Third time’s the charm for the “Spider-Man” series. Not that Columbia Pictures and Marvel Comics have been complaining; the first two “Spider-Man” pictures made over a billion and a half dollars, so everybody’s already happy.
Still, “Spider-Man 3” is the best of the series. This installment has a flow and a comic spirit that keep it flying, and a strong set of villains. It’s a giddy movie.
We pick up with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), better known to New York City as Spider-Man, as he experiences an unfamiliar rush of good feeling. The city loves him, and the time is right to propose to longtime love MJ (Kirsten Dunst).
It can’t last.
On the romance front, MJ is depressed about her acting career, just as Peter enjoys attention from Gwen Stacy (the terrific Bryce Dallas Howard). In one of the film’s cleverest scenes, the famous image from the first “Spider-Man” movie – an upside-down kiss between Spidey and MJ – is burlesqued in public with Gwen. (“No, Spider-Man, no!” cries a kid in the crowd.)
Even more vexing, bad guys are everywhere. An escaped con named Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church, from “Sideways”) is transformed when an accident at a particle physics test facility turns him into Sandman, a shape-shifting creature made of sand.
Sandman rocks – pun not intended. Church’s tortured performance is just right, and the transformation sequence is darn near poetic in its eeriness. That scene justifies the heavy use of computer graphics throughout the film.
The other villain is Eddie Brock (funny-smarmy Topher Grace), who competes with Peter as a news photographer. He’s infected by a mysterious outer-space sludge and becomes the fiendish Venom.
And then there’s Harry Osborn (James Franco), disgruntled best friend from the first two movies. “Spider-Man 3” is not a stand-alone film; it refers constantly to the first two movies, and even revises things we thought we knew about them.
Director Sam Raimi and co-screenwriter Alvin Sargent ingeniously connect the old stuff with the new stuff. Some of the dialogue plunks out in platitudes, but it’s all pretty true to Spidey’s comic-book origins.
And the film’s ideas are pure Raimi, in a free-wheeling way that wasn’t true of the first two films. The director of “The Evil Dead” indulges his cracked humor with some wonderfully daffy ideas, including Peter’s flirtation with the dark side (the space sludge affects him, too). The bad Peter’s lounge-lizard behavior at a jazz club is a highlight – part Bugs Bunny, part Busby Berkeley.
At 140 minutes or so, it all goes on a bit long. But boy, the huge budget is on the screen – Raimi’s ability to convey sheer bigness is sometimes breathtaking.
And what can you say about a sequence featuring B-movie hero and “Evil Dead” star Bruce Campbell as a French maitre d’? Just one word: sublime.
“Spider-Man 3”
Best: The best of the “Spider-Man” series, as it wraps up the ongoing story and introduces some fun new elements (and two new villains, Sandman and Venom, played by Thomas Haden Church and Topher Grace). Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is tempted by love and power, and he flies through the movie on the wings of director Sam Raimi’s giddy inventiveness – this movie has a real sense of flow and scale.
Rated: PG-13 rating is for violence
Opens at midnight tonight: Alderwood mall, Marysville, Mountlake, Olympic, Stanwood, Meridian, Neptune, Oak Tree, Woodinville, Cascade Mall
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
