Pete Talbot’s review published on Letterboxd:
I hadn't seen this since it came out and I came in with an open mind. This movie is a mess, the dialogue is pretty terrible, the Peter Parker character is written as a doofus, the special effects start off being just crude then stumble into something nightmarish by the time Sandman becomes King Kong sized.
A lot of the score is impressive orchestration and the infamous emo dance scene isn't that bad compared to a lot of the other cringing scenes in the movie. There are pieces in this movie of what could have been a good movie. When I first saw it I didn't like Sandman at all, but I think if it was just a monster movie of the King Kong or Godzilla vein where Spider-Man has to spend the whole movie trying to solve the problem of a growing monster.
This movie also suffers from every villain or consequential character having some personal connection to Peter Parker. It's kind of a surprise that this movie came out only ten years ago because of how sloppy it is. The one good thing that came out of it when I saw this ten years ago is that it sparked an idea of a Spider-Man where not only no one in the fictional universe, but that the readers don't know Peter Parker (or a like character) is the hero or who the alter-ego is in the story. I still haven't written out such a story, but some day I hope to.
