Spider Man 3

Spider Man 3 (2007) shows us what happens when a super hero runs out of steam. It is entertaining enough, but not as successful as its two predecessors. Part of the problem with a single film that attempts to perpetuate itself through multiple sequels is that novelty and creativity can wear thin. My memory of the Spider-Man and Superman and Batman comic book series is that they used basically the same plot-lines in issue after issue. This was possible because their audience consisted mainly of young readers who didn't mind the repetition and who even depended on it. Film audiences are somewhat more varied demographically than comic book readers, and in general probably more demanding and discerning. It's easy to recognized an overused and hackneyed plot. Once a film about a super hero tells the origin story and engages in several variations of stories about the good deeds super heroes can do for the world at large and its inhabitants, other plots are limited. Many super hero narratives show their heroes in conflict with other super-human or with alien nemeses. A few show their heroes struggling with the challenges of trying to live as normal people in a normal world. But these plots wear thin eventually too. For the most part I stopped reading comic books forty years ago, so I am not as aware as younger readers may be of the fact that comic books have grown more sophisticated and "adult" in recent decades—an attempt to maintain a more mature reading audience and to stay current with the modern world, also the result of the increasing creativity, imagination, and ambition of comic book artists. The Superman and Batman and Spider-Man stories have grown more complicated, more ambitious, much darker. Cinematic adaptations of comic book super heroes often don't seem able to keep pace with these developments. Only the Batman films—some of them at least—have succeeded in doing so.

One of the main interests of the Spider-Man series is that Peter Parker starts out as a normal kid who, after the infamous radioactive spider bite, finds himself possessed of superhuman powers. He struggles with wanting to continue his life as a normal American teenager and with facing up to the challenges of his powers. The first and second Spider-Man films made this struggle a central focus. The same is true in this third film, but here the plot begins to seem too familiar. So too do the continuing concerns with Peter's wavering romance with his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson and his relationship with his best friend and worst enemy Harry Osborn. Perhaps recognizing the need to freshen the story up, the film offers up as adversaries (in addition to Harry's alter-ego the New Goblin) an alien creature that infects Peter and brings out his evil side, a criminal (who Peter believes killed his uncle) who accidentally falls into a particle accelerator beam and is transformed into a superhuman sandman, and an ambitious rival news photographer. Peter is overcome by his own celebrity, begins acting like a disco king (with echoes of Saturday Night Fever, not to mention The Simpsons Disco Stu) and is insensitive to Mary Jane's problems with her career as an actor. He's never quite able (until the end) to convince Harry that he didn't really kill his father. And so on. It doesn't profit too much too think too deliberatively about this film. It's an overly complex and meandering mess whose action sequences manage to keep it interesting and loosely coherent.

Portions of this film are sillier than one has a right to expect. Some parts are simply a bore. Given the outcome of this film, especially Harry Osborn's death, it's difficult to imagine where and whether the series will go from here. Toby McGuire does have acting talent, but he has expended a lot of it on the Spider-Man films. Would he really want to do another?