Spider-Man 3 – Film Review

Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and Mary-Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) seem to finally be on the right track in their complicated relationship, but trouble looms for the superhero and his lover. Peter’s Spider-Man suit turns black and takes control of him, not only giving Peter enhanced power but also bringing out the dark side of his personality. Peter must overcome the suit’s influence as two supervillains, Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and Venom (Topher Grace), rise up to destroy him and all those he holds dear.

Hear me out – Spider-Man 3 is genuinely amazing and also significantly better than Sam Raimi‘s original Spider-Man and also the most entertaining Spider-Man film aside from 2019’s Far From Home starring Tom Holland as the webhead. Superhero movies can be a little tricky to talk about online because it seems as though a ton of people these days tend to bash them for being nothing more than stupid, dumb fun that has little else to offer aside from some fancy explosions and computer-generated imagery.

Personally, I think that superhero movies today are better than they’ve ever been. For example, this year’s Eternals is one of my favorites of the year thus far mainly because it was so different than other MCU offerings, but even still, lots of folks seemed to hate it. And although I do think that most superhero outings today are better than the old-school ones (Avengers: Endgame says hello), I’ve always had a soft spot for Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, which is also one of my favorite movies ever.

But I want to stop right there and acknowledge the fact that this film is without a doubt quite flawed. It has way too many villains in it and also has a handful of sub-plots that perhaps would’ve been more impactful had they been included in a fourth film. However, when Spider-Man 3 hits, it hits hard. It’s literally the culmination of a three-part story and now that we’ve already spent two whole movies with these characters such as Peter and MJ, we care for them now more than we ever have before.

To this day, Raimi has been incredibly vocal about how he, too, is disappointed with how Spider-Man 3 turned out, even apologizing to those he let down with the film. But in the off-chance that Raimi is reading this very review I want to say – you made a film that literally shaped me as a person and you genuinely made my childhood ten times better. I’ve mentioned it already in my reviews for Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films but I need to say it again – Tobey Maguire’s performance as Peter Parker / Spider-Man is my favorite portrayal of the web-slinger to date.

Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland are both excellent in their respective Spider-Man series, but to me, Maguire has been the only actor to truly perfect Parker’s nerdiness and make him feel the most sympathetic. In Spider-Man 2, Parker basically goes through hell and back the entire film. The love of his life has agreed to marry someone else, his best friend learns that he’s Spider-Man now and hates him because he thinks he killed his father, and he is performing poorly in school. And on top of that, he of course has to be Spider-Man and protect the city of New York.

Spider-Man 3 sees Parker moving past a lot of those problems but, you guessed it, he finds himself in yet another batch of trouble. This time around, Mary-Jane gets fired from her Broadway play and must do whatever he can to support her which doesn’t go as planned. Harry is out for vengeance and will stop at nothing to kill his former best friend and the cherry on top? He finds out that Uncle Ben’s killer is actually still out there and is none other than Flint Marko aka the Sandman.

This is a crazy movie, honestly. It’s only two hours and twenty minutes long and yet there are so many different plots the viewer has to follow along with but I truly feel as though screenwriters Sam and Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent did the best they could here. There’s a handful of emotional beats in Spider-Man 3 that honestly hurt me to watch, mainly Harry’s death in the final act as well as the entire Mary-Jane and Peter arc.

Earlier in this review, I mentioned that this film legitimately changed my life and now I’ll explain how. In this film, Parker gets infected by a strange symbiotic substance that clings to his skin and it eventually begins to take over his life. He gets a new black suit that has this symbiote infused inside, and whenever Parker wears it he feels ten times stronger and it makes him become more unhinged.

This, understandably, slowly begins to turn Parker into… well… kind of a jerk. He starts to lash out at people he never would have lashed out at before, he gets a gigantic ego, and worst of all, he starts treating his girlfriend Mary-Jane like trash. There’s one scene in this film that always breaks my heart every time I watch the film. I watched it today for probably the fifteenth time and it still hurt me to watch.

Parker heads to a bar with his new girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) where, surprise surprise, Mary-Jane also works. When he realizes this, he does an embarrassing dance just to humiliate her in front of everyone, and after he’s done with his act, instead of feeling sorry, he feels good. Then, after he gets a bit loud, a bodyguard puts his hand on Parker’s arm and tells him to leave, which turns into a big fistfight.

Mary-Jane can no longer look at Parker’s erratic behavior, lunging in telling him to stop, at which point he literally hits her, causing her to fall to the ground. She then asks a single, honest question – “Who are you”? Parker answers with “I don’t know”.

Watching Parker – a man we’ve seen time and time again as being an extremely friendly person to all around him – suddenly become a complete jerk after letting something take over his life, served as a cautionary tale for me. It showed me that no matter what I’m going through in life that I can never change who I am and treat people differently. We must all show kindness and love for one another in all circumstances.

Spider-Man 3 is not just a “dumb superhero movie” like some will tell you it is. If you watch this film and hate it, that’s totally fine. But personally, I adore this movie even with all its faults. The biggest one is one that most people overlook. Why did Harry’s butler Bernard (John Paxton) wait until this movie to tell him how his father actually died? That’s honestly inexcusably stupid. But at the end of the day, Spider-Man 3 is a wonderful treat of a superhero film and one that still speaks to me fourteen years later.