Sequelitis: A terrible disease that afflicts sequels of blockbuster motion pictures. It can manifest in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to: missing stars (see
Speed 2); three hour runtimes (see
Pirates of the Caribbean 3); new big name actors sleepwalking through their role (see
Ocean's 13), and even the director's daughter in a prominent (and awful) acting role (see
Godfather III). In the genre of the superhero movie,
sequelitis typically manifests itself by a need to add so many additional villains/characters to the mix that the end result is one big morass of mediocrity. For perhaps the textbook example of this, see
Batman & Robin, which not only introduced us to a new Batman (George Clooney), but threw in Arnold as Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, and Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl. It nearly killed the franchise (although let's face it, Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey had put a couple of bullets into it in
Batman Forever).
Spider-man 2 managed to avoid succumbing to
sequelitis, keeping things to one villain, Doc Ock, who was interesting and had a developed backstory. This left room to actually explore Spider-man's alter-ego, Peter Parker, while nonetheless maintaining a high level of action and some very good fight scenes. Evidently, the producers and writers used all their good ideas in
Spider-man 1 and
2, but they had nothing left for
3.
Spider-man 3 opens with Peter Parker living large, enjoying his success as Spider-man, and intending to propose to his girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson, who herself is ready to open as the lead in a Broadway show. After the success of
1 and
2, you would think director Sam Raimi would have enough sense to stick with a winning formula. He doesn't. Instead, we get the kitchen sink thrown into the script. Instead of just one villain, we get three – Venom (Topher Grace), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), and the Hobgoblin (James Franco). Either Venom or the Hobgoblin would have been more than sufficient. The Sandman adds nothing but cheap plot devices and an excuse for millions of dollars in CGI (
3 cost over $250 million to make).
Venom is one of the comic book's more popular villains – a symbiotic alien parasite that originally attaches itself to Spider-man as his new black suit, but eventually once Peter Parker realizes the detrimental effect that the symbiote is having on his psyche, he jettisons the suit, which attaches itself to a variety of human hosts as Venom. In this variation, Parker's rival at the Daily Bugle, Eddie Brock, serves as the human host, and his competition with Parker develops into outright hatred under the influence of the symbiote. Rather than a well-developed character, Brock is reduced to a smarmy, underhanded cliche, with the underwhelming Topher Grace doing the acting. With a better actor, and some more development as the lone villain, Venom could have been up there with Alfred Molina's Dr. Octopus in
2.
Similarly, the Hobgoblin gets short shrift here as well. James Franco returns as Harry Osborn, the son of Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin villain from
1. Harry Osborn's descent into the same madness that afflicted his father, and its effect upon his friendship with Peter Parker was worthy of its own movie, but here, it's thrown in amongst everything else that's crammed into this overstuffed failure. Thomas Haden Church's Sandman would be forgettable except for the cardinal sin against the Spider-man comic book history. Instead of just leaving his story as Flint Marko, a thug whose molecules are turned into particles of sand, Raimi adds the completely unnecessary twist that Marko was the actual killer of Peter Parker's Uncle Ben. This entire character should have been left on the cutting room floor, and I can only figure that the Sandman stayed in the script for purposes of CGI images of the Sandman absorbing and utilizing dirt and sand to fight Spider-man, which are nice, but nowhere near jaw-dropping.
The personal highlight of
Spider-man 3 for me was the expanded role of Bruce Campbell. Campbell is the protagonist of Sam Raimi's
Evil Dead series, which made Raimi's career. Enjoying far more success than Campbell, Raimi has included him in each
Spider-man: as a ring announcer in
1 and as a theatre usher in
2. He gets significantly more screentime in
3 as the maitre d' in the restaurant at which Peter Parker intends to propose to Mary Jane, and he takes full advantage, providing the only genuine comic relief in the movie (the scenes of Peter Parker under the influence of the symbiote acting like a Rico Suave gigolo were awful, period.) For the latest Bruce Campbell work, check out his excellent role as the sidekick in USA Network's
Burn Notice. He's terrific, and the show's terrific. Much, much better than this dreck.
In the end,
Spider-man 3 isn't as bad as
Batman & Robin, but that doesn't exactly set the bar high. Let's hope the franchise enjoys a rebirth in the same way that Batman did in the very well done
Batman Begins.
DVD details: In line with the movie, the DVD is chocked full of seven audio commentaries and other assorted useless trash.
