A good movie. Very good. Not great. Not the best in the series.
Actually, if I were to rank the three movies, it’d be: 2, 1, 3. (And that’s not a Snoop Dogg homage, either.)
Coming in behind the first movie is not a good sign, really. First Superhero movies have the burden of telling the origin story of the character. February’s Ghost Rider was 3/4 origin — they had to make it really loud when Ghost Rider finally showed up, presumably to wake the audience. But, I digress . . .
By the third movie we should see wall-to-wall action. Instead, Spider-Man 3 screeches to a halt in the middle for an extended interlude I like to call “Goth Peter Channels John Travolta Circa Saturday Night Fever.” A few minutes would’ve been funny, and made the point. But it just went on and on and on (and on).
The movie has a few other points where it stops for some character development, which would be fine, but the amount of character developed is pretty slim considering the time invested.
Oh, and the very ending is a little unsatisfying on a few levels, especially if this is it for the Raimi/Maguire/Dunst era of the francise.
But in between all of that there is lots of very-well done, great looking action. And, you know, it’s Spider-Man. So, if you’re one of the 5 people in North America that didn’t see it opening weekend when it was breaking all the box office records, by all means, go. On the whole it’s well worth it.