changes once the third film rolls around. It’s an inclination, but not a conscious requirement.
There’s also the fact that a movie trilogy tends to take 6-9 years to get completed, which is a pretty long time for a single series to run. Eventually, filmmakers and actors want to move on, executives get replaced by new ones with different interests or goals, so the longer a film series lasts, the more likely it’ll be subject to change.
Man… Daredevil, The Punisher, Elektra, Fantastic Four, Catwoman and Ghost Rider… The mid 2000s were full of terrible superhero films, with the first two Spider Man films, Batman Begins and X2 emerging top of the pile. It appears that this genre could be divided into only terrible or iconic films during this time. I am also curious to see if V for Vendetta, Watchmen and Jonah Hex will be reviewed, although the latter would be no great loss if it was not.
Despite this being the weakest of Raimi’s trilogy, it is still a pretty good movie. I have to say that trilogy ranks right near the top of the superhero movie genre. They represent a turning point in the genre, and cleared the ground for all the Marvel movies that followed.
I will, in fact, be covering V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and Jonah Hex in this rewatch.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
A day or so after I saw SM3, I emailed a few friends an idea I came up with for a story treatment that I thought would have taken the movie in a better direction. I don’t remember all the details, but I think it began by establishing that Spidey was the underappreciated, can’t-catch-a-break public pariah he so often was in the comics, not the virtual folk hero he is at the outset of the movie Raimi shot. In my conception, Marko was a low-level employee of a big corporation who had been screwed over by his bosses, whose operation he then tried to rob both as revenge and a way of keeping his family afloat. Spidey interceded, but upon learning of Marko’s plight – and empathizing with his status as the victim of an unfair system — he simply let him go. The rest of the movie would have shown Spidey coming to regret that snap decision, as Marko used the powers of the Sandman to commit ever bigger crimes, which was increasingly the only option left to him to take care of his kin. (I don’t remember if Marko would already have been the Sandman when Spidey first encountered him, but it really doesn’t matter for the purposes of the story.)
In its own way, the idea was a revisitation of the origin, but without being an outright retcon. Peter would be forced to contemplate just what “responsibility” is and to whom it is owed. Once you’ve decided that your responsibility to society is to act as an unsanctioned vigilante, are you morally and ethically bound to enforce all the other strictures of the legal system, other than the ones you yourself are not observing? Or are you free to make any judgment call you think is appropriate? And if you do, what are the consequences?
Of course, as I said above, I personally prefer the characterization of Marko as a dumb thug who’s dangerous because his powers exceed his smarts or imagination. I just wanted to see what I could do with a characterization similar to the one Raimi employed. I can easily see the movie having also worked well had the central conflict been Peter’s quest to control the damage wreaked by a Sandman who was both ignorant of, and apathetic toward, the catastrophic damage he was creating while pursuing his relatively mundane aims. Maybe Harry could have initially conscripted him as a dull dupe in his own vendetta against Spider-Man, only to discover that Marko didn’t give a damn about anyone else’s program and wasn’t smart enough to stick to one in the first place.
Lots of interesting ways they could have gone with this one.
(And please pardon the double use of the word “damage” in that one sentence.)
Very pleased to hear it, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on them. As to these series of films, there was a video a friend of mine recommended to me, where a reviewer analysed the Raimi trilogy and discovered that the three films all followed the same three basic plot points: Peter struggling with a new aspect of his power, breaking up with and then getting back together with Mary Jane, and fighting villains with personal connections to Peter (best friend’s dad- the Green Goblin, scientific idol- Doctor Octopus, uncle’s killer- Sandman and jealous coworker- Venom,) who all, aside from Sandman, ultimately kill themselves, so Spider Man doesn’t have to live with their deaths on his consciousness.
@40/Stephen: “I don’t remember all the details, but I think it began by establishing that Spidey was the underappreciated, can’t-catch-a-break public pariah he so often was in the comics, not the virtual folk hero he is at the outset of the movie Raimi shot.”
