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Now, this isn’t really going to be a true review or anything. Just me running my mouth. If you want to read a review or something really objective, I suggest you look elsewhere. And since I’m writing this half-asleep at past 4AM, things might not make sense. There is a change I’ll edit this post later, but mainly I wanted to get it up before you guys actually watch it in the US. But yea, I loved the past Spider-Man movies and even used to be really into Spider-Man stuff back in school, so of course I was looking forward to this movie for a long time. Just the fact that Venom is in it would be enough to get me to pay money to see it. I’ll say some negative things about this movie, but overall it was a lot of fun and very entertaining. The story and everything isn’t necessarily the best in the world, but if you want to just be entertained, you’re getting your money’s worth. If you like action, sci-fi, comic book stories, etc, then you’ll be getting more than your money’s worth.

As usual, the movie starts off with a really long and drawn-out credit sequence, with CG graphics and a musical score. This time, however, it didn’t seem as eye-gougingly boring since they gave us a nice summary of the past two movies through short video clips. Spider-Man’s life is great. People love him, he’s got his picture on magazines, a hot girlfriend on Broadway, parades in his honor, yada yada yada. He is, however, still fighting with his pal Harry, played by worst actor in the world James Franco. This time, it’s literal, since Harry, who couldn’t pass high school science without help from Peter, has somehow managed to use his father’s leftovers and engineer himself a brand new set of Goblin equipment, including a new glider that looks more like a hoverboard from Back to the Future on crack. And with his new gear, he attacks Peter. The fight is pretty sweet, especially since Harry ends up getting destroyed, laying unconscious in a rainy ditch Did I mention I hate James Franco? So he goes to the hospital, gets fixed up, but conveniently now has memory loss and can’t remember anything that happened since before the first movie.
Note: there are an awful lot of things that happen in this movie that are very convenient for the plot.

Oh yeah, Peter is going to propose to Mary Jane, but of course not before a long speech from Aunt May. There is also a small meteor that has crashed on Earth, conveniently bringing with it a black symbiote alien that attaches itself to Spider-Man. Next up is Flint Marko, played very well by Thomas Hayden Church. He is the guy who really killed Uncle Ben, escaped from prison, has a sick daughter, and is on the run from the cops. He is being chased at one point, jumps a barbed wire fence into a molecular alteration lab area, and falls into a pit. This pit is filled with sand, and also a giant machine being used to alter the particles of the sand in the pit. Although it’s sometime very late at night, the scientists at this lab are hard at work and getting ready to run a test. Marko gets sucked up in the particle changer gadget, and instead of dying like in real life, gets fused with the sand into Sandman. He is the emo villain, who is supposed to be a good soul who is only fighting and destroying the city to save his daughter. Yeah yeah yeah.

Spidey saves this girl from his science class, Gwen Stacey, as she is falling from a building that is being destroyed by a construction crane run amok (huh?!). She is actually pretty hot. Who would have known that Ron Howard could have a hot daughter? Anyway, since he is such a super hero, the town gives him the Key to the City, with her presiding over it. She gives him the upside-down kiss, and Mary Jane gets angry. She is pretty much angry the entire movie, by the way. Sandman interrupts the parade, fights with Spider-Man, and escapes for now. We then find out that Sandman is actually the guy who killed Uncle Ben, which gets Peter all pissed off. This goes well with his new black/symbiote suit, which amplifies his anger and rage and stuff. Black Spider-Man goes to track down Sandman. Bunch of fights, sweet. Since I’ve forgotten most of the intricate details of the movie’s chronology, I will mention here that Bruce Campbell has a long cameo in 3 as a French Maître d’, and it is awesome.

Oh yeah, Harry also regains his memory and attacks Peter again, but the black suit has warped Peter’s mind so he’s all angry and moody, causing him to totally own Harry again in their next fight. Dark Peter has a pretty cool scene at the end of this fight, throwing a cheap shot of a Pumpkin Bomb back at Harry. Although the bomb goes off right next to his head, it doesn’t kill him and somehow only gives him a slightly disfigured face. Ah well. All along in this movie, we also have Eddie Brock, a new photographer character played by Topher Grace. He is more of an Eddie Haskell type, sucking up to people and saying all the right things. As if his personality wasn’t enough of a giveaway, he is a con, revealed after he Photoshops a picture and sells it to the newspaper. He is ruined by Dark Peter who exposes his Pshop job. Now Eddie Brock is angry. Dark Peter is almost completely mental from the symbiote, which makes him either be really nerdy, dancing down the street like he’s a ladies man, or really angry and wanting to beat the crap out of everyone.

Spider-Man finally ditches his symbiote on the top of a church, where a down-and-out Eddie Brock happens to be praying. The symbiote latches onto Eddie, and we now have the sweetest movie villain ever: VENOM. Unfortunately, Venom isn’t used as much as I would have liked in this movie, which is a real shame because Sandman was overall pretty boring and the New/ninja-like Goblin also overall sucked. What we do get to see of Venom is awesome, but it just makes you wish you could see more of him. He teams up with Sandman, and Peter convinces Harry to help him. We have 2 on 2, in a huge fight that is overall pretty amazing and very well put together. Sandman is lame and has morphed into a giant monster, and he fights Harry. Harry gets killed saving Peter from Venom. Sandman ends up…dying? I don’t really get it. He apologizes to Peter, they make up, and he flies away.

Venom is beat by Spider-Man, who uses a bunch of pipes and the vibrations from them to paralyze the symbiote, who is weak to noise. Spidey uses a Pumpkin Bomb to supposedly finish off Venom, although I’m sure he just escaped. Let’s hope they make a 4th movie. Venom’s voice was also slightly disappointing, because I was looking for a two-voices-at-once thing like they had in the 1990’s Spider-Man cartoon. While unfortunately there was no “We are Venom” quote, the Venom scenes are overall
amazing, although extremely heavy on the CG. I don’t think there were many shots of just Venom’s face, probably to hide the fact that his head was always CG (blame it on the huge mouth, which would require an animatronic head or something). The fights were very fast paced, with Venom flying all over the place and being awesome. Oh, and of course I couldn’t find a good picture of movie Venom online, but this concept art I found is pretty close to what he looks like. Very close to the comic/cartoon, but more realistic (not built like the Hulk), and definitely supposed to be a dark Spider-Man. Overall he looked great, trust me.

Definitely see this movie.