Skip to main content

Spider-Man 3

It was Sam Raimi and Spider-Man who successfully brought a lone comic book hero to the big screen. More than Donner's Superman, more than Milius's Conan the Barbarian, more than Burton's Batman, Raimi's Spider-Man was the perfect translation of comic book to big screen. His achievement was only matched by Bryan Singer's X-Men, which had an entire crew of superheroes.

Raimi then did the incredible: He topped himself with a sequel, Spider-Man 2 (much as Singer did for himself with X2). Sequels, by definition, are never better than the original. And yet that's exactly what Spider-Man 2 was.

Alas, lightning does not strike twice. Spider-Man 3 isn't horrible, but it comes close. It is horribly disappointing. X3 had the excuse of being turned over to a hack director. Spidey 3 is just Raimi reaching a villain too far.

The plot goes something like this: Parker has become content with his dual nature and has come to love the adulation the city gives his Spider-Man alter ego. He plans on proposing to MJ. MJ, meanwhile, has a theatrical career which is tanking, something Parker is oblivious to. Meanwhile, we learn who really killed Uncle Ben. Meanwhile, that guy, while escaping from the police, stumbles into a random nuclear particle generator and is transformed into the Sandman. Meanwhile, Harry has decided enough is enough and is coming after Spider-Man as Green Goblin Jr. Meanwhile, an arrogant prick photographer is trying to horn in on Parker's territory. Meanwhile, the chief of police's daughter is alluring. Meanwhile, a meteorite falls to earth and a semi-intelligent, belligerent goo wanders about looking for someone it can transform into Venom.

I think that's all, or least the ones I can remember. These are all the starting points for plot threads. Each thread develops threads. Most go absolutely nowhere. They don't even make a nice, tangled weave. They look more like a hairball.

In case you lost count, the film ends up with three villains, and that's at least two too many. Now, without giving too much away, there's some wobble with one of the villains, so that leaves one who is completely useless, and that would be Sandman. He owes his existence to a terrible decision to rewrite history from the first film, namely the murder of Uncle Ben. Bad, bad, bad, bad and pointless move. From there, he's simply pointless in the film. Any lesson or point he might have had in the film to make has either already been made in Spidey 1 and 2, or is made in other ways within Spidey 3.

Remove Sandman and an overly long film tightens up all around. The immediacy of the climactic battle would have been better, and there would have been one less ending in a film that is exceeded only by Return of the King in having ending after ending after ending after... (Honest, people kept getting up, thinking the film was finally over, only to be surprised that it was doing an Energizer Bunny on them.)

Removing Sandman and correcting a "the butler did it" moment would have made this a decent-if-not-great capper to the Spider-Man trilogy. It has other issues. The action sequences are marvels to behold, but they suffer from Lucasitis, the digital filmmaker's driving need to do all sorts of impossible things with the camera POV. Not incredible, mind you, impossible. Problem is that they are so obviously impossible that they yank the audience out of the film as we realize it's all done in a computer. (This, in case you don't realize it, is A Bad Thing.)

Spider-Man 3 made a ton of cash its opening weekend. If it crashes 60% for its second weekend -- normally a horrifying thing -- it'll still set box office records. I expect that kind of crash, though, because the word of mouth around here isn't good.

It's important to remember that the bar here was set by Raimi himself. He made a pair of great Spider-Man films. He then made a set of bad decisions in an effort to top himself. Luckily, this might have been his last Spidey film, which means he can pick a different project for his next film. Which means he can again make me cheer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not the Hero We Deserve, But the Hero We Need

The Dark Knight is the best film I’ve seen in years. Not just the best “superhero” film, but the best film of any type. It’s not perfect, not quite a masterpiece, but it’s flaws are, to me, tiny and overwhelmed by the time the film ends. While relatively bloodless, it is consistently brutal, not just in what it depicts but in the themes that drive it. TDK is a film for adults, please leave the kids at home. Let’s deal with those “flaws” first, the largest being the character Rachel Dawes . In Batman Begins , I blamed Katie Holmes . Her acting was weak, to say the least, which is regrettable in that who she is and what she says and does are important to the film. Critics agreed and either for that or other reasons, Katie was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal , who is a better actress. Yet here she’s weak, real weak. Maybe it’s the character, not the actress, which is frustrating because Rachel is a pivotal character. The film,...
1 comment
Read more

John Wick: Chapter 4

No sense in playing coy, this is a great film. I’ve seen it twice and while I don’t quite love it in the way I love the first, original John Wick , it’s my #2. It’s a little overlong, has some wasted space and time, has one absolutely pointless and useless character, and generally ignores the realities of firefights, falling, getting shot, hit, etc. All that notwithstanding, it’s a great action flick, has a genuine emotional core, and is well worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Summary: John Wick (Keanu Reeves), last seen saying he was fed up with the High Table, goes to war to obtain his freedom. Some of the most incredible action scenes ever filmed ensue, culminating in a very satisfactory finale and a devastating post-credit scene. The first Wick film was a surprise hit. It was a simple, straight-forward tale of vengeance told in a simple, straight-forward manner. Where it stood out was its devotion to human stunt work, on exploiting long camera shots that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

We pause now for a minor rant…

“My car has a flat tire.” “You should buy a new car.” Every time I hear President Obama and other Democrats talking about “health care reform,” that’s what the conversation sounds like. A health care crisis is declared and the only solution is to replace the entire system. At most, around 15% of the American population is without health care insurance. Ignoring the fact that for most of them, this is a matter of choice, it also means that 85% are insured. And of that 85%, something like 70+% like their current coverage and don’t want the government to touch it. So for the vast majority, the current system works and works great. Yet, because of the minority for whom it allegedly does not...toss it all, start again. Admittedly, regardless of insurance coverage, it all costs too much, but again, the only accepted approach to controlling costs are to throw out everything and turn it all over to the government. Tactics that are proposed to address specific cost issues are not consid...
Post a Comment
Read more