It’s apparently very easy to create a superhero or supervillain. All you need is some random scientific experiment, be it radioactive spider or vague particle physics. The new Spider-Man movie has so much going on that it tends to gloss over important details. We only get a glimpse of the strange lab and weird experiment that creates The Sandman. We are left to believe that these things are going on all the time in Manhattan, and all one need do to gain super power is stumble upon the correct experiment.
If you do decide to see Spider-Man 3, and if you do happen to go with a bunch of research scientists, make sure that you check your brain at the door and encourage your colleages to do the same. Other than that the movie is quite entertaining. Toby McGuire does a great job of first looking nerdy, then foreboding. Thomas Hayden Church makes the conflicted Sandman almost seem believable. Sam Raimi introduced many, many themes and subplots, but somehow managed to bring it all together in the end. In my opinion, it was not quite as good as the original, but much better than the second. It’s worth seeing on the big screen.
Afterwards, my group of scientist friends (including the one to whom I’m married) put their brains back in gear and gathered at Snapshot to deconstruct the movie in excruciating detail. It was fun.