I did say before that I found it odd to see Spidey widely acclaimed as a hero, but in the context of these films, I think it makes sense. In the comics, Spidey came along after the Fantastic Four were already established and around the same time that the Avengers and its various members emerged. So with a lot of other people for the public to latch onto as superheroes, it’s plausible that the weird creepy bug guy who clung to walls might’ve had a hard time competing with the others’ reputation and could’ve been seen more negatively. But in the Raimi continuity, Spider-Man is the only superhero in town, the only one doing these big, dramatic rescues and supervillain battles. So it’d be harder for the public not to be aware of his heroism. Something of the same dynamic occurs in the Garfield/Webb films, for the same reason. It’s only in Homecoming that we see Spidey’s situation being more like that in the comics — there, he’s not necessarily seen as a menace, but he’s kind of an also-ran; he doesn’t have a reputation on the same level as the Avengers, and the public isn’t quite sure what to make of him.
So I can see where you’re coming from in terms of wanting a more traditional unappreciated Spidey, but it’s hard to see how he couldn’t be appreciated when he was the only superhero in town, with nobody else to overshadow him.
Spider-Man 3 is on TV right now, and I must apologize for having stated that Sam Raimi is a freakin’ dork for making us watch Harry and Mary Jane do the jitterbug.
He’s a freakin’ dork for making us watch them do the twist.
This must be the most mis-understood movie in recent memory,
The emo-Parker is SUPPOSED to be embarrassing. He’s supposed to be a dick, This isn’t your usual ‘hero turns evil’ thing. The point Raimi is making is that when you are young you get cocky, you get arrogant and you become a dick. You think you’ll cool, but you’re not. Most people go through that stage when growing up.
I addition, people complaining about Venom’s lack of screentime and Topher Grace: the movie is about Spidey. Venom here reflects Spidey. Topher Grace plays Eddie Brock as an amoral Peter Parker. And Venom shows what would have happened to Peter is he hadn’t rejected the symbiote. No, it’s not a Venom movie, but Venom in the comics is a borigin character who looks awesome. The movie told the best story possible with Venom.
This movie is OK. It’s a step down from the first two films and has some genuinely cringey bits but I’ve always found it watchable. I still think the best way to handle the black suit/Venom is to give Peter an entire movie having the suit and ending it with Brock becoming Venom.
It’s the weakest of the original films, but it still works well for me. Meshing multiple villains and plots may have been questionable, with dubious results. Nevertheless, I really have a soft spot for the Sandman storyline. Forgiveness is always a strong theme to tackle in superhero stories. Peter’s ability to forgive a regretful Marko and let him go makes for one of the better ending scenes in the trilogy.
Venom is more of a mixed bag. I think Topher Grace does what he can with the role, but the story never quite sells his transition from failed photographer to outright villain.
As for Peter’s arrogance, I think it would have worked better had they attempted to do the Venom storyline in a separate film. Even Harry’s Goblin thread could have benefitted from more screen time (although I do enjoy the way Peter humilates him, one of the few truly effective uses of Peter’s arrogance in the film).
It’s too bad Raimi couldn’t agree on a story direction for the fourth film. For all intents and purposes, it should have been the Lizard. They had already set up Dylan Baker in the role, a great nod to continuity.
Spider 3 is not remotely bad in any sense. Just a very flawed story with good intentions, and way too much executive meddling involved. The Raimi/Maguire collaboration could have easily generated five or six worthy films total.
I don’t really agree with the idea of doing Venom in a separate film, largely because I don’t much like Venom and I’m glad they got him out of the way quickly rather than devoting a whole film to him. But also because I still think the best Venom story was “The Alien Costume, Parts 1-3” from The Animated Series. It spent the first part on the origin of the black costume, the second part on the alien costume’s effect on Peter and his escape from it, and the third part on his battle against Venom. So it makes sense to me for Venom’s emergence to be the closing act of the alien costume storyline, the climax that it builds to. It’s like a story about a clingy, emotionally abusive lover who becomes a psychotic stalker after the breakup. It’s a single story arc.
