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Spidey 3 |  |
I just got back from seeing Spider-Man 3 (some spoilers ahead; be warned). It’s interesting; had I gone in not having heard anything about it, I probably would have been disappointed. As it is, though, I wasn’t, since I had heard a lot of people say that it wasn’t as good as the previous movies. I went in expecting a movie on par with X-Men 3, and I was pleasantly surprised. This movie is better than The Last Stand was, but not as good as previous entries in the franchise. The annoying thing is, I think it could have been just as good, had they pared it back a little bit.
There are scenes in this movie that seem superfluous. There’s 100% more singing and dancing in the third installment than there were in 1 and 2, and I don’t think any of it needed to be there. The Sandman, while a tragic and somewhat sympathetic villain, is largely not that necessary to the story, and features only in maybe fifteen minutes of screen time, total. Venom, who has long been one of my favorite Spider-Villains, was sort of a mixed bag in this movie. He looked cool at times, and somewhat goofy at others. His hatred of Spider-Man/Peter Parker was well-portrayed and well established in the movie, but there were discrepancies in his behavior. For one thing, Venom’s always been a fairly un-subtle, straightforward kind of problem solver, and his manipulation of Sandman in the movie seems at odds with that established personality. For another (and this, for some reason, really bugs me), the movie Venom didn’t share the comic book Venom’s composite personality. Eddie Brock was clearly affected by the Venom suit in the movie, but in the comic book he goes so far as to call himself “we”, and he holds conversations with his symbiont side frequently. He doesn’t do that at all in the movie. And again, he only gets a few minutes of screen time. The Green Goblin–Harry Osborn–is probably the best-realized and most interesting of the nemeses in the movie, and he really serves to illustrate just how complicated a relationship he and Peter Parker have. Once again, though, not much screen time.
Perhaps my biggest pet peeve regarding this movie is how Parker was portrayed while under the influence of the black suit. I expected him to be violent, erratic, and morose, but instead he’s a swing-dancing tool. Some of the most bizarre scenes in the movie are those that focus on Parker falling victim to the suit’s power, and while early on it’s very well done (such as when he dons the black Spider-Suit and hunts down Sandman), later (the scene in the Jazz Club) it’s almost comically ridiculous. It could have been done much, much better.
Is the movie all bad? No. Far from it. There are more than a few scenes where it approaches the quality of its predecessors, and it really shines when Peter and Harry are pitted against one another. But it suffers from some bloat (Three villains? Was that necessary?), and some questionable writing and directorial choices. I’m not sorry that I saw it, and my sense of completism will probably drive me to buy it on DVD, so that I have the whole series. But I do wish it had been better. And shorter.
May 15th, 2007 at 10:28 am
By and large, I concur with your assessment. This movie should have been made to set up the Venom storyline, and not cover it start to finish. From the original spider-man comic, it took a looooong time to get to the venom storyline from the point where he obtained the black suit during secret wars. And from a directorial perspective, how much job security could Sam Raimi have created for everyone if the movie had not had Venom as a BBEG, but instead had a scene at the very end showing the symbiote bonding with Brock, and maybe a quick shot of his coolness? I can picture it in my mind - Brock walking down a dark alleyway and getting “attacked” by the symbiote and sucked into darkness, emerging 10 seconds later as Venom. Ah, the potential wasted………
Speaking of wasted potential, the New Goblin storyline. How sweet could the out of costume head games that Harry played w/ Peter have been if they were given a larger portion of screen time? And what was with Gwen Stacy? Why not make her an actual love interest and follow the storyline that springs from that? A Spider-man torn apart from his own confusion and MJ’s snubbing due to Harry’s mind game - that could be some good stuff.
Last but not least - Sandman. Why are all of Spider-man’s enemies such tragic figures? With the exception of Venom, they have all been some kind of decent person in some sort of “unfortunate circumstance.” How about more people who just want to get rich, or get the fame of killing spider-man, etc.?
However, the movie was enjoyable to watch, and I agree with the purchase on DVD, at least to complete the set.
May 15th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I really like your idea of using Venom as a cliffhanger, so as to better develop him in a fourth installment. That, of course, would also leave the way paved for Carnage, a path that was, sadly, completely vaporized along with Brock and the Venom suit (unless another mysterious deux ex meteorite falls from the sky). As for Spider-Man having a lot of tragic villains; I think that this is true to the core ethos of Spider-Man as a concept, to some extent. Spider-Man was created to be an everyman hero, someone who isn’t a paragon of virtue or a symbol for good walking around in tights, a man with problems and vices, just like everyone else, who manages to rise above them when he dons the Spider-Suit. The villains follow the same model, but in a sort of “there but for the grace of God” way. They’re real people, not cookie-cutters or evil maniacs. And let’s not forget that, while they tend to be tragic, it doesn’t serve to dilute the terrible things they do. Norman Osborn was a good man consumed by revenge and hatred, and he did a lot of evil things because of it. Same goes for his son. I think a problem with the third installment is that certain characters (Brock) weren’t tragic enough. He wasn’t terribly sympathetic, and as such the transformation into Venom isn’t that jarring. It should have been. The Spider-Man mythos has always been about rising above the morass of moral ambiguity to do what’s right. There are plenty of other comics/movies out there who deal more in absolutes (check out Hellboy for good examples; Rasputin and his cronies are just plane Eeevil!)