Let me first tell you what is good in this movie. Bruce Campbell is genius. His role brought the “fun” back into the movie that I was missing so dearly. The villains are pretty good, if undeveloped.
Now on what is bad in this film. Kirsten Dunst cannot sing, period. Why did I have to hear her twice? Bryce Dallas Howard is wasted. Gwen Stacy becomes a plot device and not a character. She is used, much like Venom, simply to geek out fan boys at her appearance, but really never once bringing anything to the table. What the hell was James Cromwell doing in this film? James Franco has this damn smile throughout the movie that seemed so forced and fake. The Sandman is gone for too long. Venom sucked. This is where it was wrong to cast Topher. He just doesn’t have the menace to play the classic Venom. Venom also did not look good whatsoever. He looked fake and rubbery. For the most expensive movie ever made, why could they not simply go get Weta to do Venom right, and give him the depth he deserved, both physically and emotionally? To avoid even needing Weta, they should have got rid of Venom all together. Develop the Eddie character this movie, and bring him back for the forth, and do Venom right. Raimi has always said he didn’t like Venom, and you can tell that was the case. He was probably forced to put him in the movie simply for marketing sakes, and not because he makes sense for the story. The action scenes were uninspired, and too CGI heavy, which you could tell. They took you out of the film when they should have you firmly planted in your seats. None of them ever came close to the terrific train battle, or the final showdown with Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2.
Also the plot hinges on too many conveniences in order to set up the story. The meteorite happens to land ten feet from Peter, but doesn’t attack him till much later on in the film, Harry comes down with short term amnesia, Harry’s butler shows up out of nowhere to resolve his daddy issues, the terrible newscast that informs us and Peter of the quick developments of a hostage situation was so hokey and lazy story telling, Flint happens to fall into a particle accelerator while on the run, Gwen happens to be modeling for the latest “copier” ad in a building 62 stories in the air when a crane goes out of control, oh and yes, a crane goes out of control because of a electrical malfunction. All of these things were too hard for me to suspend my disbelief for because the other films didn’t have them or at least weren’t nearly as glaring.
The most glaring misstep in this film though lasts for roughly 15 to twenty minutes. Once Peter Parker first obtains the black suit, apparently everything is fair game. Peter suddenly becomes the newest member of Panic-at-the-Disco. Spider-Man has officially jumped the shark. The scene is so out of place that it was as if Joel Schumacher jumped in the direct this scene. It just couldn’t have been Raimi. He is too smart to have done this. Test screenings were done. Did nobody tell him that he had just fucked up the middle part of the flick so haphazardly that the rest of the movie could never regain the momentum that the first part had built up? Apparently our idea of cool, must be telling women to get us cookies, covering one eye with emo hair, wearing the latest in European gigolo attire, and then becoming a dance/pianist aficionado. The jazz sequence is straight out of Jim Carrey’s The Mask. Once again, it is so out of place that I have to believe Raimi had his life threatened if he didn’t put it in there. One review compared this whole sequence of events to the equivalent to “having the greatest sex of your life, and than she looks at you and asks if you called your mom today.”
Finally, I hated the schmaltzy ending. Flints lines, while delivered well, really were saccharine. Peter lets him go all because his daughter is sick. The guy not only killed your uncle, he is an escaped convict, and he just probably killed a bunch more during that whole finale. Why let him go Spidey? Because you forgive him. What kind of hero are you. I also didn't care for the MJ/Peter resolution. So because they danced together at the end, we should expect that she forgives him. He frickin hit her and kissed another woman. Doesn't matter. I had little respect for MJ anyways.
***Spoiler End***
I know I will get quite a bit of negative feedback about this review already, but I must say this,...X3 was better. I know it is so easy to pick on Brett Ratner and X3 had a lot of problems, but it took chances. Besides when you compare there Tomato scores, X3 had 57%, while Spidey currently sits at 62%. This movie was just lazy story telling for most of the film. It juggled too many subplots, which made it bloated and contrived. X3, while not great, kept the film within the universe Bryan Singer had created. Spider-Man 3 did not maintain the same feel as the first two. It is akin to the differences in
5 comments:
I gotta say, I've always been partial to Batman. Well, not the Schumacher Batman, but the Nolan and Burton ones. For instance, I was looking forward to The Dark Knight with more eagerness than Spider-Man 3 and after the reviews opened up surprisingly mediocre, I gotta say Iron Man was looking great and it's only getting better by the minute.
I dunno, the superheroes who don't actually have superhuman powers (Batman, Iron Man) seem more interesting to me than those that do (Spider-Man, X-Men and Superman) - at least on film.