(Tellingly, every single one of these changes was reversed—the ones to the Hulk and Iron Man were dumped immediately, in fact. Spidey’s costume actually lasted for four years, and writer John Byrne got considerable storytelling mileage out of the roster change in the FF. Oh, and it took a loooooong time, but Colossus and Kitty did get back together eventually.)
Actually, the costume lasted six issues. The original black costume premiered in Amazing Spider-man #254 (the issue where he returned from Battleworld post-Secret Wars). He learned it was alive from tests run by Reed Richards in ASM #259 and they locked it up in a cryo-tube in the Baxter Building. That’s the issue with famous “Bag Man” costume, when Peter had to go home in a spare FF costume with a paper bag on his head because he didn’t have a Spider-man costume with him upon leaving the symbiote with the Fantastic Four.
Folks actually remember the replica cloth black costume that Black Cat then made for him (to replace the battered Ditko-era costume he wore for an issue, his previous costume having, one will remember, having been destroyed on Battleworld), which he proceeded to wear for about four years through Kraven’s Last Hunt and The Death of Jean DeWolff. The storyline introducing Venom that folks remember actually follows the famous FF story where Doctor Doom destroyed the Baxter Building (John Byrne showed the symbiote, which he included in Reed’s lab over the course of four years, escaping); it tracked down Peter — angered at its captivity — and his attempt to destroy it at the church tower (replicating Reed’s original sonic blaster attack) which led to its bonding with Eddie Brock below.
Of course, because of how the costumes look alike on Peter and how later adaptations have condensed the story (knowing’ that it will lead to Venom), folks forget that the symbiote was just a six-issue storyline in 1984, no more meaningful that Iron Man’s space armor. Had John Byrne not kept drawing the interesting black alien goo in Reed’s lab in subsequent year’s on Fantastic Four, Venom would probably never have existed!
bhaughwout: Yeah, the symbiote lasted six issues, but the new costume lasted four years. The point was the change of an iconic outfit, not the origin of that outfit. The cloth black costume that Felicia made for him is still the new Secret Wars costume in all the ways that matter.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This film just sticks with me the least of all of them. I think I have seen it twice. While watching it, I thought it was mostly inoffensive. In retrospect it just looks worse every time, though. Altogether, it feels like they were spitballing ideas, decided to use all of them, and then didn’t bother to really develop any of them. The plot elements just feel half-baked; a plot where Brock is jealous of Peter and Gwen doesn’t really feel appropriate when Peter and Mary-Jane’s romance has already progressed so far, right? How is it supposed to have any weight?
The performances of the new characters just feel empty–Grace does what he can, but he never seems fleshed out enough to earn the pathos that Brock gets in the comics, nor to really serve as an effective foil to Maguire’s Spider-man. Thomas Haden Church and Bryce Dallas Howard feel like they wandered in from some other movie, and they’re not sure why they are there.
I think the recurring characters from previous films have it worse though. Maguire just plays Peter too dopey for me to buy into this Peter Parker’s arrogance; the lessons he learns seem forced. Mary-Jane’s arc feels like it ends with a disappointing whimper. Franco’s performance of Harry in this movie just felt forced to me; I don’t even know what he was going for, since he doesn’t have the crazed menace of Dafoe’s character, but he is too goofy to be taken straight.
JK Simmons was still good.
@21 – Stephen: Bane and Venom do share some similarities in story, but the former is nowhere as popular as Harley and Venom.
@31 – Nathan: And now we’re getting a Venom movie without Spider-Man, that’s an awful idea.
FWIW, Spider-Man and his black symbiote suit also appeared in the early days of the Transformers comic — 1984, issue #3. The original miniseries was explicitly set in the mainstream Marvel universe, but the connection was disavowed in the letters page of #64. (“Let’s cross over our properties!” seems to be an inescapable compulsion that pops up about once a decade.)
