Third ‘Spider-Man’ film is lazy, indifferently crafted

Spoilers ahead.

With its protagonist sorrowfully ruing his revenge-baked mind atop a church, a few potshots at the plot revelations of Tim Burton’s “Batman,” and a final action set-piece taking place at a perilous construction site, Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 3” is essentially a ridiculously overblown version of the director’s own comic book masterpiece “Darkman.”

Why it is that Raimi feels compelled to rip himself off (finally crossing that line between sentimental self-homage and just recycling old material) is particularly confusing to me, considering what tremendous work he’s already put into this series. The first two “Spider-Man” films were complex treatises about emotional growth; the fact that they were also tremendous summer blockbusters almost seemed beyond the point. Being about the destructive nature of vengeance, “Spider-Man 3” seems to follow suit, but it’s also acquired a rather dangerous awareness of its status as the new, unstoppable Hollywood juggernaut; because the movie is guaranteed to fill a lot of seats and make a lot of money no matter how good or bad it is, it’s made with a lazier hand, more than content to swipe from better films about the same subject.

With New York having finally come around to see Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) as their friendly neighborhood hero, “Spider-Man 3” still manages to introduce quite a few brilliant concepts which explore the tragedy of Peter Parker’s happiness, rather than that of his traditional misery. Just as he seems ready to pop the question to his long-time girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), Peter is forced in battle with his vengeful ex-friend/new Green Goblin Harry Osborn (James Franco), eventually giving the would-be villain brain damage—which shatters his short-term memory and causes him to forget his vendetta. It’s an uncomfortable inverse of Uncle Ben’s death, a horrific turn of events that doesn’t send Peter on an extended guilt trip only because it ends in his favor. Meanwhile, Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), the petty criminal revealed to be Uncle Ben’s real killer, is transformed into the super-powered Sandman; his subsequent bank-robbing spree gives Spidey an even-handed outlet into which he can pour his newly-found aggression, increased exponentially thanks to Mary Jane’s jealousy over his success—and a mysterious black goo that latches itself to our hero and gets the angry juices flowing.

And all of that might have added up to something worthwhile if any of it had any consequence whatsoever. Spidey’s descent into darkness is brief and arbitrary at best, with Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) offered the thankless role of the third angle of a poorly-developed love triangle, and doddering old Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) left with the thankless task of offering a few tortured metaphors that inevitably guide him back to the light. Meanwhile, consider Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), a rival photographer who’s rather painfully set up as the anti-Peter Parker in order to give some credence to his eventual role as Venom, the anti-Spider-Man. His fate is almost certainly meant as a grim what-if scenario, should ol’ Webhead have continued on his self-destructive path. But the film barely has the patience to really explore him or his anger, seeing a mirror image of Spidey as purely a means to an action-movie end, ultimately discarding him in the familiar revolving-door system of villains in superhero movie franchises. The same pretty much goes for the Sandman, whose primary motivation lies in helping his sick daughter; but after a scene to set that up and a few sideways glances toward a heart locket, the movie calls it a day in terms of characterization. To be fair, it’s difficult to best the saddening image of Marko trying and failing to resuscitate his human form from a pile of sand, but that’s just the problem—the best moments of “Spider-Man 3” are quiet heartbreakers, and you can’t help feeling cheated when it sacrifices them for a lot of indiscriminate action scenes where the characters are thrown around like rag dolls.

And so “Spider-Man 3”’s hyperactive childishness reminds us of another film from Sam Raimi’s lower-budget days—“Army of Darkness,” the third entry in his “other” trilogy. It’s a thoroughly vapid action-figure flick that possesses none of the qualities that made its predecessors such classics—neither the paranoid terror of “Evil Dead” nor the psychotic energy of “Evil Dead II”—but if it should pop up on television one day, you’d probably watch it if you had nothing better to do. I suspect that in a couple of years, “Spider-Man 3” will be regarded in a similar light as “Army:” an all right timewaster that’ll be nice to watch (though not really pay attention to) during some lazy afternoon. Which is okay, I guess. But what a tremendous step down that is from “Spider-Man” and “Spider-Man 2”, movies that were so thoughtful and exciting that they didn’t require any excuse or rationalization as to why you were watching them.