So When's Spidey 4 Come Out?

Just got back from seeing Spider-Man 3 in Frankfort. And while I liked it, I do have some complaints. I'll get into all that, but first, I have to say that this post is probably gonna have some spoilers, so you readers who haven't seen Spidey 3 yet and don't want to know anything about it might want to just skip to the end.

Okay, want to know my beefs with the movie? One is that it seems Gwen Stacy's role wasn't all that big. She's an important part of the Spider-Man mythos, but it seems like she was just pushed into the background here. Yeah, she might serve as one of the catalysts for the drama between Peter and Mary Jane, but I never really got the feeling that she was any sort of rival to Mary Jane at all. There could have been an opportunity for a love triangle between Peter, Mary Jane, and Gwen, but the movie instead falls back on the Peter/Mary Jane/Harry triangle from the first movie. For all she was worth, they could have given Gwen some other unrelated name and it wouldn't have made any sort of difference at all.

I also didn't like the fact that Venom was killed off. Does every comic book villain have to be killed off in the movie version? Green Goblin's death is understandable, as it pushed Harry's character arc forward. But can't we have a villain that lives to fight another day? Aside from Lex Luthor, I think the only comic villain to get away at the end was Scarecrow in Batman Begins. So Green Goblin is dead, Doctor Octopus is dead, Venom is dead, and I don't see them using Sandman again, at least not for a while. If they keep up this trend, they'll end up having to use villains that could come across as being lame, like Vulture or Rhino. This sort of thing was one of the problems with Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher's Batman movies. Joker, Penguin, and Two-Face all ended up dead and Riddler became a shell of his former self, when sequels featuring them could have been really good. And although there is a teensy bit of the Venom symbiote left, I doubt it'll ever come up in another sequel.

Another problem I had with it is that there was just too much going on. If they'd cut the plot in half, with Sandman and Harry as the villains of one movie and Venom as the villain of another, then it might not have been as worrisome. I've heard that Sam Raimi doesn't exactly like Venom, so I assume that he just shoehorned the character in here to shut Avi Arad up. It just feels like there's so much going on, but there still a feeling that some scenes were left out. There just seemed to be some gaps in the story. Like how does Spider-Man reprising the upside-down kiss with Gwen, and her ditching Peter in the middle of the date lead to Eddie Brock's claim that Peter "stole [his] girl"? Of course, this probably means there'll be either a three-hour unrated cut or a huge number of deleted scenes when the movie is released on DVD in a few months.

However, everything else about the movie is fantastic. Raimi's direction is sound, the acting - especially Tobey Maguire and Topher Grace - is great, and the special effects are amazing. Plus the cameos from Stan Lee and Bruce Campbell are almost worth the price of admission itself. Outside of my above complaints, the movie isn't too bad at all. It's actually a lot of fun. And really, isn't that what most movies should be? I might have to give the movie a second viewing to really get a feel for it, but I'm going to give Spider-Man 3 three and a half stars, leaning towards four.

And now to wait for Spider-Man 4.