Spider-Man 3 plays like a nexus between the blockbusters of the mid-aughts and those of today, bridging a brief moment where filmmaker-driven franchises were the future (the era of The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings) and the modern status quo of visual spectacle driven by executive decision-making. Despite its reputation, director Sam Raimi’s third entry isn’t altogether bad — in fact, when it works, it really works — but it doesn’t take long to show symptoms of bloat.
On one hand, the 2007 film picks up a number of threads from its predecessors, and writes a meaningful and surprising chapter in the romance between Peter (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). On the other hand, its haphazard construction leaves several themes dangling in mid-air. These narrative problems become exacerbated by an awkward aesthetic approach, resulting in a film that both looks and feels strangely unlike Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, despite its familiar sincerity and its attempts to recapture their grandeur.
In our third look back at the cinematic history of Peter Parker, we examine what works and what doesn’t about the film that inadvertently led to the character being rebooted multiple times within only a couple of years.
One of the chief complaints levied at Spider-Man 3 is its abundance of antagonists, but the problem isn’t simply numerical. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the back-to-back scenes where Peter’s vengeful best friend Harry Osborn (James Franco) experiments on himself with the green gas his father used in the first film, followed by the arrival of the Venom symbiote on Earth in the background of a Peter/MJ scene, followed by The Sandman/Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church) running to evade police. Of the three consecutive sequences, only Harry’s has even a hint of causality related to Spider-Man — who he believes killed his father — and none of them are causally related to one another. The symbiote simply happens to land in Peter and MJ’s vicinity, and Marko hasn’t yet been connected to Uncle Ben’s murder, so for an extended period, the film feels as if it’s merely jumping between random, unconnected events.
Each villain’s individual trajectory reflects or magnifies some element of Peter’s personality, but even at 140 minutes in length, the movie is unable to balance this hefty combination. Some themes feel discordant, given their lack of meaningful overlap, while others feel perfunctory, since they tell a story that’s already being told elsewhere in the film. Take, for instance, the alien symbiote: Its function in the film is to magnify and enhance Peter’s aggression and insecurity, and while it does so in wildly entertaining fashion, it merely speeds up the story which the film is already telling via its fraught romantic relationship and the way Peter becomes blinded towards his own ego. In addition, the presence of career climber Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) also serves a similar function, in that he reflects a more ruthless and uncaring version of Peter — a version Peter transforms into anyway during the story, rendering Brock practically useless.
Venom wasn’t originally part of Raimi’s plan and so the presence of both Brock and the symbiote feel as if they’ve been layered atop a story that doesn’t really need them.
The fact that Brock and the symbiote eventually fuse is a matter of logistics. It’s an outcome of their comic book relationship, and it occurs through sheer coincidence in the film, while doing little to enhance Peter’s story. Venom wasn’t originally part of Raimi’s plan — producer Avi Arad suggested the character since he was a fan-favorite — and so the presence of both Brock and the symbiote feel as if they’ve been layered atop a story that doesn’t really need them. In comparison, Flint Marko exists to dredge up Peter’s unresolved anger over the death of Uncle Ben, which in turn leads to a story first and foremost about revenge. Harry is a prime fixture of this theme as well, and he helps close a loop in which Spider-Man is both a recipient of vengeance — for his perceived role in Norman’s death — as well as a perpetrator of vengeance against Marko, who he tries to kill for his hand in Ben’s demise. Violent reprisal becomes a cycle which Peter needs to break. However, for a large chunk of the story, Harry ends up with amnesia, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but he’s completely sidelined in the process, and remains absent for a significant portion of the runtime when he should be a central figure.
The result is a story that has made so much room for extra setup that it lacks meaningful resolution. Harry accepts the true nature of his father’s death — that it came at his own hands, rather than at Peter’s — not because he wrestles with Peter’s actions or with his own, but because his butler simply gives him additional information, which could have also been provided to him at any other point in time (there is, once again, no coherent causality here). Flint Marko never ends up challenging Peter’s presumptions about Uncle Ben’s death, or about Marko’s own morality, because by the time he reveals the full story, Peter has already undergone an apparent reformation by shedding the symbiote — a process that, strangely, leaves him no remaining negative traits or impulses with which to wrestle. Brock, though his story ends tragically, is given barely seconds of screen time during which his reliance on the symbiote takes center stage. Even Peter and MJ’s breakup, which ought to be a major crossroads for the characters, not only comes about as a villainous scheme by Harry, but is seemingly resolved off-screen.
