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"Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It's the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what's right."
— Peter Parker

Spider-Man 3, International Poster
Spider-Man 3
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Produced by: Avi Arad
Laura Ziskin
Grant Curtis

Written by:

Sam Raimi
Ivan Raimi
Alvin Sargent

Starring:

Tobey Maguire
Kirsten Dunst
James Franco
Topher Grace
Thomas Haden Church
Rosemary Harris
J.K. Simmons
Bryce Dallas Howard

Rating:

MPAA: PG-13
BBFC: 12A

Running time:

139 minutes (theatrical cut)
156 minutes (director's cut)

Music by:

Christopher Young
Danny Elfman (themes)

Edited by:

Bob Murawski

Released by:

Columbia Pictures

Release date:

May 4, 2007 (theatrical cut)
June 13, 2017 (director's cut)

Previous installment(s):

Spider-Man 2

Next installment(s):

The Amazing Spider-Man

Budget:

$258 million

Box office:

$890,871,626


Spider-Man 3 was released May 4, 2007 and was a superhero film written and directed by Sam Raimi.

It is the third film in the Spider-Man film franchise, based on the fictional Marvel Comics character Spider-Man. It stars Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons, Bryce Dallas Howard and with Thomas Haden Church as the anti heroic villain, Sandman and Topher Grace as Venom, the film's primary antagonist.

Synopsis[]

The film starts out with a Peter Parker who has finally figured everything out, and can balance his double life as the crime-fighting web-slinger, Spider-Man, and the college student/loving boyfriend, Peter Parker. After a dramatic turn of events, the escaped criminal Flint Marko has been transformed into the Sandman, and has returned to New York. When Spidey's suit has mysteriously turned black, and he has become arrogant, brash, and careless, he begins acting like a criminal, with malicious intents. He finally manages to get his suit back to normal, but not without creating an entirely new supervillain, Venom. Development of the film began immediately after the release of Spider-Man 2, due to the extreme success of the first two films. It premiered in Tokyo on April 16, 2007, and was released in US theaters on May 4, 2007. Although the film was not as critically acclaimed as the first two of the series, it wracked up over $890 million worldwide and currently stands as the most financially successful Spider-Man film ever made. The film also surpassed the previous films' openings, making over $150 million. Although it received mixed reviews from critics, Spider-Man 3 was nominated for over 25 awards, and is currently Marvel's third most financially successful film behind Iron Man 3, and The Avengers. A fourth film entered development in 2007. In February 2015, Sony and Marvel Studios announced that a new iteration of Spider-Man will appear in the MCU, with the character appearing in Captain America: Civil War before Sony releases a standalone film titled Spider-Man: Homecoming produced by Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal on July 7, 2017.

Plot[]

Peter Parker has begun to feel secure in his life and plans to propose to Mary Jane. While Peter and Mary Jane are on a date, a small meteorite crashes nearby, and an extraterrestrial symbiote attaches itself to Peter's moped. Meanwhile, escaped convict Flint Marko falls into a pit of a particle accelerator that fuses his body with the surrounding sand. The result allows him to shape shift at will, becoming the Sandman. Peter's best friend, Harry Osborn, who seeks vengeance for his father's death, which he believes Peter caused, attacks him using new weapons adapted from the Green Goblin technology his father had left behind. During the scuffle, Harry injures his head and suffers from partial amnesia, making him forget his feud and the fact that Peter is Spider-Man. NYPD are next seen in response to a malfuntioning construction crane with the operator trying to shut it down. The crane, carrying a large girder, damages a nearby building with a group doing a photo-shoot. A women named Gwen Stacey is put in danger due to the crane damaging the floor she is on.

Later, during a festival honoring Spider-Man for saving Gwen Stacy's life, Sandman attempts to rob an armored car, and overpowers Spider-Man. NYPD Captain George Stacy (Gwen's father) later informs Peter and Aunt May that Ben Parker's killer was actually Flint Marko, and that the now-deceased carjacker was merely an accomplice. A vengeful Peter waits for Marko to strike again. The symbiote bonds with his costume while he is asleep; Peter wakes up hanging from a skyscraper in central Manhattan and discovers that not only has his costume changed, but his powers have been enhanced as well. Perhaps capitalizing on Peter's current conflicted and anguished state of mind, the black suit brings out the more vengeful, selfish and arrogant side of Peter's personality. Wearing the new suit, Peter locates Marko, fights him in a cavernous underground subway tunnel and, upon discovering that water can dissolve Marko's body, rips open a large water pipe to deliver what he believes to be a lethal torrent of water, reducing the Sandman to mud.

