With the blessing of his Aunt and a bit of luck finally on his side, Peter intends to propose to Mary Jane. All is well in the universe...until mysterious ooze from another universe attaches itself to Peter’s scooter and Harry Osborn appears with a nifty new glider, pumpkin bombs, and a serious homicidal complex. A well-crafted aerial “acrobattle” leaves Osborn with serious head trauma and a case of amnesia, affording Parker a brief respite from Harry’s vengeance. However, problems begin to mount when Mary Jane’s career flounders and her thirst for compassion becomes seemingly unquenchable (and from a character perspective, unmotivated).
To add further complication to Peter and Mary Jane’s relationship, Director Sam Raimi introduces Gwen Stacy, who in a matter of minutes is seen as: Peter’s college lab partner and potential love interest, the daughter of the police chief that informs Peter his uncle’s killer is still at large, the girlfriend of Eddie Brock, a sleazy photographer who threatens Peter’s job and life. Stacy is also a model that is being photographed in a corporate midtown hi-rise (huh?) that gets smashed by a runaway crane reigning debris and bodies onto the streets of New York in a scene eerily reminiscent of the WTC disaster. Confused yet? The audience sure was.
Following the crane accident Spiderman is awarded the key to the city where he plants an upside-down kiss on Gwen Stacy, much to the justifiable dismay of a jealous Mary Jane. Parker enjoys his moment in the spotlight until a mysterious cloud of sand materializes into a “Sandman” and robs an armored car.
The Sandman, aka Flint Marko, is introduced briefly in the opening of the film. Escaped from prison, Marko sneaks in to his daughter’s bedroom and encounters his presumable ex-wife. The exchange between Marko and spouse paints the convict as a sympathetic character criminalized only by his need for money to “make his daughter well again.” (Her supposed sickness is only portrayed by a blinkandyou’llmissit machine in her bedroom.) While retreating from the police, Marko is befallen into a sandy ditch where three wheat thresher-esque glowsticks spin around his body changing his molecules into sand. This scene really pushes our suspension of disbelief, providing the least plausible transformation in any of the three Spiderman installments. As cockamamie as the pseudo-science was behind Dr. Octopus’s bionic arms, at least it existed. Here we are forced into believing that a late night experiment in Corona Park, Queens, conducted without security or explanation, is capable of changing a man into an indestructible sand creature.
Sigh.Spiderman’s first encounter with the Sandman leaves him defeated, emptying sand from his boot, a subtle note that briefly recaptures the wit and charm of the previous films. Suffering from laborious pacing throughout,
Spiderman 3 finally begins to pick up steam in a hilarious scene between Peter Parker, Mary Jane, and Bruce Campbell as the
maitre’ d of a French restaurant. The plot moves along nicely until an all-to-convenient appearance by Gwen Stacy foils any plans Peter has for a successful proposal and any hope the audience had for a flowing plot.
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