Spider-man 3

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

I put this movie review in "Drama" category because like its prequel (Spider-man 2) this movie touches our emotion with its story more than the actions and visual effects.

In Spider-man 2, Peter Parker has to face many difficult situations and unfortunate conditions for being a normal human being (as a nephew, a friend, a student, and an employee), and at the same time for being a man with a great power and a choice to use it for good causes with the risk of putting the lives of his beloved ones in danger. Also in the prequel, we see how Peter struggles to survive his daily life by working as a pizza delivery guy and a freelance photographer, with no enough money to pay the rent, at the same time juggling between school works, friends, and the Spider-man job to fight crimes in the city.

In Spiderman-3, Peter has to face a greater challenge of being overcome by his own pride and wrath: the pride of being a superhero whom all people in the city love and praise, and the wrath to revenge his uncle's death. These two uncontrolled feelings trigger a series of events that tears apart his relationship with the girl whom he loves and plans to marry. The situation becomes more increasingly complex with the old tension between him and his best friend, Harry - the new Goblin, and the confrontation between him and the killer of his uncle - Flynt Marko the Sandman, and the existence of a symbiote, a living alien organism from outer space, that is attached and bonded to his Spider-man suit, boosting his arrogance and anger, as well as the conflict between him and Eddie Brock who later becomes the Venom.

The visual effect is good, especially the crane accident part. The fighting scenes are also good but not as good as its two prequels shown with more slow motion styled fighting movements.

It seems the director (Sam Raimi) intentionally shoves a lot of stories into this 2 hours-30 minutes movie, making this movie contain too much to digest. In this case, too much means less information in such a short of viewing time. I think they should have cut the Venom part and put it into another sequel (Spider-man 4) since it has enough stories in itself to be made as a separate movie.

Some scenes seem to move slowly to focus on the drama but others move fast to cover all story. I think this is done at the expense of some parts which might have been cut or deleted to fit into the given time length. For example, there is no scene that tells us how Peter starts to realize the existence of the symbiote and brings a sample to his Professor's lab. Some player roles are also not shown in enough time to make the story flows better, like the role of Gwen Stacy and her father as the Police chief.

As its two prequels, I like this movie more than other movies with different superheroes, because it treats a superhero as a normal human being who has emotions, feelings and real life with family and friends. The story is easy to follow, the pictures are so clear and easy to enjoy (compare this with "Batman Begins"). It seems there is no bad guy in this movie. All the bad guys here are shown as normal people who are caught in difficult situations and predicaments. You could feel the sensation of emotions during some scenes, especially the part at the end of the movie when a best friend who had become a sworn enemy......[cut]... (you better watch it yourself to find out! :-))

Lessons learned:

* Always control your feelings - especially pride and wrath.
* Revenge can be like poison that might take you over and turn you into something ugly.