This inability to tie up even a single narrative thread is especially unfortunate, because despite all the things that don’t work about Spider-Man 3, what works best about the movie is a vital element carried over from both prior films: the story of Peter and Mary Jane.
Peter and MJ’s romance has been at the heart of the trilogy since its opening narration, and it forms the backbone of Spider-Man 3. When the second film ended, MJ had learned Spider-Man’s identity and had resolved to be with Peter regardless, and the third film begins in starry-eyed fashion by retaining the goofy sincerity of its predecessors. Peter is no longer just an empty seat, but he consistently shows up to watch MJ perform on Broadway, enough that he’s able to mouth her lines alongside her. He even plans to marry her. MJ, for her part, carries herself with much more confidence than in the second film, which saw her beaten down by failure. However, this rosy image is fragile, and Peter’s unconfronted past all but ensures that it won’t last.
Before Peter can propose, Harry’s vengeful attack sets off an action sequence that, despite being plagued by weightless CGI, tells a precise story of Peter’s past getting in the way of his future — both his romantic past, since Harry once dated MJ, as well as the personal fallout of his double life, as Harry still believes Peter killed his father. The scene isn’t merely fisticuffs, but centers Peter’s constant attempts to catch an engagement ring, which, like his desire to lead a normal life with Mary Jane, keeps falling out of reach.
However, unbeknownst to Peter — largely because crime-fighting takes up so much of his time — MJ has also been fired from her show and replaced with another actress. This results in a dynamic where life is once again dealing MJ crappy hands, but Spider-Man is more popular than ever, and so Peter is only able to use his own inflated self-image to filter and contextualize MJ’s debilitating self-doubt (stemming from the specter of her verbally abusive father, to whom she compares ruthless criticisms of her performance). Peter means well, but he’s ultimately dismissive of her feelings, and he even goes as far as kissing his college classmate Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) during a Spider-Man parade in the same upside-down pose in which he kissed MJ in the first film. In his mind, this is merely for show, but to MJ it centers Gwen as another replacement for her.
Peter’s egotism is a fascinating jumping-off point for a third entry, because it makes him cruel in a way he doesn’t intend.
Peter’s egotism is a fascinating jumping-off point for a third entry, because it makes him cruel in a way he doesn’t intend. In many superhero movies (such as Batman Begins, Iron Man and Doctor Strange), the power fantasy element is often a cure for a character’s callousness, but in Spider-Man 3, it’s a direct result of Peter’s abilities and the public image they’ve helped him build. In purely comic book terms, it’s a villainous trait, and in the context of this series, it’s great power used irresponsibly. The ripple effects of Peter’s actions may be inadvertent — like the domino effect he set off leading to Uncle Ben’s death — but gaining control over them makes for a worthwhile character arc, at least in theory.
Under the influence of the symbiote, Peter gives in to his impulses in hilarious fashion, poorly imitating Dirty Dancing and Saturday Night Fever while adopting an emo persona, as if to mold himself off a woebegone nerd’s mish-mash image of someone cool and desirable. His jealous actions eventually result in him hurting Mary Jane, both emotionally and physically, when he dances with Gwen at the jazz club where MJ works and steals her spotlight before accidentally striking her. Given MJ’s story in the first two films, Peter has come to represent the abusive and uncaring men in her life (like her father, her boss at the diner, and even Harry) whose shadows she’s been trying to escape. This moral corrosion is owed, at least in part, to Peter’s resurgent anger over the death of Uncle Ben, which begins to consume him.
Ironically, the amnesiac Harry becomes MJ’s source of comfort once his memory loss frees him from his previous romantic jealousies, and from his own anger towards Peter over his father’s death. While this pushes Harry’s character arc aside for long stretches, he serves a distinct plot function: to reflect the simplicity and uncomplicated sincerity which the characters have been yearning for throughout the series.
Harry’s playfulness with Peter and MJ is a brief reminder of a more innocent time. It feels plucked right out of the first film’s initial high school scenes, when death wasn’t yet a central fixture of everyone’s lives, the story was painted in sunny brush strokes, and people carried themselves with bright smiles.
The characters desperately want to return to this status quo, which makes the rift between Peter and Mary Jane all the more difficult to watch. The film even sets up a clear path for them to find each other again; when Peter is at his lowest, Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) reminds him not only that Uncle Ben wouldn’t want him to hold on to revenge — a potent and ironic expression of his dilemma over Ben’s killer — but that the best course of action may be to forgive himself and to make amends. However, Peter’s subsequent scenes feature neither him reckoning with his vengeful actions against Marko, nor any semblance of him making up for his misdeeds.
