OK, I took off from work yesterday afternoon to see Spiderman 3...a perfectly justifiable reason for an afternoon out of the office. Besides , I needed the downtime after the two week install trip out to Bellingham, WA. I will warn you that the remainder of this post contains an entirety of spoilers. If you want to view the movie from a fresh perspective, move on!!!

So, the movie was mediocre, and scores a 4 out of 10. It was not the travesty that X-Men 3 was. You will be entertained when you go see it, but by the end of the movie, I was disappointed.

My brother and I view cartoon or comic movie adaptations through very different perspectives...usually. He tends to feel that any deviation from the original storyline is an error on the creator's part. I usually try to view the movie completely detached from the original story. I think that there are some necessary deviations that have to be made. Sci-fi/fantasy flicks always have to hoe the tough road of being dedicated to the original to not tee off the geek hordes, but must make the movie accessible enough to new consumers to capture a large enough viewer audience to make a significant enough profit. I also think that where the villains are concerned, the conflict between them and the protaganist must be personal. Let me explain:

In comics it is totally accepted that frequent villain origins are not required to be overly fleshed out. A new villain can just be exposed to a freak accident involving radiation or a random mix of chemicals, or can be overlooked when the hero is rescuing some group of innocents from some major catastrophe and then want revenge. There does not have to be some familial link going back five generations or old teammates that find themselves on different sides of the law, and so on.

In the movies, I think creators want the conflict to be more binding in order to ensure some level of emotional involvement between the two enemies. The greatest villains are the ones that you really dislike to the point of wanting the hero to go over the edge; maybe it's ok that the hero not become judge, jury, and executioner, but you definitely want there to be a little taste of vengeance in the final fight; it's gotta be about more than just bringing the guy to justice.

So those are my basic tenets. However, there is a point at which you have strayed too far from the original content that even I get perturbed.

The first problem with S3 is that there is just entirely too much going on. This is a kitchen sink movie. Despite the fact that Sam Raimi has stated that they are not locked into the traditional trilogy format for the series, that 4th and 5th movies were possible, it seems like the unlikelihood of Toby Maguire's return to don the blue-and-red suit is confirmed by the apparent attempt to include every fan-favorite storyline from the comic into this movie. Any 1 or two of the storyline's could have been a movie by itself. X-Men 3 and Batman Forever tried to do the same thing, and every time movie-makers do this, some character gets marganilized, and it is totally unecessary.

In the comic, Parker dates Gwen Stacy before marrying Mary Jane Watson, and her death is one of the two major guiding tragedies in his future stories. She is installed in the movie as a mere strain mechanism for Peter and MJ.

Sandman is one of Spidey's most interwoven and at times viscious enemies. His story is near epic, if only in terms of its sheer length and endurance. His story has gone on for 43 years. In the movie implementation, the story of Spiderman's origin is convoluted and in many ways is lessened in its value by the realization that Flint Marko was actually Ben Parker's murderer. By the end of the movie, it is portrayed as an accident in which Ben's murder was never intentional.

In the comic, Harry Osborne's death is due to his own thrist for revenge. While his final act before dying is to save people he loves, it is a much longer road getting there, and the actions that bring him there are brought about by his own thrist for revenge on Parker. It is hardly the heroic, buddy movie ending that is shown in the movie. Additionally, the psychosis that plagues him is a great story in the twisting of human nature, and this aspect is completely glossed over in the movie.

One of the favorite sotrylines in the comic was Spidey gaining the black suit, which is a much different design than the way it is protrayed in the movie. In the film it's just a pallette swap from the blue-and-red design. In the comic, the suit is a principle device used to inject some freshness into the story. The ensuing storyline of twisted vengeance and the triangle between Brock/Venom,Parker, and the symbiote is run over in the movie. The fact that the symbiote is intelligent is removed. The fact that, via its original attachment to Spiderman, it can negate the preceptory function of Parker's "spider-sense" when grafted to Brock is never explained. All you see in the movie is that Venom is consistently able to sucker-punch Parker, which an uninformed viewer would normally think should not be possible.

Any one of these stories could have been a movie on its own. A good movie would have been a part of the Sandman saga, or the Venom saga, and the personal storyline of Peter dating Gwen and his estrangment from MJ. If they were looking for a 4th movie, they could have ended it with Peter still estranged from MJ. As it is, it is apparent that the studio figured that a 4th movie was not going to happen, so they chucked the kitchen sink of storylines into this one movie, making for an unfocused, kaleidoscope of muddled scenes that leaves the viewer feeling like nothing epic has really occurred. None of these villains really feel like they are a serious threat to Parker's life, unlike the Green Goblin and Doc Ock. Nothing they do really make you say "Whoa!" We are expected to feel sympathetic for the Sandman, when his original character is a total criminal, not somebody who is "not a bad man, [I just] had bad luck". Also, the movie script removes the key Spidey quips, which seems to empty the character out from Toby's previous performances. Throughout the whole movie, Maguire just doesn't seem like he's as much into this performance as he was in the first two. Could it have been the crappy script and storyline?

So the good: Topher Grace's line delivery, which is very similar to his Eric Foreman character from "That 70s Show" brings some comic relief to the movie, at least for the first half. The technology and CG sequences are pretty smooth, unlike most movies, the switch from a live action actor and a CG model appeared pretty seamless, at least on the big screen and during the first viewing. In every movie I've seen before, you can always see the transition from man to clay-like CG model. And there is something undeniably fun and hilarious about pumpkin bombs.

I'm trying to think of something to say about more positive aspects of the movie, but I can't think of any. Maybe when the DVD comes out, and after an additional viewing, I'll see it in a more positive light. Why am I getting the DVD when I didn't really like the movie? I'm a collector...I've got the first two...you gotta buy the third. Those are the Seinfled rules of life.