@53/Phillip Thorne: Oh, Marvel used to include nearly all its licensed properties in its main universe by default. It was the rule, not the exception. They even had Godzilla pursued by Dum-Dum Dugan and a SHIELD team and getting into fights with the Fantastic Four and Devil Dinosaur, and even getting railed at by J. Jonah Jameson. Even their Machine Man character was an outgrowth of the rather bizarre licensed comics that Jack Kirby did based on 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the Dire Wraiths and other elements created for the ROM: Spaceknight comics have continued to be a part of the Marvel universe even though Marvel no longer has the rights to reprint the comics or feature ROM himself (and I think IDW now has the ROM rights using just the original toy character with none of the Marvel-created elements, since Marvel still owns those).
Even Marvel’s 1980-82 Star Trek comic book contained an implied link to the Marvel Universe, when an issue featuring an illusory recreation of Count Dracula had Spock referencing a character from Marvel’s Dracula series as part of the historical record. Although a Spider-Man issue by the same writer (Marv Wolfman) had Peter and friends going to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the theater, so Trek was not actually treated as part of the MU. Nor was Star Wars when Marvel initially had the license during the ’70s and ’80s. But those were the exceptions.
@54: Lets not forget that Kiss fought Dr. Doom in the ‘70s issue that was inked with Paul, Gene, Peter and Ace’s blood …
Agreed on most points particularly when Peter turns into a greasy ass. I actually walked out of the room until the end of the dance scene. I do think it’s reasonable for MJ to be irritated when she was trying to talk about how her life isn’t going so hot and all Peter can do is talk about himself. It’s nice that his intent was to help, but he was still being a bit self-centered.
My favorite Marvel crossover was in the Nick Fury and the Howling Commandoes comic, issue #13. The Howlers team up with Captain America and Bucky. Seeing Cap win the respect of the Howlers was when I learned to respect him as well (can you blame me for initially thinking a guy dressed like a flag was kind of a clown?).
I also remember that the Howlers meet a young OSS Major named Reed Richards (it happened in issue #3, and I think other issues as well), and at one point, remember an encounter a P-51 pilot, Lt. Ben Grimm. The FF connection got retconned out of existence when they delinked a lot of character’s connections with WWII, but it still stands out for me.
As I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t read a lot of superhero comics, though I *did* grow up reading The Amazing Spider-Man in the Sunday funnies. I dimly recall Spidey’s new black costume, and I think I might have seen Venom action figures in a toystore, but I don’t remember knowing anything about Eddie Brock before I saw Spider-Man 3. So I had no idea he was originally a “musclebound bruiser”. Does that mean that Truth in Journalism is inspired by Raimi’s interpretation of the character?
In any case, I don’t see how that would in any way make him a more interesting character. John Jameson is better suited for that role. In fact, now that I think about it, JJ Jr and Raimi!Brock make a great pair of contrasting foils for Peter Parker. One has everything Peter wants, the other wants what Peter has. One is a fundamentally decent guy who’s undone by violent impulses he can’t control, the other could be a decent guy if he’d learn to stop being a self-serving ass, but instead he embraces his violent impulses.
@12: Never knew there was a director’s cut of Daredevil…will have to try to find it (I have the theater version on DVD).
@59/Mike E.: The director’s cut of Daredevil is an enormously better and more coherent movie, since it restores a lot of major plot and character beats that were hacked out of the theatrical cut for some reason. It still retains some of the same weaknesses, though.
59. Mike E. What CLB said. The Director’s Cut of Daredevil takes it from a 4/10 to a 7/10 in my opinion.
I’ll have more on this tomorrow, but the differences between the theatrical cut and the director’s cut of Daredevil are negligible.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
62. krad How dare you have a different opinion than mine!! ;)
So, we rewatched this one too, and I’ll say that we actually enjoyed it more than we remembered. The ‘Emo Peter’ scene is definitely ridiculous, but given the disgusted glances all the passerby are given…it’s supposed to be. (The jazz dance scene is uttelry ridiculous though…it seems straight out of another movie. And where did Peter learn piano??? And why is everybody all excited about some upstart interrupting the show? At least MJ’s boss had the decency to try to throw the guy out, but after all was said and done).