Whether or not it intends to, Spider-Man 3 is a film that yearns for the simplicity of the first Spider-Man film, and, failing that, the catharsis of Spider-Man 2. In some ways, it recaptures the magic of those earlier entries — each dialogue scene between Peter, Harry and Mary Jane has a charming, operatic feel, even when heartbreak is involved — but its final act avoids the kind of emotional complications that always underscored the broad drama in favour of an oversimplified and grandiose action spectacle. This is par for the course when it comes to most superhero movies, but for a series where even action-heavy climaxes feel intimate and dramatic, Spider-Man 3 fails to live up. It’s over-stuffed to the point of being disconnected — Who is Harry Osborn to Venom? What use is their conflict? — an issue further exacerbated by the film’s aesthetic un-reality compared to its predecessors.
Its New York is a stark departure from the first two films, whose dramatic scenes were set on streets which extended far into the background, and which were walked by sweaty, fast-talking, heavily-accented New Yorkers with familiar, risible attitudes, who all felt like they had somewhere to be. In contrast, the third film feels composed of closed sets populated by well-made up extras, whose words feel stilted and expository — almost robotic. Rather than coming off as real people with interior lives, and with relationships to a real city, they exist only on news screens and just behind police barricades, in isolated shots meant to convey fleeting reactions — a problem that would plague future Spider-Man films. The color grading also goes a long way to straining the relationship between the environment and its characters. Spider-Man 3 is a much colder film than its predecessors; the warm tones feel far too muted, resulting in a more frigid texture in which the red of Spider-Man’s suit and MJ’s hair rarely pop the way they used to. This aesthetic works when Peter gives in to the symbiote and MJ languishes in her depression, but it never subsides, even when Spider-Man returns in all his glory, or when the sun rises after the climax, and the characters are meant to have reunited in the end.
The visual and emotional warmth of the first two films never truly returns, and so Spider-Man 3’s most rousing moments feel dull in the process. However, there is the slightest consolation of its closing shot: Peter and MJ dancing together once the emotional fog has begun to clear. Peter may have done little to curb his worst impulses, but the film at least recognizes that this romance is, and has been, central to the story of Spider-Man all along. If nothing else, the series ends with a reminder of why the first two entries struck the chord they did, and why they still land with such emotional impact all these years later, even if the third film doesn’t.
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On one hand, the 2007 film picks up a number of threads from its predecessors, and writes a meaningful and surprising chapter in the romance between Peter (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). On the other hand, its haphazard construction leaves several themes dangling in mid-air. These narrative problems become exacerbated by an awkward aesthetic approach, resulting in a film that both looks and feels strangely unlike Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, despite its familiar sincerity and its attempts to recapture their grandeur.
In our third look back at the cinematic history of Peter Parker, we examine what works and what doesn’t about the film that inadvertently led to the character being rebooted multiple times within only a couple of years.
Too Many Villains
One of the chief complaints levied at Spider-Man 3 is its abundance of antagonists, but the problem isn’t simply numerical. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the back-to-back scenes where Peter’s vengeful best friend Harry Osborn (James Franco) experiments on himself with the green gas his father used in the first film, followed by the arrival of the Venom symbiote on Earth in the background of a Peter/MJ scene, followed by The Sandman/Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church) running to evade police. Of the three consecutive sequences, only Harry’s has even a hint of causality related to Spider-Man — who he believes killed his father — and none of them are causally related to one another. The symbiote simply happens to land in Peter and MJ’s vicinity, and Marko hasn’t yet been connected to Uncle Ben’s murder, so for an extended period, the film feels as if it’s merely jumping between random, unconnected events.
More From The Spidey Saga
- Day 1: Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Choosing Responsibility
- Day 2: Spider-Man 2 and Choosing a Suit
- Day 3: Spider-Man 3 Is Both Better and Messier Than You Remember
Each villain’s individual trajectory reflects or magnifies some element of Peter’s personality, but even at 140 minutes in length, the movie is unable to balance this hefty combination. Some themes feel discordant, given their lack of meaningful overlap, while others feel perfunctory, since they tell a story that’s already being told elsewhere in the film. Take, for instance, the alien symbiote: Its function in the film is to magnify and enhance Peter’s aggression and insecurity, and while it does so in wildly entertaining fashion, it merely speeds up the story which the film is already telling via its fraught romantic relationship and the way Peter becomes blinded towards his own ego. In addition, the presence of career climber Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) also serves a similar function, in that he reflects a more ruthless and uncaring version of Peter — a version Peter transforms into anyway during the story, rendering Brock practically useless.
