Spider-Man 3 (2007) Review — A Spectacle About Forgiveness
In my continuing Spidey rewatch, I now review Spider-Man 3 which has always been critiqued for it’s messy plot and has been a rather divisive film. Some love it while others really hate it and I actually like Spider-Man 3. As a kid, I loved it and thought it was great and over time, the flaws brought it down for me but there are some fantastic elements in it. Most don’t know that this wasn’t the film Sam Raimi intended as there were some behind the scenes changes and in the years, he himself has been hard on this film. Originally Sam Raimi didn’t want to use the character of Eddie Brock/Venom as he wasn’t that big of a fan of him at first but Sony really wanted him in so Sam agreed and took out a character he really wanted to do: Adrian Tombs/The Vulture.
The Vulture was gonna be MJ’s father and it was gonna be a big part of MJ’s arc and it was supposed to tie in with the root theme of Spider-Man 3 which is about the power of forgiveness. We see this theme with two of the villains in the film, Harry Osborn/New Goblin and Flint Marko/Sandman. The intended climax of the film was supposed to feature forgiveness and we luckily do still see some of that. Peter forgives Flint Marko, Harry and Peter forgive each other, and MJ forgives Peter for some mistakes he made. But the forgiveness theme doesn’t work with Eddie Brock in the film as he stays evil and hates Peter until his death.
But as a kid and even now after all these years, I get what Sam was trying to do with Spider-Man 3. I get what he wanted to do with so many of these characters and there are moments, it works as a conclusion to the previous two films. It just this film needed more time to breathe and develop more. It does attempt a lot and some elements are wasted a bit in Spider-Man 3 like Venom, Gwen Stacy, and some stuff with the Black Suit. Kirsten Dunst didn’t want MJ to be a damsel in distress again and due to some rewrites, she had to be for the final battle in this film which was kinda disappointing as this is the third time this trope was repeated with her MJ.
After some test screenings, Sam Raimi had to do some reshoots and there’s this really bad scene with Harry’s butler, Bernard in the third act that was done with the reshoots and shouldn’t have been featured in the film. Even with a lot of the flaws like the uneven tone and direction, there is a lot of admirable things in Spider-Man 3. I know a lot of my fellow Spidey fans hated the casting of Topher Grace as Eddie Brock cause Eddie is supposed to be this buff dude but after watching the film, I realized why Topher was cast. He looked a lot like Tobey Maguire and Eddie is portrayed in the film as Peter’s dark mirror in a lot of ways. Also Eddie being a scrawny guy fits the weasely take of him in the film before he becomes Venom.
There are some nice horror elements down with Venom and Sam did appreciate the character more as he kept depicting him in Spider-Man 3. Thomas Haden Church as Flint Marko is great and while some didn’t like the retcon of him being Uncle Ben’s killer, it did lead to a very entertaining arc. The action in this film is awesome and a lot of the effects still impress me a lot. I wish Sam got more of the film he wanted to do and I am really curious to see how No Way Home will depict Tobey’s Peter after the end of his trilogy. Spider-Man 3 is a little wobbly in some parts but at the end of the film, it still becomes about forgiveness, touches on Peter’s journey since the first film, and is still a fun spectacle in a lot of ways.
For me, Spider-Man 3 is a 3.5 out of 5 stars like Spider-Man 2 and while Spider-Man 3 is not for everyone, go check it out if you’re interested.
