'Spider-Man 3': With third movie comes..no creativity

This seems to be the summer of the threequel, and 'Spider-Man 3' (trailer) continues the trend set by Pirates of, well, let's just say not living up to the the predecessor. In spidey's case, though, it has two solid movies to contend -- and 'Spider-Man 2' was bigger and better than the first 'Spider-Man'. That left some high hopes for Tobey Maguire's third time stepping into the red and blue tights. But something happened on the way: Even though the same actors and the director were in place, the movie was sapped of the excitement and the resonance that made the previous two memorable. The cast and crew, including director Sam Raimi, are still able to hobble together a more enjoyable movie than, say, a Fantastic Four, but when the previous efforts were among the better comic book movies, it's just sad.

To understand where the third movie went wrong, it is best to look at what worked in the second movie. First step, create some thrilling action and a challenge for spidey to overcome. In the third movie, instead of pairing the reoccurring struggle with with Harry and the Green Goblin with one villain -- Doc Oc -- they chose in the third to bring in two new villians, Sandman and Venom. Because of this, they fail to get me interested in either plotline. Even the parts with Harry seem to just putting him in their because they wanted to bring James Franco back. Anyway, the second step is to create a compelling exploration of Peter Parker as a character. Tobey Maguire has shown he has the chops to explore some of the more serious sides of the character, which in the second one took the form of considering whether the whole thing was worth it and if he should continue. There's a particularly great moment when he saves people on a subway and the all see him for who he is and marvel over how he is just a kid. After what he has done and seeing the looks of sheer exhaustion and fear on his face, they have a moment with him and they promise to keep his secret and then try to stop him from having to face Doc Oc, but he stands up and faces his job. There's not moment like this in the third movie. A few times in the movie I started to get a sense of the overall theme of this movie, but somewhere between a dancing scene and the scenes following Kirstin Dunst as Mary Jane, I lost the elements it. There could have been a movie about the twin dangers of hubris and revenge, but too much was going on to sustain it. Even worse, both Thomas Hayden Church and Topher Grace are brutaly underused as the villians (with many out there especially ticked at the lame use of Grace's Venom) and neither manage to make much of a mark

As a whole, there could have been a lot worse ways to spend a couple of hours. I could have watched one of the many, lesser movies that are made out of comic books lately -- due in a large part to Spider-Man's success. But I expect more from this franchise. That's what left me most disappointed. Despite having read some negative reviews, I was fully prepared to like this movie. I just couldn't. Here's hoping that the next iterations will be better.

Grade: C+