Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Three films in, and Sam Raimi was handed what felt like an impossible brief: close out a beloved trilogy, satisfy the studio, honour the fans, and somehow make Venom work. The result is a film I have genuinely complicated feelings about. Because there's real good in Spider-Man 3. But there's also a jazz bar sequence that has haunted me since 2007, and not in a good way.

Let me start with what works, because it deserves credit. Tobey Maguire's descent into arrogance once Peter Parker bonds with the black suit is actually one of the smarter ideas in the whole trilogy. Pride and temptation made literal, the costume doing what costumes do in superhero stories: externalising an internal shift. Maguire plays it with surprising conviction, and there's a version of this film where that arc is the whole thing, a tight, focused character study about ego corroding a good person. Thomas Haden Church brings a quiet, aching dignity to Flint Marko that I didn't expect, and James Franco's Harry Osborn carries genuine emotional weight throughout. Their fractured friendship with Peter is the film's beating heart, and when it pays off in the final act, it lands with real feeling.

The trouble is everything piled on top of all that. Three antagonists. A romance in crisis. A revenge plot. A redemption arc. A dark Peter Parker storyline. And, yes, the dancing. The infamous strutting-down-the-street, jazz-club-finger-pointing sequence has become a meme for obvious reasons: it's wildly, bafflingly out of tone with everything around it. I understand what Raimi was going for, showing Peter's cringe-worthy idea of "cool" as a symptom of the suit's corruption. But the execution tips from bold into chaotic, and it's emblematic of a film that never quite decides what kind of film it wants to be. Dark character study? Romantic melodrama? Campy action spectacle? It reaches for all three and gets a firm grip on none of them.

Then there's Topher Grace's Venom, which remains the biggest missed opportunity. A character fans had been desperate to see on screen, reduced to smirking one-liners and cartoonish fury. The transformation feels more silly than sinister, and Venom vanishes almost as quickly as he arrives. It's not Grace's fault entirely; he's working with a script that never gives the character room to breathe.

Raimi's direction still has genuine flair in places. The church fight between Peter and Harry is beautifully staged, and the action sequences mostly deliver the goods. Knowing his work on The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, you can see that same kinetic, almost gleeful energy in how he handles physical chaos, but here it's squeezed into gaps between storylines rather than given space to breathe.

For comparison, I think back to Spider-Man 2, which had the clarity and focus this film desperately needed. One central conflict, one villain who meant something, and a Peter Parker at genuine breaking point. That film knew exactly what it was. This one is trying to be six things at once and spreading itself too thin to be any of them fully.

That said, I want to be fair: Spider-Man 3 is not a bad film. It's often entertaining. There are sequences of real visual imagination, performances that genuinely move you, and moments where the emotional groundwork laid across the trilogy pays off beautifully. The final confrontation carries weight precisely because we've spent three films with these people.

Three stars. Good, not great. A bloated, overstuffed finale that still has enough heart to make you care, even when it's testing your patience. The peak of this trilogy was Spider-Man 2, and this never quite climbs back to it. But it's worth watching, if only to appreciate how much the first two films got right by doing so much less.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2007  | Watched: 2025-08-08

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Sam Raimi: Evil Dead II (1987) · The Evil Dead (1981) · Spider-Man 2 (2004) · Spider-Man (2002)
More with Tobey Maguire: Spider-Man 2 (2004) · Spider-Man (2002)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)