Spider-Man movie action sequences have come a long way from the first installment, when one of the big moments had Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man dashing into a burning building like some pulp serial hero from the '30s. In Spider-Man 3, the webslinger tumbles and twirls in mid-air, bouncing off walls and fragments of debris as he fights off a trio of villains. There's New Goblin (played by James Franco), the bomb-throwing son of Spider-Man's dead nemesis The Green Goblin; Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), a dense ex-con whose molecules can shift and solidify like grains of sand; and Venom (embodied by Maguire and Topher Grace), an alien symbiote that bonds to an organic host and amplifies its strengths and weaknesses. A decade ago, the Batman series ran aground while trying to stuff too many bad guys into too little plot, but Spider-Man 3 works the villains into its story well, giving each at least one boffo fight scene before bringing everyone together for a final battle royale.
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