To many villians for Spidey

Spiderman does exactly what is says on the (increasingly overmarketed) tin. It closes Sam Raimi’s trilogy dealing with Peter Parker’s origins, maturation and the key relationships between him, his girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and his best friend Harry Osborn (James DeFranco). This third installment also explores Parker’s arrogance and vengeful side through the villians of the piece, Sandman and some alien gunk that invades Spidey’s suit before becoming the mutant mirror of our hero, Venom.

The action is bigger, faster and more vomit-inducing than ever, although sometimes to the detriment of what is actually going on as the camera twists and twirls over New York. There are more set pieces too, the film wastes little time crashing its multiple villains into our hero. All the character moments are there too, the actors never mis-step, Tobey MacGuire is a terrific Parker and the villains and love interests do much with, sometimes very, limited screentime. So why did I leave disapointed?

However, it is this abundance of characters, and their associated backstories that stretches the narrative, there’s enough story here for two focussed movies rather than the slightly blurred story that’s appeared. It’s nothing like as bad as the pre-Begins Batman films with their baddie processions – Raimi cares about the material more than that – but this movie suffers from extraneous characters, for example Gwen Stacy is rather wasted and neither ‘main’ villain is properly explored.

Good but not great. Despite all the pieces being in place and the sometimes spectacular visuals on screen the third Spiderman seems not to add up to the sum of its parts.