The shift in Peter's personality alienates Mary Jane, whose career is floundering, and she finds solace with Harry. Harry recovers from his amnesia and, urged on by an apparition of his dead father, forces Mary Jane to break up with Peter. After Mary Jane leaves Peter, stating she is in love with another man, Harry meets him at a restaurant and claims to be the other man. Later, Peter confronts him at the Osborn mansion. With the help of the black suit, Peter is victorious in a brutal fight, which leaves Harry's face disfigured due to a mini-explosion of a bomb. Influenced by the suit, Peter exposes and humiliates Eddie Brock, a rival freelance photographer, who has just gained overnight star status at the Daily Bugle by submitting doctored photographs supposedly exposing Spider-Man as a criminal. J. Jonah Jameson gets wind of the photos and Jameson fires Eddie Brock. Peter changes how he dresses and alters his hairstyle and begins to behave arrogantly. Meanwhile, the Sandman recovers from his injuries, having somehow survived Spider-Man's attack.

In an effort to make Mary Jane jealous, Peter brings Gwen to the nightclub where Mary Jane works. He gets into a fight with the club's bouncers and unintentionally shoves Mary Jane, knocking her to the floor. Peter realizes the symbiote-suit is changing him for the worse. He walks out of the nightclub and goes to a church bell tower to dispose of it. Initially, he is unable to remove the suit, but the alien eventually weakens due to the loud sounds of the bell, enabling Peter to break free. Eddie Brock, by chance, is at the same church praying for Peter's death when the symbiote falls from the tower and takes over his body. Eddie, now reincarnated as Venom, finds the Sandman and suggests joining forces to destroy Spider-Man, to which the Sandman agrees.

The pair put Mary Jane in a taxicab and hang it from a gigantic web above a construction site, filled with sand. Peter approaches Harry for help, but is turned down. However, Harry learns the truth about his father's death from his butler Bernard, and arrives in time to rescue Peter; they form an alliance against the two villains. As the fight progresses, Harry temporarily subdues a gigantic, monstrous incarnation of the Sandman, and Eddie attempts to impale Peter with Harry's glider, but Harry jumps in the way and is fatally wounded, suffering the same fate of his father. During his fight with Venom, Peter notices that falling lengths of pipe appear to distress the symbiote, and Peter recalls how the church bell's toll weakened it, and creates a ring of several pipes around Venom to make a 'fence' of sonic vibrations. The alien succumbs to so much pain that it releases Brock, and Peter pulls Eddie away from it with a string of web. Peter throws one of Harry's pumpkin bombs at the symbiote, and Eddie jumps into the ring in an instinctive attempt to rebond with it; where they were both then killed by the explosion.

After the battle, Marko recovers and tells Peter that he had no intention of killing Ben Parker (but rather fired his gun as an angst reaction when the crook Peter allowed to escape grabbed his arm), and that it was an accident born out of a desperate attempt to save his dying daughter's life. He claims that Ben Parker's death has haunted him for the rest of his life. Peter forgives Marko, who dissipates and floats away. Peter and Harry forgive each other before Harry dies with Mary Jane and Peter at his side. Later, Peter walks into the jazz bar where Mary Jane is singing. They embrace and begin to dance, implying that they are mending their relationship.

Rating[]

Spider-Man 3 received a PG-13 rating for sequences of intense action violence and some frightening images by the MPAA. The film is rated 12A by the BBFC for strong fantasy violence and moderate horror.

Cast[]

Media[]

Video Games[]

Reception[]

Reaction to the film was mixed among critics. The film currently holds a 63% rating, based on 242 reviews, on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic gave the film an average score of 59 out of 100, which signifies "mixed or average reviews". David Edelstein of New York magazine said of the film's three main antagonists, "the three villains here don't add up to one Doc Ock."

Conversely, Andy Khouri of Comic Book Resources said the film was "...easily the most complex and deftly orchestrated superhero epic ever filmed..."

Despite mixed reviews from critics, the film was a box office smash, grossing a worldwide total of $890,871,626. It was the highest-grossing Spider-Man film ever until Spider-Man: Far From Home which got $1,131,927,996.

See Also[]

Sequel[]

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