Tangled Webs, Straight Lines

Disclaimer: I am *not* an official Marvel comic book nerd. I know very little of any Marvel character history outside of the films and cartoons. I have no investment in some argument about what is, or should be canon in the Spidey flicks.

*Spoilers Below* so if you haven't seen Spiderman 3 yet, *don't keep reading* if you want to be kept ignorant of plot twists etc.

It is my considered opinion that multiple villain stories are *great* for comics....the day that a reader woolgathered and said to themselves, "How great would it be if Character A and Character B interacted from different universes, different moral sides, even different comicbook makers...Also the multi-hero Justice League thing has some of the same juice...

But.... I've noticed...

For *films* featuring comic book villains and heroes...Meh, not so much.

I wanted this Spiderman flick to be all about the tensions between Harry, Peter, and Mary Jane. The two guys wrestling with their dark sides, or dark parents, and Mary Jane realizing that if she married Peter, it wasn't going to be all goofy love all the time.

I *wanted* Harry to get his licks in with his fights with Peter, because from his perspective he was avenging his father's death, just as Peter went after
Sandman...

But both Sandman, and the wanna-be photographer, distract the viewer and pull attention and time away from the main story.

And the Sandman and the photographer also get shorted because there's not enough movie for them...Sandman in particular isn't a one-note dry cleaned version of Ben Grimm from the Fantastic Four...He's complicated and driven, from the first moments you see him with his daughter, and I wanted to learn the backstory....

Loved the black hero costume, and the total asshat behavior of "Darth Spidey." (right down to the symbiont "acting like" some meteor that fell in "The Seventies," and Peter Parker's patently ridiculous Travolta strut with the 70's funky backround music in the black tailored suit.)

Did anyone else catch the joke of the photographers red hair....reminscent of Toby Maquires red hair in Seabuscuit? They *had* to differentiate them, in part, because IMO the actor who played the photographer looks a lot *like* Toby McGuire in real life from his stint on "That 70's Show..."

Two hours of great cgi, regular stunts and special effects...*should have been spent* on Spiderman,Goblin redux (and satisfyingly 'redeemed...) and the girl having trouble choosing between them.

One last cavil.

Parker bounced back from killing two people just a bit too quickly...one used to be his best friend...

My opinion, of course.