Film Reviews	The People's Hero: Spider-Man 3 by M. Faust

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Trailer for "Spider-Man 3"

Yes, but was it worth $350 million?

Depending who you believe, that’s the final price tag on Spider-Man 3, once you total up all the special effects invoices and marketing costs. The studio is only willing to admit to something in the high $200 millions.

I suppose that compared to the amounts we’re spending to do whatever it is we’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s chump change. Still, it’s a lot more money than I can get my limited imagination around. And when it comes down to it, the question of “Was it worth it?” really means “Will it make that much back?”

Count on it. If it was possible to buy stock in individual movies, I’d mortgage the farm and invest on this one.

In fact, every studio head in Hollywood ought to send director Sam Raimi a nice thank-you note for what he’s done for them. As the kickoff movie to a summer blockbuster season that studios are praying will refill their drained coffers, Spider-Man 3 sets a tone that could well bring viewers back into theaters on a regular basis. As a reminder of just how involving, entertaining, and simply fun movies can be, it’s a terrific advertisement for the habit of moviegoing to even the most jaded of viewers.

The best news is that the reason it succeeds so well is not because of the special effects. Sure, they’re expensive and lavish. But if any of the digital magic on display here is in anyway new or groundbreaking, it passed me by. We’ve all long accepted that filmmakers can now put anything on screen, as long as they’ve have the money to pay for it. To the extent that Spider-Man’s swinging from building to building high above the streets of Manhattan, or the brutal fights he has with various opponents, are improved in any sense over previous films, it is at the expense of plausibility (even by the standard of a movie that asks us to check our disbelief at the door).

The most impressive sequence here involves a runaway crane and a skyscraper, which obviously and uncomfortably recalls the demise of the World Trade Center. It’s not nearly as memorable as the runaway train sequence that was a highlight of Spider-Man 2. Aside from the spectacular production design by J. Michael Riva (who has been doing astonishing work since The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai), I have no idea what they spent all that money on.

Nor do I care. Spider-Man 3 works because Raimi knows that all the movie magic in the world can’t do anything for a story that doesn’t pique our interest and characters we don’t care about.

This is the first film in the series that Raimi wrote (with the help of his brother Ivan, and some polishing work by Alvin Sargent on the final screenplay), and it’s as intricately crafted as a Shakespearean comedy. I won’t go through the whole litany of characters and storylines woven together here (yes, like a web); suffice to say that every significant character concern and story element is mirrored and contrasted in some other part of the movie. It’s like a comic opera with special effects instead of arias to amplify and illustrate the characters. Freshman writing instructors should give it to students to analyze. It’s not deep, but it’s vivid and engrossing through most of its two hours and 20 minutes.

And at the risk of alienating viewers who prefer their entertainment in simple black and white, Raimi remains a great humanist. To an unusual degree for a popular storyteller, he holds no truck with traditional notions of “good” and “evil.” With the exception of newspaper publisher J. J. Jameson (played with great comic panache by J. K. Simmons), there are no villains in the traditional sense here. Just as Peter Parker outside of his Spider-Man costume is no one’s idea of the stereotypical “hero”—he’s clumsy, uncertain, indecisive, lacking in self-esteem, disorganized and, well, nerdy—his typical nemesis is, as one puts it, “not a bad person, I’ve just had bad luck.” Aside from a blob from outer space that is treated as the clunky plot device it is (allowing Raimi to borrow and improve on the most memorable parts of Superman 2), Parker’s adversaries here include a friend driven to avenge what he mistakenly sees as the murder of his father; a man desperate to care for his crippled daughter; and a callow youth who loses everything in his life to misplaced ambition.

Raimi even makes a point of treating his small villains with a measure of humanism: the Broadway producers who regret the misfortune of a failed actress; the landlord who hopes his laziness doesn’t lose him a good tenant; the smarmy maitre d’ at a fancy restaurant (Bruce Campbell in a funny cameo) who turns out to be surprisingly helpful given a chance. You can’t help but get the impression that Raimi genuinely likes people, that he wants to understand them and hopes they can learn to get along. (Try to name another movie of this genre where the notion of forgiveness plays such an important role.)

The downside? It’s rather overstuffed, with so much going on that nothing ever really amounts to a lot of anything. (Of course, you can say the same thing about The Magic Flute.) It doesn’t have the emotional payoff of Spider-Man 2, leaving Peter Parker and Mary Jane essentially as it found them. And none of the villains has the impact of Alfred Molina’s scene-stealing Dr. Octopus.

But while it may lack the high points of its predecessor, it’s tone is more even. A week after you see it you may not remember a whole lot of it, but I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy every minute of it while you’re watching it.

What more can I say? It’s swell stuff.