Spider-Man 3 review

Spider-Man 3

**3/4 out of five

Directed by Sam Raimi

Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and James Franco

“With great power comes great responsibility.” This is the motto Spider-Man lives by. If only movie studio executives did the same…

“What? Silly Ben, movie studio executives aren’t superheroes!” you exclaim.

“Don’t interrupt me,” I reply.

I then go on to explain that these executives indeed wield great power in their sweaty, greedy, disgusting palms. This power comes in the form of green pieces of paper. Their responsibility is to use this power for the good of mankind. In their position, the least they can do for the good of mankind is to make a decent movie. Calling Spider-Man 3 an abuse of this power is a stretch, if only for the action and effects, but it is an omen of worse things to come.

I would love to go in-depth about all the little things that made Spider-Man 3 disappointing, but I’d hate to take away space from the other talented writers who make this newspaper possible. I’ll just describe one flaw, for example’s sake.

See, Harry thinks Peter killed his father, since he saw Spider-Man bring the dead body to the house. Peter, the brilliant physics graduate student, has no idea what to tell Harry when he sees him one night. He hesitates. Apparently, he got a lot dumber since Spider-Man 2 a few years ago.

Below is how that conversation would have sounded if written well…i.e., written by me.

Peter: Hey Harry!

Harry: Hello. My name is Harry Osborn. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Peter: Dude, I didn’t kill your father.

Harry: Hello. My name is…wait, what?

Peter: Yeah. He killed himself by accident. Stabbed by his own glider.

Harry: You mean I’ve been obsessing over getting even with Spider-Man for the past five years for no good reason?

Peter: Dude, didn’t you see the first movie?

Harry: The what?

Peter: I’ll explain…let’s go to Blockbuster and rent it.

Boom…Harry’s character arc, which took up a good hour of the 140 minute movie, could have begun and ended in a minute, shortening that length considerably, and thus greatly improving the movie’s pacing. How could the filmmakers get away with such irresponsibility? My spider-sense tells me they’re simply exhausted. They have spent more than half a decade making Spider-Man movies, and thus have no qualms about passing in a faulty script if it means Sony will let them go home and sleep.

Of course, Sony will be working these poor people for even more years, since Spider-Man 3 will be a hit regardless of its quality. Sadly, the studio will not do the responsible thing, which is to let them take a few years off, and then get everyone together for Spider-Man 4. Nope. Instead, shooting on the next one will begin tomorrow, and then a few years later, it will come out, stink, and tank at the box office. Oh, how irresponsible the powerful can be!