Ever since the first teaser poster was released of Spider-Man donning the infamous black suit back in early 2006, I've been highly anticipating this film. Hell, I could even say I've been looking forward to this since I walked out the theater for the sequel in the summer of 2004. Spider-Man is the first franchise to drag me out to the movies for all three installments since "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," so yeah, I was foaming at the mouth to see this.

I finally got the opportunity to catch the midnight viewing on opening night and I think it was absolutely worth the wait. For me, it's one of the best movies I've ever seen -- and yes, I've seen a lot of films in my day. I tend not to read reviews before I write one of my own, but I couldn't help but to peep a few reviews of this film from both "armchair critics" and "real" ones. The theme I've noticed is that most people think this sucked. My response? I wipe my ass with your precious comic collection!

I'm not an avid reader of the Spider-Man comics (or any other comic book in general.. I've only owned one or two issues of Spidey in my life), but I know enough about the Marvel universe to get by. It seems with every movie made from a comic brings along the extra baggage known as *coughs* NERDS... Look, I know you want your obsession to be accurately portrayed on the silver screen down to the smallest, most obscure detail, but shit, some changes should be expected. Goodness, I think the general population of geeks would accept this fact since this is literally like the 13th film translation of a comic we've seen since the turn of the millennium, but I guess not.

Before I get deeper into some of the changes, let me go ahead and get this Gwen Stacy controversy out the way before some random overweight geek (ala "The Comic Book Guy" from The Simpsons) reading this threatens to show up at my house cosplaying as Dr. Doom or something. It's a well known fact the first love of Peter Parker dies in the comics at the hands of The Green Goblin, but here she is in this movie very much alive and dating resident low-life, Eddie Brock (pictured above). *scratches head* Shouldn't fanboys expect her to live since the Goblin died in the first film? Why or how else would she die? This isn't "Final Desintation"; death isn't just going to sneak up on her because she's supposed to be dead already. She fits into the story presented here quite well... speaking of which...

The overall plot of the film is what is really pissing people off. Again, I don't get it -- I spent two hours and ten minutes of my life really wrapped up in this film. I apologize if I sound like a lame-ass movie reviewer, but it was a real roller coaster of a ride and I enjoyed every second of it. The film picks up pretty much immediately after the events of "Spider-Man 2" (which to me, was the weakest out of the three). Parker is still broke as a joke, Harry still wants to piss in his corn flakes, and he's still going out with Mary Jane. Not much has changed here.. Everyone's favorite nerd wants to wed MJ, but it doesn't take long for that get all messed up.

Harry breathes in the "crazy green mist shit" (which probably lime-flavored hooka or something) like his dad did and becomes the Hob Goblin. Erm, sort of. Despite the fact the camera pans past a silverish-orange mask (which looked to be the perfect Hob Goblin mask), Osborne insists on wearing some ridiculous, low budget X-Games crap. Seriously people, if Peter can make some elaborate-ass costume to swing around the city in and he's broker than my black ass, then what's the deal with Harry when he's ballin' like Bruce Wayne?

*sigh* So the "X-Goblin" attacks Peter while he's out and about since it's not hard to spot a dork with a silly helmet on while riding a bicycle. A fight ensues and eventually Harry gets knocked silly and forgets he even wants to kill Peter. For a good portion of the film he remains clueless, which leaves some breathing room for the other villains. When I saw the trailers for this, I was afraid that "Spider-Man 3" had adopted the dreaded "Batman & Robin Syndrome" of having way too many characters to deal with in a short amount of time. To my pleasant surprise, it all works out in the grand scheme of things.

Going back to complaints however, people were livid they changed up parts of The Sandman (played by Thomas Haden Church). He's now Uncle Ben's killer in addition to trying to get money for his sick daughter instead of his girlfriend or something (I didn't read the comics lol). To tell you the truth, I liked the changes. The Sandman, to me, has always been yawn inducing and I've never particularly cared for the guy (and at the end of the day, he's still just a guy made up of sand. How menacing is a guy who makes sand castles out of his dick?). I was expecting him to be a disposable character; maybe have a big fight scene early in the film before leaving/dying just to satisfy the fanboys, but thanks to the tweaks, he's important to the film.

More on page two if you're not angry at my ass yet lol...

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