Review: You’re All Wrong About ‘Spider-Man 3’
Sam Raimi’s underrated and misunderstood superhero film concludes one of mainstream cinema’s finest trilogies
In the years between the releases of Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), my personal life shifted massively. In those three years, my parents separated and I struggled massively to adjust to that sudden hole left by my father’s newfound absence. We fell onto hard times financially that, to this day, haven’t really let up. It was the beginning of the times which would leave me feeling kicked around emotionally. Spider-Man 3, largely because of those personal changes, is the first piece of art that I had an emotional experience with that wasn’t merely a mixture of awe and excitement. I still remember watching a shoddy camcorder rip of the film on my tiny TV in 2007 (or maybe early 2008) and, by the end of the film, being inconsolable.
It’s important to get a couple of things straight about Sam Raimi’s film before really discussing why it is criminally underrated. First of all, as all of its naysayers will have you know, the film is a mess. It constantly takes big swings, removes itself from the previous two instalments stylistically (mainly by being more reliant upon CGI, which has aged surprisingly well, and by switching out its warmer colour palette of…