Venom wasn’t originally part of Raimi’s plan and so the presence of both Brock and the symbiote feel as if they’ve been layered atop a story that doesn’t really need them.
The fact that Brock and the symbiote eventually fuse is a matter of logistics. It’s an outcome of their comic book relationship, and it occurs through sheer coincidence in the film, while doing little to enhance Peter’s story. Venom wasn’t originally part of Raimi’s plan — producer Avi Arad suggested the character since he was a fan-favorite — and so the presence of both Brock and the symbiote feel as if they’ve been layered atop a story that doesn’t really need them. In comparison, Flint Marko exists to dredge up Peter’s unresolved anger over the death of Uncle Ben, which in turn leads to a story first and foremost about revenge. Harry is a prime fixture of this theme as well, and he helps close a loop in which Spider-Man is both a recipient of vengeance — for his perceived role in Norman’s death — as well as a perpetrator of vengeance against Marko, who he tries to kill for his hand in Ben’s demise. Violent reprisal becomes a cycle which Peter needs to break. However, for a large chunk of the story, Harry ends up with amnesia, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but he’s completely sidelined in the process, and remains absent for a significant portion of the runtime when he should be a central figure.
The result is a story that has made so much room for extra setup that it lacks meaningful resolution. Harry accepts the true nature of his father’s death — that it came at his own hands, rather than at Peter’s — not because he wrestles with Peter’s actions or with his own, but because his butler simply gives him additional information, which could have also been provided to him at any other point in time (there is, once again, no coherent causality here). Flint Marko never ends up challenging Peter’s presumptions about Uncle Ben’s death, or about Marko’s own morality, because by the time he reveals the full story, Peter has already undergone an apparent reformation by shedding the symbiote — a process that, strangely, leaves him no remaining negative traits or impulses with which to wrestle. Brock, though his story ends tragically, is given barely seconds of screen time during which his reliance on the symbiote takes center stage. Even Peter and MJ’s breakup, which ought to be a major crossroads for the characters, not only comes about as a villainous scheme by Harry, but is seemingly resolved off-screen.
This inability to tie up even a single narrative thread is especially unfortunate, because despite all the things that don’t work about Spider-Man 3, what works best about the movie is a vital element carried over from both prior films: the story of Peter and Mary Jane.
Romantic Entanglements
Peter and MJ’s romance has been at the heart of the trilogy since its opening narration, and it forms the backbone of Spider-Man 3. When the second film ended, MJ had learned Spider-Man’s identity and had resolved to be with Peter regardless, and the third film begins in starry-eyed fashion by retaining the goofy sincerity of its predecessors. Peter is no longer just an empty seat, but he consistently shows up to watch MJ perform on Broadway, enough that he’s able to mouth her lines alongside her. He even plans to marry her. MJ, for her part, carries herself with much more confidence than in the second film, which saw her beaten down by failure. However, this rosy image is fragile, and Peter’s unconfronted past all but ensures that it won’t last.
Before Peter can propose, Harry’s vengeful attack sets off an action sequence that, despite being plagued by weightless CGI, tells a precise story of Peter’s past getting in the way of his future — both his romantic past, since Harry once dated MJ, as well as the personal fallout of his double life, as Harry still believes Peter killed his father. The scene isn’t merely fisticuffs, but centers Peter’s constant attempts to catch an engagement ring, which, like his desire to lead a normal life with Mary Jane, keeps falling out of reach.
However, unbeknownst to Peter — largely because crime-fighting takes up so much of his time — MJ has also been fired from her show and replaced with another actress. This results in a dynamic where life is once again dealing MJ crappy hands, but Spider-Man is more popular than ever, and so Peter is only able to use his own inflated self-image to filter and contextualize MJ’s debilitating self-doubt (stemming from the specter of her verbally abusive father, to whom she compares ruthless criticisms of her performance). Peter means well, but he’s ultimately dismissive of her feelings, and he even goes as far as kissing his college classmate Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) during a Spider-Man parade in the same upside-down pose in which he kissed MJ in the first film. In his mind, this is merely for show, but to MJ it centers Gwen as another replacement for her.
Peter’s egotism is a fascinating jumping-off point for a third entry, because it makes him cruel in a way he doesn’t intend.
