Spider-Man 3

What It Is: The third installment in the Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series, this one dealing with 3 new villians, Peter's continued relationship with Mary Jane, celebrity, and yes, the (alien) Black Costume.

What You Get: Lots of action, lots of excitement, and jaw dropping fight scenes and special effects. You can tell this was the most expensive Spider-Man yet, and they really didn't waste money.
But now the bad parts. First, the story drags a little. And when I say drag, it's more like you really find yourself sitting there waiting for the next big action sequence and losing interest in the parts in between. You shouldn't, but you do. I've moved past the whole love story aspect of things, I just want to see Spidey be, well Spidey.
Next, the fact that there are THREE VILLIANS. It's too many for one flick, and just doesn't let you enjoy any one more than others. This is what did the Batman franchise in the first time round. They are clamour for our attention, but clearly you have to rank their importance. If you wanted to know it goes New Goblin, the Sandman, and last and least Venom (it shouldn't be!)
On the positive the effects and subsequent fights with each villian IS indeed great, but can you imagine how cool each would be if there were one less to focus on.
Other bad: the cheezy sci-fi aspects. Whether it be Sandman's origin (really, that's the best explanation?) or the appearance of the symboite (a meteor rock? really?), it just seemed too, I dunno, unrealistic for this series. I guess you can say too Silver-Age Comic-Booky. Ironically I met Bruce Campbell (btw his cameo in this wasn't as cool as the previous 2 installations) a few months back and he mentioned how many big Blockbuster movies are really just B-Movies. This is total case-in-point.
Now what I liked was Spider-Man gone black. As Peter (oddly) he went all goth, looking like he's ready to hang out with My Chemical Romance, and amazingly turning ladies man. It was fun. The shame is we never really see him busting small thugs as Spider-Man Black.
This movie is fun, but not.

Movie Rating: 2.5 (of 5) See, here's the thing. It's a fun movie. Not as good as the first two, but tied up enough loose ends that if and when they make a fourth it won't be tied down with previous events. It's amazing to watch, and you react to this movie. Half of me enjoyed the hell out of this movie.
But my other half got bogged down with questions and problems. If you read my comics-to-movies review I'll go into the casting & costume aspects, but here I'll focus on some key burning questions.

• Did we really need 3 villians? I mean, did 3 villians help the story any way, or at the least couldn't they have merely set up Venom for a 4th movie and kept him out of this one?
• How can a pumbkin bomb completely dissentigrate one character but merely scar up another when it went off POINT BLACK from his face?
• If characters could just keep their masks on do you think it would be less neccessary to kill off people?
• For that matter why does EVERY masked character in this movie unmask during a (very public) fight scene? Or even how does Spidey get his mask back out-of-nowhere when the public totally could see him for who he is?
• Where did that dump truck come from anyway? I swear it wasn't there 2 minutes ago!
• How can we kill off Gwen Stacy now seeing as how Mary Jane already stole her death scene in the first movie?

And the worst part is I have more questions!
So you see, a 2.5 really is being generous.

But then again maybe my fan-boy partialality is kicking in.

How would I make this better: Simple, have Eddie Brock get the alien costume and go all Venom style in the last 2 minutes. Leave him for a sequel if you have one. If you needed an extra villian you could've brought in any number of B and C-level guys to do the job, pose a threat, and die if need be. Shocker anyone? The Beetle? Kraven?
Next, keep the black costume on Peter longer. Show him smacking around thugs and being more of a no-holds-barred version of Spider-Man. Yes, yes, what he does to 2 villians while under the influence is bad ass, but we could've gotten more for the way they marketed this movie.
Really tease Gwen Stacy as a love interest. As it was there lacked a romantic connection on any level.

These all wouldn't make this a 5 out of 5, but it could've helped.