The Moral Anthropology of Spiderman 3

I didn't see Spiderman 2, and I gather all of the movies in the series are about power, responsibility, and temptation, so maybe this is old news ... but I found Spiderman 3, which our family saw this weekend, chock full of moral lessons of Christian import for kids and adults.  (It's also full of too many villains and plot lines to develop well, so it's not a perfect movie, but ...)  Without writing any spoilers, I can say that our hero Peter's personality is taken over by a very unwholesome influence -- but the point is, the malignant agent simply magnifies the bad tendencies he's already shown.  It was a nice metaphor of how original sin is revealed and compounded by worldly temptations and social forces.  There's also a lesson about our always ultimately having the choice to do good that may underestimate the power sin can have over our wills, but when that's taken together with the depiction I just mentioned of how evil is latent in us -- and starts to feel more and more comfortable the more we continue in it -- the overall moral anthropology in the movie is quite Christian.  Christianity Today liked it too:

[T]he themes are as straightforward as Sunday school lessons: the dangerous allure of vengeance, the power of forgiveness, the nature of true love. There's even a church standing at the center of the movie's widening gyre, where Peter wrestles with his sinful nature, that all but guarantees Spider-Man 3 a place on Christian film-critic top ten lists for 2007. An admirable act of sacrifice during the climactic battle is sure to inspire a Christian-market spinoff book: The Gospel According to Spider-Man.

Tom