Peter’s egotism is a fascinating jumping-off point for a third entry, because it makes him cruel in a way he doesn’t intend. In many superhero movies (such as Batman Begins, Iron Man and Doctor Strange), the power fantasy element is often a cure for a character’s callousness, but in Spider-Man 3, it’s a direct result of Peter’s abilities and the public image they’ve helped him build. In purely comic book terms, it’s a villainous trait, and in the context of this series, it’s great power used irresponsibly. The ripple effects of Peter’s actions may be inadvertent — like the domino effect he set off leading to Uncle Ben’s death — but gaining control over them makes for a worthwhile character arc, at least in theory.
Under the influence of the symbiote, Peter gives in to his impulses in hilarious fashion, poorly imitating Dirty Dancing and Saturday Night Fever while adopting an emo persona, as if to mold himself off a woebegone nerd’s mish-mash image of someone cool and desirable. His jealous actions eventually result in him hurting Mary Jane, both emotionally and physically, when he dances with Gwen at the jazz club where MJ works and steals her spotlight before accidentally striking her. Given MJ’s story in the first two films, Peter has come to represent the abusive and uncaring men in her life (like her father, her boss at the diner, and even Harry) whose shadows she’s been trying to escape. This moral corrosion is owed, at least in part, to Peter’s resurgent anger over the death of Uncle Ben, which begins to consume him.
Ironically, the amnesiac Harry becomes MJ’s source of comfort once his memory loss frees him from his previous romantic jealousies, and from his own anger towards Peter over his father’s death. While this pushes Harry’s character arc aside for long stretches, he serves a distinct plot function: to reflect the simplicity and uncomplicated sincerity which the characters have been yearning for throughout the series.
Nostalgia for Better Films
Harry’s playfulness with Peter and MJ is a brief reminder of a more innocent time. It feels plucked right out of the first film’s initial high school scenes, when death wasn’t yet a central fixture of everyone’s lives, the story was painted in sunny brush strokes, and people carried themselves with bright smiles.
The characters desperately want to return to this status quo, which makes the rift between Peter and Mary Jane all the more difficult to watch. The film even sets up a clear path for them to find each other again; when Peter is at his lowest, Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) reminds him not only that Uncle Ben wouldn’t want him to hold on to revenge — a potent and ironic expression of his dilemma over Ben’s killer — but that the best course of action may be to forgive himself and to make amends. However, Peter’s subsequent scenes feature neither him reckoning with his vengeful actions against Marko, nor any semblance of him making up for his misdeeds.
Whether or not it intends to, Spider-Man 3 is a film that yearns for the simplicity of the first Spider-Man film, and, failing that, the catharsis of Spider-Man 2. In some ways, it recaptures the magic of those earlier entries — each dialogue scene between Peter, Harry and Mary Jane has a charming, operatic feel, even when heartbreak is involved — but its final act avoids the kind of emotional complications that always underscored the broad drama in favour of an oversimplified and grandiose action spectacle. This is par for the course when it comes to most superhero movies, but for a series where even action-heavy climaxes feel intimate and dramatic, Spider-Man 3 fails to live up. It’s over-stuffed to the point of being disconnected — Who is Harry Osborn to Venom? What use is their conflict? — an issue further exacerbated by the film’s aesthetic un-reality compared to its predecessors.
Its New York is a stark departure from the first two films, whose dramatic scenes were set on streets which extended far into the background, and which were walked by sweaty, fast-talking, heavily-accented New Yorkers with familiar, risible attitudes, who all felt like they had somewhere to be. In contrast, the third film feels composed of closed sets populated by well-made up extras, whose words feel stilted and expository — almost robotic. Rather than coming off as real people with interior lives, and with relationships to a real city, they exist only on news screens and just behind police barricades, in isolated shots meant to convey fleeting reactions — a problem that would plague future Spider-Man films. The color grading also goes a long way to straining the relationship between the environment and its characters. Spider-Man 3 is a much colder film than its predecessors; the warm tones feel far too muted, resulting in a more frigid texture in which the red of Spider-Man’s suit and MJ’s hair rarely pop the way they used to. This aesthetic works when Peter gives in to the symbiote and MJ languishes in her depression, but it never subsides, even when Spider-Man returns in all his glory, or when the sun rises after the climax, and the characters are meant to have reunited in the end.
The visual and emotional warmth of the first two films never truly returns, and so Spider-Man 3’s most rousing moments feel dull in the process. However, there is the slightest consolation of its closing shot: Peter and MJ dancing together once the emotional fog has begun to clear. Peter may have done little to curb his worst impulses, but the film at least recognizes that this romance is, and has been, central to the story of Spider-Man all along. If nothing else, the series ends with a reminder of why the first two entries struck the chord they did, and why they still land with such emotional impact all these years later, even if the third film doesn’t.
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