The real problems of Spiderman 3 - Part II

*Spoiler warning for everything

It’s not the excess of villains or the dancing, it’s the lack of connective tissue, stuff just happens for no reason, time being wasted, douchiness, and characters make no sense. Let’s autopsy the time waste.

The character that must be cut

There is one character in the movie that is completely pointless, drags out the movie and makes it bloated and unwieldy. It’s not Sandman, Black Suit Spiderman, New Goblin, Eddy Brock Jr., or Venom. They could all be written better, but they are essential to the current build of the movie. The extra character that could be dropped and the movie gets better is… Gwen Stacy.

Gwen Stacy pads out the movie pointlessly. She has 4 significant scenes, let’s see how we get rid them and improve the movie:

· Crane crashing the photoshoot: The best part of this scene is 17 seconds of saving Gwen from falling as debris crashes around her. We’ll move that to Mary Jane falling from the skyscraper in the final battle.

· The upside-down kiss: This scene was stupid, especially before the black suit, as there is no universe in which a sober and sane Peter parker kisses another woman when he’s with Mary Jane. Mary Jane has enough misery and Peter Parker is enough of a douche in this movie for their relationship to be in trouble.

· Expo-dump in the restaurant: Building on the problems in the relationship cuts the need for Gwen to expo-dump at the restaurant as well. Mary Jane and Peter can fight over Peter’s douchiness to Mary Jane’s misery, he can even insist to propose to her because he is blind to her being on the verge of tears because she was fired from the play.

· The Jazz Club: This was overly indulgent, way too long, cringy as fuck and should never have happened, it’s only there for Peter to hit Mary Jane so he would take off the suit. “Peter Parker beats up a woman” is a huge Pandora’ box that is very dangerous, hard to pull off, and the movie completely fucks up the resolution, so let’s find another reason for Peter to take of the black suit. I would have had Aunt May horrified that Spiderman killed Marco Flint, shocked and disgusted, telling Peter the Spiderman is a monster, no different from Marco because he is a killer, Peter realizes he is becoming a monster and takes it off. There, now there’s no need for the fucking dancing in the street. “but if he doesn’t have the black suit he doesn’t blow up Harry Osborne’s face with moral impunity!” put that before the Sandman fight and after getting Eddy Brock fired. Now we have an escalation of violence and enjoying it from destroying a rival, to blowing up your oldest friend’s face to attempted murder.

Now we feel Spidey’s fall to the dark side, instead of attempted murder to blowing up Harry to getting Eddy Brock fired to beating up Mary Jane which is a confusing mess.

That’s it, we have the awesome save, there is not pointless upside-down kiss, no cringy restaurant expo-dump, no “Peter Parker beats up a woman”, no Jazz club cringe.

You say Amore, I say Amnesia

Mary Jane breaking up with Peter on the bridge to protect him from Harry or whatever mini-arc makes no sense and has no resolution. Peter nearly killed Harry when Harry has the edge. If Mary Jane tells him on the bridge that Harry is evil Peter kicks his ass even harder and that’s that. Instead, we have a breakup scene that is just befuddling.

Afterward neither Mary Jane nor Peter give a damn about their relationship. She broke up with Peter when he was about to propose so that Harry will not kill him, Peter blows up Harry’s face, and none of them think to contact each other afterward. Next time we see her is at the Jazz club. Harry might as well have gained his memory, called Peter to his penthouse, had the fight and Mary Jane was still pissed at Peter and didn’t know about the fight. But the return of the Green Gobshite has to go through the fucking love triangle, so Harry “attacks the heart” (even though the voice of Norman is a hallucination so why is he giving him information the Harry doesn’t know?) and the whole thing achieves no resolution. Thanks for wasting my fucking time.

Final Niggles

There are a few here and there paddings that can easily be cut:

· Dr. Connors analyses the symbiote twice for some reason, first getting the symbiote and then informing Peter about the aggression enhancement. Those two can be combined into one scene.

· The omelet making scene with Mary Jane kissing Harry is pointless, Harry could just lie about kissing her to get into Peter’s head in their apartment fight, they did date once and Mary Jane and Peter’s relationship is in trouble.

The credit free runtime of the movie is 02:10:43 (no opening credits and no end credits). These cuts drop about 20 minutes off the movie, time that could be used to flesh out the Stuff just happens problem or just to drop the run time below 2 hours, both would have improved the movie.