Ray Pride

Sam Raimi does not see himself as a film "franchise" director.

"Mostly I see myself as who I was for the twenty years of making films professionally and after my Super-8 days," the director of "Spider-Man 3" and "Evil Dead II" confesses, "and that was `Mr. Low-Budget Schlockmeister Horror Film Guy.' Y'know, [directing a] low-budget crime thriller or low-budget supernatural thriller." Raimi is still that guy as a producer with his Ghost House Pictures, including movies like the two American "Grudge" remakes. "Although I've made the occasional different picture, I always found it strange that [Columbia Pictures president] Amy Pascal hired me to do this film. I really loved the film and I wanted it, but I thought it was a bold and unusual choice."

The first two "Spider-Man" entries have made something like $1.8 billion worldwide, and the latest edition may be one of the three or four most expensive ever made. "When [this franchise] had that tremendous success, I realized this too will pass. This is a very strange experience and I realized how unusual it was and I know that it won't be here long." The latest entry is a flurry of action and character set pieces, not as fully realized as the post-adolescent furies in "Spider-Man 2," but with a dogged determination to give you your two-hours-and-twenty-minutes worth, with a riot of tones, including interludes reminiscent of "Saturday Night Fever" and the Three Stooges, along with the barrage of restless action and a surfeit of weeping characters--everyone seems to cry copiously at least twice.

There's a woman-in-peril sequence, the intricacy of which is enthralling--let's just say a blonde in a tall building has to be saved as cranes fall and windows burst and floors collapse--but the hope is, as always, to have primal fears and hurts and longings underneath all the action. Producer Laura Ziskin's husband, veteran screenwriter Alvin Sargent, wrote the script with Raimi and his brother; his other credits include "Spider-Man 2" and, um, "Ordinary People." "We roped him in a little bit in the first movie," Ziskin says. "We needed some help so we said, `Gee, would you write two scenes?' And he found the voices of Peter and Mary Jane in particular. And so similarly when we got to the second movie, we wanted to continue that. On this, we wanted to make the human drama as real and as relatable as possible."

Co-producer and former Marvel comics chief Ari Avad agrees. "I think the success of a movie like that, this kind of genre, is if you can create an incredible character story that almost works without the effects, without the costumes, without the metaphors, and if that part of the movie works, the rest is a bonus and you have this amazing event, an epic rollercoaster, super entertainment. In order to get there, you need writers that totally get to the human soul." (Arad sells real good.) Raimi avers as well that performance is of more interest to himself at this stage. "You should know that Alvin worked on the movie every day. It wasn't like we had the script and he went to sleep. Literally every day through post, so we always were looking for the kind of dialogue that elevates the movie dramatically, the love affair, the innuendos. That's what he does better than anybody alive."

The latest entry offers up two new bad guys--the shape-shifting Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and a photographer who's competitive with Peter Parker (a wily, deadpan Topher Grace) who becomes Spider-Man's dark mirror image, Venom. "We tried to develop a character who would represent a conflict for our hero," Raimi explains. "Once we finished the story, Avi said, `Sam, listen, you are so aware of all of these seventies villains, but you really need to incorporate Venom into this story because the fans really love Venom and don't be so selfish with villains that you know and love.' So I said, `okay.' I didn't understand that much about Venom because I hadn't really read him as a kid. So I went to school on Venom and then Alvin Sargent, he really was the voice of Venom and he showed me who he was. Then Topher Grace brought another life to the character." James Franco also recurs as childhood buddy Goblin, Jr., a rich kid with a butler on call to fill plot holes; Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane gets to sing and get fired and repeatedly humiliated for it; and natural redhead Bryce Dallas Howard is a weirdly blonde Gwen Tracy somewhere in the raft of plot complications.

Raimi had only finished "S-M 3" a few days before doing press, so he claims he hasn't got a thought in his head. "But it would be very hard to say goodbye to Spidey." Next up: Julie Taymor's Broadway musical.

"Spider-Man 3" opens Friday very near you and also in IMAX.

(2007-05-01)

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