Even still though, I love me some good superhero films. I really enjoyed the first two Spider-Man films, as well as the first two X-Men's and yes, I liked Superman Returns as well. It had a nostalgic kick and affinity for the original that I really enjoyed.
Now, I'm not rushing out to see Spider-Man 3 just yet, but I'll probably see it tomorrow sometime. And I'll sit in the theater hoping that a diehard like chachi can somehow have gotten it wrong...
But there's gotta be a reason I went and saw Lucky You first, right?
Well the general audience, for the most part believes that they know what the movie is SUPPOSED to be and often forgets that a movie is someone else's vision. In the last two days I've heard nothing but bitching from "fans" claiming that the movie "should've" done this and "should've" done that. That's it? We're all the directors now? We all know what the movie SHOULD'VE done? I had to ask everyone that said they didn't like it why they didn't like it and they all said the same thing. "The crying and Venom wasn't in it enough."
Yeah I guess it could've been just a bunch of people punching each other and CGI and one-liners and shit...but that's what make it a movie and not a flick. "Venom was one of Spider-Man's main villains! How can they get rid of him after fourty-five minutes of screen time!"
Are we comparing comics here? Really? If anyone's gonna bitch about comparisons to comics it's gonna be me. And I've got nothing to say about it. In the comics Spider-Man time travels, fights aliens, monsters, goes to other planets, dimensions, uses magic, changes suits and identities...an American-actually-a World audience would not be able to cope with that. Anyway, Spider-Man's been around since the sixties...the fans from the beginning are all old now and don't want to go to the movies.
It's just a vision of Spider-Man, that's all.
I think it looked amazing, the parts from the trailer that I thought were gonna look horrible (birth of Sandman) were AMAZING in the movie. The fights were extremely well done and my favorite fight in the movie didn't involve any CGI. Sure there was some melodrama but that's not expected? Superheroes can't cry? It's not like the acting was bad or anything, I don't see what the big deal was.
Nine out of Ten, it loses points because Bryce Dallas Howard's hotness wasn't completely utilized and Mary Jane didn't get a cab dropped on her face.
Saw it.
Liked it.
But there are obvious story problems, it goes on at least 25 minutes too long, it's the weakest in the series by far, and it's got one of the worst sequences in a movie that I'll probably see all year (Peter Parker, Occupation: Player).
For the most part I'm actually going to echo Chachi's comments even though it sounds like I liked it a bit more than he did (and maybe that's because I wasn't overly anticipating the film, I was just interested in seeing it but wasn't geeking out about it).
From what I've heard, Raimi wrote the screenplay and then after he had completed it... they told him he had to add Venom into the story, which is why I think he has painfully little to do. Venom deserved his own movie with which to deal with him.
Hell, if I want to try to make excuses for it, maybe Raimi was so pissed off about having to include the Venom character that he wrote that terrible 15-minute sequence of Parker walking down the street pointing at women and doing 360 spins as a joke, only to be shocked that they allowed him to keep it in the film. I can't believe that there was no one who saw this movie who had issues with that and the awful, awful jazz scene.
And yes Myth, we are allowed to say "they should have done this and they should have done that" if it doesn't work. And judging by the 62% tomatometer (as opposed to S1's 90% and S2's 93%) it doesn't. There are glaring missteps in this film. And I don't see how pointing them out and how they might have been improved is such an issue. That's what criticism is.
And did you even read Chachi's recap? He points out something like 30 problems he had with the film, going into a lot more detail than Venom's short stint and Parker's crying. He does an excellent job pointing out faults that the other two films didn't seem to have (or have as noticeably).
But in Spider-Man 3 Raimi seems to force things. He takes shortcuts in the story. He causes friction between Parker and Mary Jane simply because it doesn't seem like he knows what else to do. And he so poorly handles "the dark side" of Spider-Man that it almost derails the entire film. Then, after going on for about two hours, he rushes the ending and tries to sprint to the finish line - while in doing so, making characters do things they normally wouldn't and even adding crappy characters like the butler to fix long standing character issues.
I know I spent a lot of time pointing out problems with the movie, but it is a bit of a disappointment even though I thought there was too much good to consider it a 'bad' film. It's a solid B effort, but after two A/A minus-caliber films, that's a significant dropoff.
The Sandman character was interesting enough to have this film focused on him and Harry. I think Chachi was right about how they should have introduced Brock in 3 and Venom in 4.
Jeez, all this and I didn't even mention the worst acting in the movie coming from Topher Grace and James Cromwell. During the scene where their girlfriend and daughter respectively is about to drop 60 stories to her death... they decide it's a good time to have a casual conversation and show absolutely no sympathy. I guess they just assumed Spider-Man would swing in to the rescue. Just terrible.
