See this image? This is how the black symbiote suit is SUPPOSED to look like. The movie version's black suit is one of the laziest costume designs I have seen in my life. All they did was take the original costume, paint in black, and slightly alter the spider logo on the front. DOES THE SPIDER LOGO IN THIS IMAGE LOOK SLIGHTLY ALTERED? NO! IT'S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! There's no webbing on the costume at all! Spider-Man's webbing doesn't even come out of the same place in this costume! That was my initial reaction to seeing the first trailer to Spider-Man 3 all those years ago. My opinion of the black-suited Spider-Man in the movie remains about the same, just with less Caps Lock. The New Goblin has one of the worst designs I've ever seen in anything, he looks like a ninja snowboarder pretending to be the Green Goblin. The costume designs are only the beginning of problems that Spider-Man 3 had.Sam and Ted Raimi's screenplay is just all over the fucking place. The story is essentially split into 3 uneven acts. The first act is mostly about the origin of the Sandman and detailing how wonderful Peter Parker's life is compared to how it was in Spider-Man 2. The film starts off strong, showing Peter and MJ in love and Peter getting ready to propose marriage and the Sandman's sympathetic character is shown early, telling the audience he only steals because his daughter is dying of some disease and he and his wife don't make enough money to afford the medical bills. So far, this is a good movie. Pretty early on however, the film goes to shit with the origin story of the Venom symbiote. A meteor crash lands about 10 feet away from Parker's motor scooter and out of the crater crawls the symbiote, which attaches itself to the license plate. I wish I were kidding, but this is all the Raimi brothers could come up with. Yes, the symbiote is from outer space, but even the horrible 90s cartoon show gave a more impressive origin in the symbiote causing John Jameson (an already established character from the last movie!) to crash land his latest space shuttle mission and Spider-Man rescuing him, only to find black gunk stuck on his costume.
The "New Goblin" later attacks Peter and we have a completely pointless CG action sequence that serves just to waste Sony's money and have Harry hit himself on the head, causing him to have magic "short-term amnesia" so he conveniently forgets that he is the New Goblin, that his father was the Green Goblin, and that Peter is Spider-Man. In my film class we used to call this a DEUS EX MACHINA. That's right, a deus ex machina device before 1 hour has passed in the movie. I can already see this movie is going to disappoint.
Shortly after the deus ex machina, the Sandman's origin FINALLY finishes and he gains his sand super powers from again, a deus ex machina device. Off he goes, and the plot decides to become even more confusing as it seems that every fucking character in the movie gets their own private storyline that isn't allowed to intersect with anyone else's. Too many new character are introduced and they're all characterized completely wrong. Gwen Stacy is portrayed as just some dumb blonde who is Peter's lab partner in school, Captain Stacy is given fewer lines than the reporters at the end of the movie, and Eddie Brock has become a paparazzo rather than an aggressive staff photographer for the Daily Bugle. Around this point, every new character has been introduced and Act 1 is over. So far, the movie is worse than Spider-Man 2, but still better than the original movie.
Act 2 essentially opens with Peter receiving a phone call from the NYPD requesting him and his Aunt May to meet with the police captain of the local precinct, Gwen's father. Captain Stacy informs them that RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON SANDMAN IS UNCLE BEN'S KILLER LOL THE POLICE ARE USELESS RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON. After this, Peter becomes obsessed with listening to police reports and trying to find where the Sandman is to get his revenge. Spidey ends up staying up way past his bed time and falls asleep in the most unrealistic pose of all time. While asleep, the symbiote from way back in the beginning of the movie melds with the Spider-Man costume and causes it to change to an all black outfit. Parker seems to go kill Sandman and proceeds to become more and more of an insufferable douchebag while Harry recovers from having that deus ex machina pulled on him. While Peter becomes more of a giant jerk... you know what, I really can't continue writing this shit, it makes me want to go find Sam Raimi and ask him what his fucking problem with Venom is. If some terrible cartoon from the 90s can write a more compelling storyline, then that's a serious problem you got there Mr. Raimi. The movie continues to be horrible and somehow manages to get progressively worse unless Aunt May is in the scene.
By the end of the movie, anyone who has half a brain cell left has gotten 20 IQ points dumber for watching this piece of crap and deaf from having to listen to such a godawful soundtrack because Danny Elfman couldn't stand Sam Raimi and Sony hired a new composer. Things are not helped at all by the incredibly cheesy, corny, campy, etc. shot of Spider-Man running in front of the American flag before going off to fight the bad guys and saving Mary Jane. The moment the movie truly jumps the shark however, is when the New Goblin shows up to help Spider-Man by blowing up a large section of the giant sand-monster that the Sandman has turned himself into. 2 seemingly random kids (whose acting skills are shown to rival The Room's Tommy Wiseau) saying probably the worst Shark-Jumping lines ever, "AWESOME!" and "WICKED COOL!" OF COURSE, these 2 terrible actors are played by Sam Raimi's 2 young sons.
Although Spider-Man 3 was far more successful than 1 or 2, critically it was a disaster and many moviegoers acknowledged they were not interested in a 4th movie by Sam Raimi. Raimi's original plan for Spidey 4 was to use the Vulture out of all of Spidey's incredibly large rogue's gallery. Luckily Raimi is out and a whole new writing, directing, and acting crew will be taking over for a reboot of Spider-Man....
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