Cyndi and I saw Spiderman 3 last night. Reaction: meh.
I jumped over to Rotten Tomatoes this morning to have a look at the reviews. As you can see the critics found plenty to criticize, most commonly the length. But look at the number of critics that didn't like this movie but liked Spiderman 2. I don't get that. Spiderman 2 was a long, stretched out, largely boring exposition punctuated with some highly entertaining special-effect laden action scenes. Pretty much just like Spiderman 3.
Of course the biggest problem with Spiderman is, in my opinion, Tobey Maguire. He's a good actor, he portrays an excellent Peter Parker. But his character has stayed pretty flat throughout the trilogy. He still plays the wide-eyed innocent, barely touched by experience. It just doesn't work. I think Kirstin Dunst has done a much better job giving her character a story arc.
Alfred Molina was good in Spiderman 2. He helped enliven an otherwise monotone plot. But I don't think he was quite as good as Thomas Haden Church in Spiderman 3. I've always thought of Church as a caricaturist, best suited for TV. But I thought he brought some real subtlety and even a bit of tragedy to the Marko character. He really hit this character out of the park. I also thought Topher Grace was solid in what could easily have been a complete throwaway role. So all in all I'd say the third movie was a bit better than the second. But then I didn't think much of the second movie at all.