I do gotta give it to you though Myth, that "Nine out of Ten, it loses points because Bryce Dallas Howard's hotness wasn't completely utilized and Mary Jane didn't get a cab dropped on her face." line was brilliant. Great stuff.
OK...I waited several days to get my head in the right place to write this review...and to yell at Mighty Myth.
Review first: Damn. Just goddammit. I was so disappointed by this film. Not to say that it was awful. Or bad even. But considering Spidey 2 is the pinnacle of superhero films...needless to say that I had high hopes.
So what went wrong? I think it's been pointed out. Venom (hell...the whole symbiote) should've been cut. More focus on Sandman and Harry (and James Franco should be beaten with a shovel...he already acts like he was). Change the whole Mary Jane plot. She became shallow and even less fleshed out than she was in the previous films. Give Gwen Stacey something to do. For the love of god...ditch the super-crappy convenient plot points (I'm looking at you old butler guy).
What's good: Bruce "The Chin" Campbell. The man is god. Bow down and worship. Or suffer his eternal wrath. I liked Topher Grace. He brought some spunk to what was otherwise a very bland group of actors. Maybe not perfect for Venom, but the part could have suited him had it been written better. Thomas Haden Church. I love him. Unfortunately, he is given very little. A great beginning, and what could have been a great ending...had there been more in the middle to build on. He has the most potential out of all the new characters (within the confines of this film)...but is just kind of abandoned in the middle section....so we can watch Tobey act like an awful mix of Travolta and Carrey.
The "birth" of Sandman...god...that was a beautiful scene. Just amazingly done. The fall into the atomic thingy was lame....but they more than make up for it with the stuff that follows.
And I would fail as a reviewer if I failed to mention JK Simmons...who is easily the most consistent actor in the series. Always great. Always funny. The man deserves an oscar for best consistently awesome actor ever in the history of the world.
I'm not going to go too much more in depth. The other posts cover my feelings more or less exactly. This is a mess of a film. No doubt. But it has a great film in it. The film the Sam Raimi originally wrote. Before having to add in Venom. I believe that firmly. Raimi loves this character and this universe too much to do this to it without some sort of outside interference. and the fact that there is a good film in here is the reason its better than X3. That film is crap. Crap the whole way through. And I don't blame Ratner. Entirely. That film had tons of problems during development as well. Ratner just doesn't give two shits about character. About emotion. He cares about looks and explosions and coolness factor.
As for the keeping it in the universe argument. I disagree. Spidey 3 was very much in the same universe as the first two. This still felt like a Spiderman film. Even that god-awful dance sequence. Raimi's always had a bat-shit crazy, goofy sense of humor. He's used dance before in this series (the "singing in the rain" scene in Spidey 2). As much as this sequence didn't work, I could see what Raimi was going for. And it was the only time in the film that Tobey seemed to be enjoying himself. And aside from the whole Venom plot...this did feel like Raimi. You can really tell that he did not want to have Venom involved. I blame him for being childish and writing/directing it so poorly, but I can understand why. And this is nowhere near the atrocity that Schumaker's Batman films were.
This is a very uneven film. And it is a disappointment. But it has enough redeeming factors for me to at least recommend it. I really hope that Raimi one day puts out a Director's cut that just blows this out of the water....because I know that there is something amazing underneath this...something that was ruined by overzealous fans, money-hungry producers (Avi Arad...you bastard), and by Raimi himself. It's a shame. But a shame that's still worth the price of a ticket.
As for you Mr. Mighty Myth.
That's a load of bullshit. A big ole load. I can't critic a film now because I'm not a director? I can't say that Raimi should have done something else, because this is his vision (which it isn't...because his vision never included Venom)? Bullshit. Why? Because his vision was flawed. Criticism is expected. So what if it's his vision? If that's your logic...then no one can make fun of Uwe Boll. Or PWS Anderson. Because they're shit-tastic films are they're own visions of those particular mediums. Doesn't matter that those visions are border-line retarded. Can't criticize them. They're not mine...so I can't touch them.
That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. The audience has every fucking right to know what a film should be. IT WAS FUCKING MADE FOR THEM. Raimi didn't make Spiderman for no one to see. He didn't spend $267 million to make a film that only he would watch. He made it for the masses...and if the masses are disappointed...then he must face the criticism. That's what being a director of major Hollywood blockbusters is.
But since you so fervently believe in this idiocy...I don't want to read another bad review from you. Remember. You have to be nice. That's not your vision you're watching.
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