A while back I posted an entry pointing to the Spiderman 3 trailer. So you can see that I was very excited to see this movie come out. I collected Spidey comics as a kid. I know the mythology fairly well. I adore the first two movies. The second one even touched me on an emotional level during a few of the scenes (not something I was expecting from a comic book movie). I say all of this to show you that I wanted this film to be good. I am not a rabid fan boy, but I'm pretty close. It didn't have to be better than the first or second movies. It just had to not screw it up. Sadly, things did go horribly wrong somewhere. I believe that Spiderman was a victim of his own success (which is ironic given that this is a theme in the 3rd movie). Please note that I am about to talk about the movie. This means SPOILERS! Don't read ahead if you don't want SPOILERS!
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Let me break it down for you:
- First, the actors... Everyone knows that Tobey threw a fit before making the 2nd movie. Kirsten has recently been quoted as saying Sony wouldn't dare make a 4th picture without the standard crew. This all tells me that we have some serious contract negotiations going on behind the scenes. The first two movies were smashing hits, and everyone wants a piece of the pie. This means bigger salaries which means a bloated movie budget.
- Now let's look at the director... I love Sam Raimi. I really do. Army of Darkness is a classic. He did a wonderful job with the first two Spidey's. But with each of those I'm sure he had much less creative control. I imagine he had little to none for the first, and was allowed off his leash a bit for the 2nd. But with the success of the 2nd and the hype of the 3rd, he would be able to put his foot down and demand more creative freedom. Unfortunately, he's like a lot of creative types... he doesn't know when to quit. Many forget that Evil Dead 2 wasn't supposed to be a camp comedy, but the Raimi brothers were wise enough to go with the flow and followed it up with Army of Darkness, a wonderful *intentionally* campy movie. Intent being key here. I thought he'd learned his lesson when he maintained some semblance of seriousness in Spiderman 2, but I was wrong. Someone should seriously slap him for the Stayin' Alive scene.
- Finally, we turn our eyes toward the distributor... Sony... poor, poor Sony. They haven't been doing too well lately. Getting their asses handed to them by Nintendo's Wii, not to mention flat electronics sales, and the Blue Ray vs. HDTV still undecided. About the only thing for them is the entertainment division, and Spiderman had a LOT to do with that. Maybe not everything was riding on this movie, but you can bet all of the execs were depending on it to help make their numbers this quarter (and even this year).
So what happens when you combine whiney, overpaid actors, a director who doesn't know when to say enough, and a distributor that's hinging its bets on a real hit?
Well, I guess you get Spiderman 3, otherwise known as a piece of trying-to-be-better-than-it-is crap.
The plot was so frenetically paced that even I, someone who knows Spiderman history backwards and forwards, had trouble keeping up. The black suit was not nearly adequately explained for the non-comic book audience. And Sandman's tenderhearted moments required a longing gaze at a photo of his little girl EVERY TIME! Don't treat your audience like they're stupid. You could've used those extra seconds on oh, I don't know, maybe some REAL character development. Plot holes abound as well. Harry has a trusted butler? The butler knew Harry's dad killed himself? Gee, it would've been nice of him to mention that a while back, no? Say, before he was killed, no wait, only horribly disfigured, but that's OK. A moment's heart-to-heart between the Alfred wannabe and Harry and suddenly he doesn't want to kill Peter anymore. Yeah... that makes sense. And while we're on the subject of Peter, it seems that Raimi is out of touch with the modern world since Peter danced like he was in a bad 70s disco movie. Additionally, any time he was wearing the evil suit, why did he suddenly look like a cross between Robert Smith and Conor Oberst? I'm not even kidding!!! Finally, we get to the one bright spot of the movie, Venom (and Topher Grace). I thought that Topher nailed the character in a way I wasn't expecting. He was very convincing. Sadly, because Raimi and crew were trying their best to wrap up all loose ends (but not too convincingly), we only got about 5 minutes of real Venom action. Meh.
So, to sum it all up, please don't waste your money. Please don't succumb to the marketing hype (as I did). Learn from my mistake. Don't reward this kind of movie development. Just say no, and all that stuff.
