I watched Spider-Man 3 last night, and it wasn't nearly as bad as people said. Sure, the ending was a mess, and I am now completely over any illusion that Kirsten Dunst is either cute or charismatic, and Marko got completely shoehorned into the Uncle Ben story, but both the premise and the structure were really quite solid. A bit on the nose in places, perhaps, e.g. Harry's remarks in the hospital, but I am also on the other side of several decades' worth of internalizing how stories work and so I may be sensitive to that sort of thing.
Thomas Hayden Church was superbly cast as Flint Marko. Nailed the look, and had the chops to carry the emotional weight.
Let me amplify that: The movie series has, in fact, nailed the look of the source material better than any other movie series. And, in fact, watching the movie made me realize that the movies have solved a problem that the comics have always had: How does Spidey swing around? In particular, where's the necessary altitude coming from?
The answer: The webs are sproingy. Spidey nails the top of a building and the webline pulls him up to a point he can start swinging from. (This works even better if we make the assumption that the webs are sproingy for only a second or two while they're drying and shrink to a fixed length thereafter.)
I will also note that movie Spidey is amazingly more resistant to damage than comics Spidey. Comics Spidey would be smashed into pulpy bits if he took a dozen sledgehammer blows from a giant Sandman while strapped to a steel girder.
The degree to which New Yorkers cheer for their heroes feels real, and seems to be a major change in the city since September 11. Before then, we'd never have seen the idealistic and hopeful NYC crowd scenes we saw in SM 2 and 3; New Yorkers were at least perceived as cynical and hostile, especially to those held up for admiration.
Posted by Greg at May 5, 2008 10:23 AM
I agree that "Spider-Man 3" isn't as bad as most people say, but it DOES suffer from biting off WAY more than it is capable of properly chewing. This results in the Symbiote just falling out of the sky (despite the fact that they could've easily aped the 90's cartoon version and have John Jameson unknowingly bring the symbiote to Earth, or even go the Ultimate root and make it a science experiment from Earth), Harry getting Deus Ex Amnesia (as well as coming up with perhaps the dumbest supervillain plan EVER), the background character Butler playing a frustratingly important role in the end, and all other kinds of lazy storyrelling shortcuts that serve to really, REALLY hurt the movie.
That said, what works works fantastically. I loved the way Peter's frustrations and anger ultimately drive him to the suit, as well as the change it creates in his personality: rather than get all "Muahahaha" evil, as most versions of the story have him do, he becomes more or less himself, but with all his inhibitions and doubts shut off. That's why, contrary to most, I LOVED his little dance number: it just seems like the kind of thing Peter would do in that situation.
Likewise, Topher Grace's Eddie Brock/Venom is a surprisingly effective mirror for Peter. The parallels between them, which become even clearer when Peter goes symbiote, are surprisingly clever and compelling. The way Venom is likewise portrayed as being like a twisted Spider-Man, complete with a warped sense of humor, strengthens that connection. Sandman also gets some great scenes, such as his re-birth in the sandpit, which to me is a masterpiece of effects work and direction.
Even MJ and Harry, both of whom are forcibly marginalized up until the very end due to just how jam-packed the story is, come off very well. I like how they try to rekindle their relationship from the first film, only for MJ to realize how wrong it is to do so, despite her own frustrations with Peter. I likewise loved Harry's fight with Peter in his mansion.
Unfortunately, all this great stuff is forced to operate in the confines of a jumbled plot that just cannot friggin' prioritize itself properly. Who or what is most important is never made clear, with plotlines vanishing for good chunks of time only to pop up again rather awkwardly later on. I also felt trying to tie Sandman to Uncle Ben's death was a gambit that just did not pay off. Overall, I feel SM3 is a movie that is mediocre in sum, even though none of its individual parts can be said to fit that term.
Spider-Man 3 was one-and-a-half good movies crammed into a single film. Had they opened things up a little more and given themselves four and a half hours to develop everything, it would have worked pretty well. It (they) still wouldn't have been as good as the first two, but it (they) would have been better than the Spider-Man 3 we actually got.
I also thought Church did a good job as Flint Marko, but I enjoyed Harry's amnesia mostly because I liked seeing Harry actually be happy. Sure, I know it isn't going to last, that seems to be Harry's whole deal, but I really enjoyed the scenes where he's having fun with Peter and MJ, and I'm not sure that could have happened without the amnesia, given the level of baggage Harry was carrying around at the start of the film (unless they decide Harry's somehow gotten over his feelings of being betrayed by Peter between movies 2 and 3).
My biggest problem with Spider-Man 3 is the large Coke I had before going in. Man, I had to pee, and my idiot friends sat in the middle of the theater!
But seriously, the plotting was horrific.
My understanding is that about 45 minutes were chopped out of the film, most of which was supposed to develop the villains' side of the plot, and that's how the movie felt to me when I saw it - like it got squished by the editing process. Admittedly an extended cut wouldn't fix all of the film's problems, but I think it would probably be a smoother viewing experience overall.
I also loved the whole "Dark Peter" side of the story, which is probably why I like the movie more than most. The anger the dance scene and sidewalk strutting spawned in viewers often confuses me, but then I also liked the stuff in Blade 2 that everyone hates (e.g., Blade using pro wrestling moves during the fight scenes). I like it when these movie get to be a little playful. Not campy but having a little fun and not clenching teeth all the time.
I found SM3 enjoyable enough, but found it was very crowded, plotwise. My thoughts on the matter congealed when a friend who hadn't liked it as much complained that it didn't have enough super action in it. I pointed out that using the story conflict archetypes of man vs man/man vs nature/man vs self, the primary point of SM3 was man vs self - the corruption into selfishness of Peter Parker and Spiderman by the dark impulses of the suit. For me the superhero action was there for the people who couldn't get their heads around a superhero genre movie that doesn't have fight scenes. I'm still undecided on where to draw the line between seeing the action as either icing on the cake or overkill, but I'm definately not in the abovementioned camp that thinks there wasn't enough of it. Either one or both of Venom or the Goblin would have been enough in my books; I think the addition of the Sandman was unnecessary.