My boys and I saw Spider-Man 3 on opening day.  We were unaffected by any other movie review and I went in to see this movie without having watched every trailer or having read spoilers prior.  My reaction was simply, nice ending, they wrapped up everything in a bow.  So in case you never see another Spider-Man story the Harry Osborn story, the love story between Mary Jane and Peter Parker's coming into his own as Spider-Man are all complete.

What some movie goers and critics are having a hard time embracing is the fact that Spider-Man at its heart is an action based movie, it is not a drama.  To view it as such is a mistake.  This latest installment of Spider-Man ups the action a lot and this may put you off, so if you don't like action movies then this movie may test your attention.

Now for the details.  Anyone that says the story is too all over the place is forgetting this is a movie experience based on an action hero of comic books.  It's based on a comic book.   Comic books are busy, and hardly ever based on reality.  Having said this, what makes the Spider-Man franchise on the big screen work so well is the emphasis on characters and our ability to identify with them, understand the good guys motives and the bad guys motives alike.  What we all loved about Spider-Man coming to the big screen was identifying with a human having superhuman powers we all wish we had.  Swinging from tall buildings, climbing up the side of buildings and such.  Who wouldn't want to be able to jump off the side of a building without fear?  To watch Spider-Man do this is us projecting ourselves onto the screen as him.   Personally I loved seeing him use his web, and I wish I saw more of it, in more detail.   The last point I'd like to make about us identifying with Spider-Man is that costume.   What a great look and he gets to hide his identity to be that larger than life figure.  This was a great day at the movies and critics in the business should be slow to criticize when something like this won't happen often.

While Sandman is a low key character that you can't do much with, he was an exclusive character to the Spider-Man world, as is Venom and the Goblin.  They were bound to make their entrance and frankly I will admit that you could have done a much larger story with Venom, but I accept the scope of which they applied this one.  And that too is a point we should all understand, in the comic books these characters live on for long periods of time, they even move on, but when you make a movie the audience needs closure so killing off characters from time to time is something we as move-goers need to accept, or should I really be directing that at comic book readers who often say to a friend in the theater..."in the book he/she is still alive."

The special effects have clearly come a long way since the first Spider-Man and the action scenes have really been amped up because of Hollywood's ability to deliver more.  I hear the budget was way high for this movie but frankly I didn't see why.  Maybe the money was spent on animation because the location scenes didn't seem to be costly at all. 

Mary Jane and Peter do a nice story arch again but I will say this, if the next installment of Spider-Man takes this tack again with these two characters the next movie will flop.   You can't keep this up, and as the story ends here, the outcome is good, it is satisfying, and it is time to move on with Peter Parker in the other directions the comic book story line has already taken him.   Frankly I'd love to see a cross over story with an X-men such as Wolverine entering the picture, but I'm sure Hollywood doesn't work that way.

For now Spider-Man 3 is a movie that understands how various characters where developing from the first story and needed to finish their story archs.  The decision makers on this got it right in my opinion.  They respected the story and the movie-goers.  

For many people that see Venom for the first time this is a tough character to understand.   In the original story of Spider-Man he is on another planet in a war where his costume is ripped and torn, he finds a ball shaped substance that covers him in a new costume and there is no immediate reaction to it.    Over time he learns the costume is a symbiote which he becomes increasingly uncomfortable with and has to resort to finding a way to rid himself of it.  Much of this storyline is followed with Venom but very little is explained, not even his name! In fact his name as a character is never even mentioned in the film and I would have loved to have scene the film makers take a stab at explaining this, I'm sure the Marvel writers could have offered up something of assistance.    In the end the film tries to stay true to the orgin and evolution and that gets my respect as I hate it when movies depart far from original stories.   Remember the new Robin costume in Batman and Robin?  That was annoying.

So if you want to see just another Spider-Man or having the existing story line finished, this movie delivers.  Enjoy.