Netflix Marvel Movie From Legendary Director Deserves A Second Chance

If you’ve canceled your subscription to the Daily Bugle (I know J. Jonah Jameson can be a little annoying), you may need a recap of what Spider-Man 3 is all about. Our titular hero is dealing with many issues, ranging from wanting to marry Mary Janes to dealing with a hungry new photographer who wants to steal his job.

But the combined threat of a new villain, an old friend turned enemy, and a freaky alien from outer space means that his relationship and his job might be the last things that beleaguered everyman Peter Parker can afford to worry about.

One reason Spider-Man 3 deserves a second chance is its excellent cast. All of our returning players do an excellent job, including Kirsten Dunst as the girl-next-door turned love of Peter’s life and James Franco as a former best friend who takes on his father’s dark mantle. And, of course, J.K. Simmons continues to steal every scene as J. Jonah Jameson, the shallow editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle who is at once comical and, in these strange times, weirdly realistic as orders constant clickbait-style headlines regarding our hero.

Spider-Man 3 also brings in some fresh faces that make this warm cinematic universe feel more lived-in. Thomas Haden Church imbues the one-note comic book villain Sandman with more layers of pathos than there is sand on the beach, and Topher Grace does an admirably sleazy job as Eddie Brock, someone trying to bite Peter Parker’s style so hard he ends up becoming something of a web-head himself. 

Meanwhile, an impossibly young Bryce Dallas Howard plays Gwen Stacy, and unless you’ve got webbing in your eyes, it’s easy to see how this cute new girl on the block could be a threat to literal supermodel Mary Jane Watson.

Holding it all together is Tobey Maguire, and with respect to his excellent performances in films like Wonder Boys, he was absolutely born to play our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Another actor would have just repeated his performance from earlier films, but Maguire always finds new depths to his character that make him feel fresh and relatable. Sorry, Tom Holland, but this is the Peter Parker of the comics brought perfectly to life.

Speaking of Maguire, fanboys give Spider-Man 3 crap for goofy sequences like when a symbiote-infected Peter does a silly dance number. But after enduring recent MCU fare like Quantumania and The Marvels, I think you’ll find these scenes both charming and refreshing: not only does Maguire get to show off his range, but director Sam Raimi injects these scenes with the fun camp missing from most modern superhero films.

In fact, while this is definitely Raimi’s lesser Spider-Man movie, you’ll find more genuine visual style in even the worst scenes than you’ll find in the best of Marvel’s modern cookie-cutter films (more like “Avengers, assembly-line!”).

Costing somewhere between $258–350 million to make, Spider-Man 3 was notably the most expensive film ever made when it was released. Fortunately for Sony, that investment paid off, and the movie earned  $895 million worldwide. Despite all the fanboy hate, it even impressed critics, earning a 63 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes (which means, like Peter’s dance moves, the film is considered “fresh”).

REVIEW SCORE

Now, for a moment of honesty: when I first watched Spider-Man 3, I thought of it as a disappointment, but after my recent rewatch, my opinion of it has only grown over the ensuing years. The movie isn’t nearly as bad as everyone says it is, and it mostly suffers from comparison to Spider-Man 2, which, again, might very well be the best superhero film ever made.

I realize you’re probably skeptical, but let’s be honest: what else are you going to watch when Deadpool & Wolverine leaves you wanting more Marvel content? Disney would have you believe that your only choices are to stream either some cinematic slop or some televised slop. But once you stream Spider-Man 3 on Netflix, you’ll realize a better alternative was always here, and Sam Raimi, at his worst, is often better than Kevin Feige at his best.