Peter Parker gets his Sally Field moment early in Spider-Man 3, gushing "You like me, you really do," from what might as well be a perch in the clouds. This is a pretty uncommon condition for Parker, aka Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), whose life has generally been one long string of image problems, money problems, girl problems and basic bad luck.
As Spider-Man 3 opens, though, Pete and his web-crawling alter ego are on top of the world, adored by millions, gainfully employed and blissfully meshed with the girl of his dreams. Spidey's often problematic public approval rating is at an all-time high, sales of Spider-Man Halloween costumes are booming ("I've become something of an icon," he beams), and the typically self-doubting superhero suddenly seems positively cocky with success.
But this is a Spider-Man movie, after all, so how could it be anything but a matter of time before our friendly neighborhood web-slinger's bubble completely and spectacularly bursts? We don't have to wait long for the inevitable to occur — only about 10 minutes, as it happens — but what we don't expect is for that bubble to be pricked in so perfunctory a fashion, and from so many directions.
There are villains galore in Spider-Man 3, far too many for comfort, and they quickly begin crawling out of the woodwork with scant regard for rhyme or reason. Spider-Man 2 set us up for the appearance of a newly re-constituted Green Goblin, who's here as expected, but we also get quite a lot of the Goblin's troubled civilian identity (James Franco); a new bad guy called Sandman (played with tortured soulfulness by Thomas Haden Church, who's pretty much the best thing in the movie); and a snaggle-toothed super-creep called Venom (Topher Grace) — all of whom have major axes to grind against our hero. And let's not forget those slithery, extraterrestrial tendrils that turn everything they touch ultra nasty, including Spidey himself.
There's eye candy aplenty and tons of the super-sized, nutrient-free fun we demand from our summer blockbusters, but the clutter here is a long way from the elegant Doc Ock/Spider-Man tango of the last outing. Villain A simply shows up and locks horns with the hero, then exits just in time for Villain B to appear and mix it up, while Villains C and D wait in the wings for the obligatory tag team match featured by way of a grand finale.
The fighting is interspersed with moments of mild comic relief (including Bruce Campbell channeling John Cleese as a snooty maitre d'), a subplot involving the hero's struggle to overcome his baser instincts for revenge and some moderately engaging soap opera (and yes, one of the characters actually does get amnesia, only to regain his memory and make big trouble for everybody). The recipe essentially just repeats until the closing credits and, in the end, any characters left standing learn a valuable life lesson or two.
The basic model this time out seems to be those more-is-more, super-powered free-for-alls that began taking over the Batman movies right around the time of Batman Returns, and nearly sunk the franchise. There's nothing here nearly as silly or as pointless as those Bat-fiascos (which really were the last resorts of impoverished imaginations), but the script for Spider-man 3 does show clear signs of franchise fatigue, making the mistake of confusing true spectacle with the process of simply piling on one damn thing after another.
Where Spider-Man 2 felt richly textured and, at its best, primal (or at least as primal as a movie about a guy in spider-tights can be), this year's version too often feels overstuffed and shapeless. In any event, it's not really what we expect or deserve from a respected name brand, and certainly not from a movie that reportedly cost more to make than the GNP of some countries.
That said, the action scenes here are still pretty kick-ass, although the pervasive CGI is a little distracting and the fight/soap-opera/fight/soap-opera pattern becomes all too predictable — with most of the soap slathered around Pete's relationship with girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst).
Mary Jane is given a few new woes to deal with this time out — an acting career on the skids, a comely new rival for Peter's affections — but even if you can sympathize with a main character whose defining characteristics have apparently become jealousy and whiney insecurity, it's Dunst herself who makes watching Mary Jane something of a chore.
At the risk of offending any Dunst-stalkers out there, those rheumy eyes and pointy little teeth made for a swell baby bloodsucker in Interview with a Vampire, but this is an actress whose limited range doesn't seem to particularly qualify her for much beyond that.
Thankfully, Dunst doesn't have all that much to do here other than to look terrified when her character is placed in peril, and the broad shoulders on which the movie ultimately rests, naturally enough, are Maguire's. He can communicate an oddly unfathomable presence as an actor, but the bland-boy-wonder face he presents in the Spider-Man series is just right for the uber-nerdy Peter Parker persona. It's the movie's willingness to play on that very blandness, ironically enough, that finally saves Spider-Man 3 from the dustbins of history.
The movie actually gets sort of interesting, and occasionally clever, when it begins developing that aforementioned subplot in which our hero suddenly finds himself crossing the line from concerned crime fighter to vindictive vigilante (blame it on those wacky space tendrils turning out to somehow "amplify aggression").
Spidey begins taking a little too much pleasure in smacking around bad guys, while his geeky alter ego begins dressing in black, letting his hair hang in his eyes, and strutting down the street like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever crossed with Kate Moss' new boyfriend. (In one of the movie's wittier touches, this overbearing alpha-Parker becomes instantly desirable to every female he passes.)
It's an entertaining enough way for the movie to dive right into the good/evil duality at the heart of all classic superhero sagas, and right into the blurring of those poles in all postmodern superhero narratives. Nobody's perfect in Spider-Man's universe, where heroes almost always display fatal flaws and where villains are often both complicated and tragic — but Spider-Man 3 goes out of its way to remind us that we all make our own choices.
The movie might not add up to much, but you can bet that our hero's big moment of decision — when he finally stops confusing the taste of blood for victory — would benefit many among us, not excluding one or two players on the Bush team.
This article appears in May 2-8, 2007.
