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Techtite's DVD Reviews! |
"Look; I love the heroes and the villains here, and the special FX is top notch. However; there's no use denying that this currently the worst Spider-man movie." --from the review ------------- Sidebar :: ------------- No sidebar comments for this review. Yet... ...
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Spider-man 3A Review by TechtiteThere's no reason to beat around the bush here: Spider-Man 3 is a disappointment...and a big one. Sure, it had some big shoes to fill, after the prior two movies. That's no reason to have given us such a lackluster third movie, with a quick and simple Sandman story, an even more abridged "Venom" story, and as for Spidey...what happened, dude? The movie picks up where the second movie left off. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is cozying up to Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), on a web which, one must hope, is high enough to not have any onlookers see his secret identity. In the film's most peculiar moment, a meteor hits nearby, and nobody notices. No "Spidey sense" alerting Peter. No onlookers for miles asking "What's that fireball headed for Central Park?" The idea is that in order for the meteor's sole "passenger" ---a pool of black goo--- to believably attach itself to Peter's bike undetected, nobody must notice the meteor that hit just a few yards away. Um...okay. The story proceeds to ignore the fallen blob completely, as it pursues no less than two separate super villain stories, all unrelated. Allow me to digress for a second, and confess what I've loved about both of the prior Spiderman films. Just like Tim Burton's original Batman movie, the first Spiderman films wisely centered the story on one villain. One must presume that the folks behind Spiderman 3 erroneously felt that every movie saga must be a "trilogy," so they had "only" one film left to work with. So they took every story they had on the drawing board ---The "New" Green Goblin, Venom, and Sandman--- and abridged their stories into a singular film. The result is a sequel that limits each villain to a third of the film, yet by logic, each story loses two thirds of its charm. Let's start with Sandman. The film tries to sell us on the "what IF" notion that Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) might've been the true murderer of Spiderman's Uncle Ben. Yet this story's grossly abridged nature removes any emotional resonance this story arc might have had. The idea that Peter Parker's actions might have led to the death of an innocent guy is quickly abandoned, as the story jumps to Flint Marco's inevitable, accidental fall into a strange scientific experiment. The scientists think they are aiming their molecular experiment on a silo of harmless sand, when the-man-who-will-be-Sandman falls into the silo, during a high speed police chase. He becomes a super villain who can turn into hard-to-capture sand one minute, and hard-as-a-rock sandstone the next. I really loved this villain as a child and here, through great FX, his visual presentation is brilliant. Too bad this story ---which could've easily filled one whole movie--- is so very abridged here. Even in its abridged form, the Sandman story is the most effective one...though just barely. It is quite poignant when Sandman gains a small grasp of his humanity after touching a photo of his daughter, who needs money for her bad medical condition. So the human sand creature goes on auto-pilot, seeking out money wherever it can; specifically, all the local banks. Director Sam Raimi clearly attempts to provide another Spider-Man 2 style "The villain isn't really that bad" subplot here, but in such an abridged form, it doesn't work as well. Sandman winds up being portrayed as a nice armed felon who has a nice little girl who needs some nice robbed cash from the bank. Whatever. The Venom story is even more abridged, if you consider how his original story spanned several months of comics. In original Spider-Man lore, they attempted to make Spider-man more mysterious, with a black costume and more serious tone. Fans didn't warm to the idea so they had to come up with a reason for Spider-man to ditch the new black "alien symbiote" costume, and return to his old red and blue tights. They created a story where the symbiote fed on anger and hate, hence the change in Peter's personality. Peter ditches the old costume, which seeks a host that is even angrier and far less goody-goody, leading to...Venom. This would've been a totally cool story if it was given the full-movie treatment that Doctor Octopus and Green Goblin had. In this abridged form, Venom is simply that "gooey costume Spidey tries on just for kicks," which is a real waste of a classic Spiderman story. Then there's "Green Goblin Junior", as it were. Again; a much more elaborate story in the comics...though what about the films? Harry Osborn (James Franco) was a primary character in the first two films. The outlandish afterthought that he has become in this planned "conclusion" of the trilogy, is nothing short of a travesty. In fact, spoilers notwithstanding; the way he is finally told the truth of his father's death, two movies earlier, will be remembered forevermore as one of the biggest plot holes in super hero film history. Why did this "witness" keep quiet for nearly three whole movies, only to say, "Um, yeah; I know how your father died. Sorry I didn't bring it up sooner...like, say, immediately when it happened." There are times when I feel sorry I spoiled even a slight part of the final reel of a film. This isn't one of them. Along the way there's Spider-man himself. To be fair, these are the scenes that sell the movie for me, though only barely. Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) is introduced, as is a particularly funny dinner scene where Peter tries to propose to MJ, with mixed results. The fact that the maître de is played by Bruce Campbell makes the scene even funnier. Then again; there's no denying that they took yet another staple in Spider-Man comic book lore ---Gwen--- and made her into an abridged footnote in one Spider-Man film. It's actually the biggest sign of my fanboy nature, that I give this hodgepodge of a Spiderman film a half-good rating. For some, that would be a thumbs down; for me, it's the lowest common denominator of "thumbs up." It's all a matter of optimism. On the one hand this film wasn't half as bad as X-Men 3. On the other hand; if they were ever to make a fourth Spider-Man movie, only to realize that they had wasted three whole movie concepts in one lackluster film; how disappointing would that be?
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