It’s that time again true believers! Spider-Man returns to theaters this Friday for a third installment. To catch you up, Spiderman has discovered his powers, defeated both the Green Goblin (William Dafoe) and Dr. Ock. It has been revealed to Harry (James Franco) and Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) that Peter (Toby Maguire) is, in fact, Spider-Man. Mary Jane has decided to risk life and limb to be with Peter, not that she wasn’t doing that already, but now it is official.
Although I cannot give an accurate description of “Spider-Man 3” because neither the trailers nor Columbia pictures’ official site for the film tell enough about the story to fill in major gaps. I’ll try to explain to you as much as I know.
In this installment, Peter Parker, or Spider-Man, is going to propose to the love of his life, Mary Jane Watson. He then finds out that police have identified the man who killed his Uncle Ben as Flint Marco who, after a freak accident, becomes Sandman. Peter’s life-long friend, Harry Osborne, turns against Peter and tries to kill him. Harry believes that Peter killed his father, Norman Osborne, or the Green Goblin, some years before.
At the same time, Peter is taken over by a black symbiote, which colors his suit black and makes him more aggressive. A fan favorite also comes into the movie as the second villain, but I will not ruin the surprise.
Now, I know that sounds like a lot to digest, and it is. Even for a comic book fan like me, it almost seems that they are putting too many ingredients into the soup. But I have faith in director Sam Rami. He is a die-hard comic book fan and has done justice for two movies so far. Why would he falter now?
A lot of people have asked me how close the Spider-Man movies are to the comics. To be truthful, they are and they are not. To make each of these Spider-Man movies, the screenwriters have taken over 40 years worth of comic history and compressed it into two hours.
The Spider-Man films have been faithful to original comics, but they were not taken word for word, panel for panel like “Sin City.”
“Spider-Man 3” does something very interesting. It takes the story about the black suit, made popular in the ’80s, and mixes it with a new story about Sandman. How close will it be? We’ll see on Friday.
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