Film Review: Spider-Man 3

Great, another dark re-tooling of a flagging movie franchise. After Batman Begins, Superman Returns and Casino Royale, what the movie world really needs is a darker version of Spider-Man.

So, when an alien symbiote crashes to Earth – conveniently landing within inches of the only acknowledged superhero in the universe – and attaches itself to Peter Parker, it turns his mind all dark and angry.

At first, these black thoughts manifest themselves in the form of a new emo fringe that make Parker look like the bloke from Bright Eyes. But slowly the haircut becomes the least of Parker’s worries as he starts wearing eyeliner and behaving like the Cat from Red Dwarf.

Eventually we see Parker do some really evil things like shout at his landlord, attempt to kill the man who murdered his uncle, deflect a bomb back into the path of the bloke who threw it at him, and accidentally bitch-slap his annoying girlfriend. Truly we are in no doubt what a cold-hearted motherfucker Spider-Man has become.

The emergence of My Chemical Spidey means that we’re supposed to feel sympathetic towards MJ because her boyfriend is getting all the attention and she just got fired from a Broadway show for being a lame singer. Well, guess what, MJ, he’s a costumed crime-fighter who can climb up skyscrapers and shit, and you are a rubbish singer. It’s hardly a surprise that he garners more column inches in the Daily Bugle.

Apart from the battle raging within Peter Parker, Spider-Man finds himself with three nemeses this time. His former best-friend, Harry Osbourne, who, as the New Goblin, tries to kill Spider-Man with some sort of Marty McFly hoverboard; Sandman, a man made of sand, whose superpowers are easily negated by water but who spends much of the film crying like a pussy; and Venom who is born when the symbiote gets bored of Parker’s goofy jazz piano-playing and moves onto photographer Eddie Brock. Brock, it’s worth mentioning, already possesses a dislike of Parker over a disagreement involving Adobe Photoshop. Yes, really.

Anyway, after one of the most tragic examples of deus ex machina you’ll ever see – some hitherto unseen butler tells Osbourne to forgive Parker for disfiguring him – Spider-Man and the New Goblin join forces to combat the recently united Venom and Sandman: two villains who could have easily been defeated by Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and a Hoover.