While it’s definitely overstuffed, I didn’t feel bored by it.
I actually found myself a lot more interested in Harry’s character in this one, even it seems like he’s under used a lot or just an afterthought. Honestly, I wish they would have just had a movie to explore the relationship between Peter, MJ and Harry since that could be interesting on its own. Watching Harry’s descent into madness here I couldn’t help but think he might have made a decent prequel-Anakin (I remember thinking this during some of his tantrums in Spider-Man II as well) – he has that slightly unhinged, insecure, jealous, possessive, ‘my friends have betrayed me!’ aura to him. But then again, Anakin should probably be played with a little more charisma/confidence as well – but we also see Harry pull that off during his ‘good’ moments so I think he could have managed it. (Also, insert joke about a villain made of SAND. It really does get everywhere…)
The part with him re-gaining amnesia and forcing MJ to break up with Peter and then manipulating Peter on top of it was actually pretty interesting to me, although it did seem out of character for me to be actively threatening MJ. I suppose it was the influence of the goblin serum? But in this movie his character seems to go from somebody who was always a bit jealous/insecure and held a grudge, to a character who was actively manipulating and hurting his friends, which was a bit creepy.
Also, this movie spawned another inside joke in our house – it’s pretty much guaranteed that if one of us encounters strawberries we’ll mimic that “Strawberriesssss” line. Although I completely forgot about Harry’s “SO GOOD!” line while eating the pie and then his evil wink/grin out the window at Peter. I know in some ways it’s totally over the top but I love the delivery.
The one thing that really bugged me though was that I can’t stand MJ and Peter as a couple. They don’t act like a normal couple, they act like…well, a couple in a movie because they always make the most drama-causing decision possible in their interactions with each other. Personally I think Peter’s advice after her bad review was perfectly fine and he’s right – if she’s an actress she’s gonna have to get used to it. I didn’t see it as him trying to make it all about him. On the other hand, I agree his behavior at the parade was ridiculous. But then the two of them throughout the movie just seem completely unable to communicate with each other in a mature way.
Another thought – in this movie, MJ is physically assaulted by both Harry and Peter (arguably by accident in Peter’s case). And at the end she seems to have no grief with any of them. And in the movie we know Harry is under the influence of the serum, and Peter is under the influence of the symbiote, but she doesn’t know any of that. Plus there’s something kind of icky about all these guys doing crappy things to women but the story basically waving it away by them really being good guys, they’re just under the influence of x! I get that the story is supposed to be about ‘forgiveness’ (hence the Sandman arc) but…that’s not really what forgiveness is. And speaking of Sandman…just because it was an accident doesn’t mean that he wasn’t purposefully carrying a lethal weapon around and causing a situation where it might be used. So frankly I don’t think he’s just innocent or ‘not a bad guy, just bad luck’. That doesn’t mean Peter can’t forgive him and stop the cycle of violence, of course, but forgiveness doesn’t mean letting people off the hook or denying their accountability. Argh!
Speaking of, MJ at the end is yet another example of her flubbing a performance because she sees Peter. Maybe those bad reviews were warranted ;) (Also, why would the owner/bouncers even still let him in at this point? This is the guy that they saw a few days ago cause a scene to humiliate their singer and then beat up the bouncer as well as accidentally hit her.)
Okay, maybe I do have problems with this movie, lol.
@64/Lisamarie: “Personally I think Peter’s advice after her bad review was perfectly fine and he’s right – if she’s an actress she’s gonna have to get used to it. I didn’t see it as him trying to make it all about him.”
