Ok, just got back from watching it, and I must say that I was not impressed. This is horrible news for me, since I really enjoyed the first 2 films, and I have been waiting for a movie with venom in it since I was 6. I'm nat saying ti was a bad movie, but it was the worst spider-man movie yet IMO... Here is my complete review..
Plot:
The first problem I noticed with this film is it seemd that the pacing was completely messed up. Not only this, but it seemed that they wrote in things at the last minute to fill int he gaps, not giving proper explinations for things that could have been easily fixed. I then noticed that the new composer almost ruined MANY scenes in the movie (there is actually a "swing" song playing during one of the new goblin/spiderman fight scenes. WTF). As for the symboit theme, it sounded more like an X-Men theme than anything.
Sandman:
So sandman is running from the police and enters a testing ground, ok that's fine.. then he falls into a giant concrete bowl that's filled with sand. We are to understand this is the "testing ground". There is no monitoring equiptment of any kind on this experiment (except for a scale that shows a weight increase when flint marco lands on the sand..) so they run this test blind (which I still don't understand what they were running a TEST ON.. basically if flint marco wasn't there, it would have just been a "sand stirring test"... after the "test" no one even follows up on the test, the scientists are forgotten, and after a few hours of being sand, sandman pulls himself together and walks off... no one seems to notice. (sandman does look VERY cool in nearly all of his scenes though)
Plot:
At this point the symbiot has already crashed, and has followed peter to his room, but since the camera isn't on it, it decides to sit around for 3 days with out doing anything.
The main problem I had with this movie was the emo parker scenes.. Especially the dancing scenes. They were very silly, almost to a point where it was unbareable.
So peter Parker punches MJ and decides that maybe the suit isn't a good thing, he has it on under his clothes, but he decides he needs to get rid of it. SO instead of simply going home and taking it off (as he had done several times earlier in the film) he decides to put MORE of the costume on (his mask too) and goto a church so he can rip it off of him.. (again, it seemed like a lot of this movie was just written at the last minute to get certain scenes to work)
Venom:
So after parker gets rid of the suit, it gets on topher grace, and makes venom. The first thing Venom does instead of trying to take spider-man on himself is he looks for sandman. Venom speaks with his mask on, but his voice had BARELY any effects on it, so it reminded me A LOT of something from the Shrek movies (the way the mouth looke dwith teh voice). Venom never spoke of himself as "WE" and his name was never mentioned AT ALL... no "We are venom"; "I am venom"; "We call ourselves venom!" nothing... not even spider-man refered to him as venom. Venom looked ok, but some scenes they tried to over exagerate his features to a point to where it looked very cartoonish (reminded me of when the dog puts the mask on in "The Mask").. Also the sounds venom made were more annoying than anything... sounded like a high pitch cheetah.
Then spider-man figures out that Venom don't like loud noises, but they use metal pipes hitting the ground as teh loud noise that hurts the symbiot.. this is the weakest sound ever used - to my knowledge- to kill the symboit.. int eh comic, they used a sonic gun & the bell that made parkers ears bleed it was so loud. In the cartoon, they used the bell and a rocket engine.... You'd think that if the symbiot int eh film were weak enough to be hurt by pipes hitting the ground, that the annoying screams that he keeps making would equally hurt the symboit, I suppose not.
Final Thoughts:
There is really not any closure to this movie (mostly due to teh fact it didn't really follow any kind of progressive story line, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened), especially with the Sandman charactor.. We never find out what happens with him, he doesn't goto jail for robbing banks, and killing Uncle Ben (even though it was an accident).. Peter Parker just tells him he forgives him, and then sandman disolves into sand and flies away..)
I don't think it was the worst movie to be made, but I can't say that I am not disappointed. I know that Sony has already announced that they are going to do Spider-Man 4, even if Raimi and the cast doesn't come back.. after seeing Spider-man 3, I am kind hoping that they dont come back. I think it's time to take teh franchise in a different direction, hopefully a better one.
