Nick Lattin-Scheetz
Ugh......... This is the worst Spider-Man movie ladies and gentlemen. Because there's more bad than good let's get the good stuff out of the way; Best effects, more J. Jonah Jameson as always, awesome cameos from Stan Lee and Bruce Campbell, and I measure Sandman on the same level as Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2. OK let the suffering begin. There are far too many subplots being squeezed in to focus on the main plot of the story, Sandman is Uncle Ben's real killer, and Harry has become the New Goblin and wants to kill Peter as a means to avenge his father and has temporary amnesia after hitting his head, and Peter and MJ are having relationship problems again when we should be focusing on what the trailers promised us, the birth and introduction of Venom, we'll get into that a little later....... *sigh*.......... And while on the subject of Harry, TEMPORARY AMNESIA??? Is that really the best they could come up with? Amnesia I don't think is temporary disease (we'll talk more about Harry later). Gwen Stacey if you ask me is the most pointless character in the movie aside from being there so that Peter can have someone to cheat on MJ with, and they had Bryce Dallas Howard playing her for crying out loud, how could they just flat out waste her like that? Venom is horribly misused in this, we all are familiar with his origin so no need to go over that but here's what these people did, when Peter gets attached to the symbiote it makes him an emo and it's used for more of a comedic tone and what made it so good in the comics was that it's supposed to torment Peter the same way an addict or Gollum was, plus the dream sequence never appears, and then comes the fact that Topher Grace was completely inaccurate with what the character should've been like and Venom gets only 10 minutes of screen time and then gets blown up in the end, and even then most of the time his face is peeled back, we don't want to sit through Topher Grace with fangs, we want to sit through Venom for crying out loud! Finally the romance, more complication between Peter and MJ as always but this is when it gets to the dropping point of how bad it is, in which Peter cheats on MJ with Gwen as mentioned before but after the dramatic dinner argument MJ realizes they need to forgive each other and they make up with one other. BUT WAIT!!! Harry suddenly gets his memory back and forces MJ to break up with Peter otherwise he'll kill him, thus they break up, has MJ forgotten Peter is Spider-Man? When Peter arrived she could've said "Harry's got his memory back and is right over there! Deal with him!" And Peter could've just defeated him and we can continue focusing on the stuff with the symbiote. BUT NO! She breaks up with him! And she never explains to Peter why she did it! Honestly, THOSE 2 NEED COUNSELING!! Finally I must address the worst thing about the movie........ *drum roll*......... *dramatic silence*.......... The jazz club scene................... *BUM BUM BUM!!!!* Peter and Gwen go to a jazz club, MJ is working there, Peter decides to make things right by dancing around, does that sound like a scene from a Spider-Man movie to you? It's so silly and over the top it feels like it's from a Chicago musical, but that's not what makes it fall flat, it's what follows that really kills the movie, after Gwen leaves feeling like something's wrong with Peter he gets into a fight with some of the employees and accidentally hits MJ and is then shown crouching over a church tower while it's raining, THESE ARE 2 COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SCENE TONES THAT DON'T GO TOGETHER!!!!! THIS is what killed the movie. So overall, don't let the advertising of Venom fool you, because this is just a waste. Don't get me wrong, there are movies that are far worse than this, but as a Spider-Man movie, it's just ridiculous. What they should've done is have the story only be focused on Peter and Harry. The truth is revealed in Spider-Man 2 about Peter being Spider-Man and Harry accusing him of killing his father, Spider-Man 3 should've expanded upon that. THAT is what could've made the movie better.