Yeah, that always bugged me. I always thought it was supposed to be a good thing to show you understood what someone was going through by relating a similar experience in your life and how it made you feel. It’s a way of expressing empathy, of showing that you can relate to what the other person is feeling because you’ve been through it too. I’ve seen it said that a difference in typical male and female communication in our culture is that men tend to try to offer ways to fix problems when women would typically rather hear understanding and validation of what they’re feeling about those problems — less “This is what you’re doing wrong” and more “Yes, I totally get why you feel this way about it.” And that’s what it seemed to me that Peter was trying to do — to show that he understood and empathized because he’d been through something similar. So it seemed odd to me that MJ saw it as making it about himself.
I definitely saw it as a very stereotypical way of portraying male/female communication. Of course women (and probably men) want to feel heard and validated and not like somebody’s just trying to tell them how to fix their problem – but I didn’t think Peter was being unfeeling either.
That said, as somebody who does often (when trying to show that I am empathetic) at times relate my own experiences, I do understand (and try to guard against it) how can look like it’s just about turning the conversation to yourself. For example, my grandmother was a classic case of something like that – if you didn’t feel well, or some loved one died she just had to ‘top you’ by talking about HER ailments, about how HER husband died and that was so much worse, etc. But I honestly didn’t see that as what Peter was doing and he also seemed sympathetic to her plight.
@54: Yes, a ROM title is currently published by IDW.
At Hasbro’s direction, over the past few years IDW has been using its popular Transformers books to launch books for other Hasbro 1980s toy properties — Action Man, G.I.Joe, MASK, Micronauts, Rom, and Visionaries (o/~ knights of the magical light o/~). (Jem is another Hasbro property and IDW book, but not linked.) The connections make sense, so far as such things go — G.I.Joe was formed in part as a response to repeated Decepticon attacks on Earth; the transforming vehicles used by MASK are based on Cybertronian tech; on the galactic stage, the Solstar Order are aware of and not friendly to the Cybertronians, since their war has blighted the galaxy for eons; the Microverse was created by one of the first Primes.
The IDW efforts have been successful (albeit sometimes divisive), unlike abortive ambitions to spawn a “Hasbro Cinematic Universe” from the Michael Bay Transformers movies.
The Transformers and Avengers crossed paths in a four-issue special in 2007 which definitely isn’t congruent with Marvel’s Earth-616 and only awkwardly fits within IDW’s continuity.
What the fuck happened?
Sam Raimi, what were you smoking?
The actual Mindy Newell?
MaGnUs: Yes, that’s the actual Mindy Newell. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Awesome.
I’ve seen quite a bit of this movie (some parts more than others), as it’s my son’s favorite of the trilogy. While it certainly has its flaws, I find it to be a pretty decent film, or at least not the overall disaster it’s sometimes described as being. I do have to say that Peter comes across as incredibly self-absorbed and oblivious, though. Yes, he is trying to sympathize with Mary Jane, but he so quickly makes everything about his own experiences that he doesn’t give her room to be heard. It’s another manifestation of Peter being so wrapped up in his life as Spider-Man here, just like his obliviousness in giving Gwen that kiss.
Thanks for another interesting, and informative, review, KRAD!
This was the first superhero film I ever actually saw in theaters. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was the first superhero movie I ever saw at all. At the time I loved it, considering it my favorite of the trilogy. Then years passed, and I let a decade go in between watches of it. Now that I’m an adult, I definitely see the flaws in this movie. I think it’s a noble failure, but still a failure. To give this movie credit, the main themes of revenge and forgiveness are handled well. That’s mainly due to the scenes with Aunt May, which Rosemary Harris once again knocks out of the park. The action setpieces are exciting, though I think the highlights are the first fights with Harry and Sandman. And while I get that a lot of people cringe at emo Peter, I can’t help but feel a bit sympathetic to the filmmakers in those scenes. They’re trying to demonstrate a dorky guy convinced he’s cool, and it’s probably spot-on to how I would act on a power trip like that (though hopefully I would at least have the sense and morals not to do anything Peter does at MJ’s club. Dorkiness is one thing, cruelty is another). Spider-Man 3 could have worked, and it’s a shame it didn’t. It’s unfortunate that it wound up taking down the franchise with it, but at least we got two good movies out of it.